I like the story about the fortune teller who told Siddartha's father that he was meant to be a leader or a prophet. Of course we all know how the story ended. Not unlike the young Sigmund Freud whose mother took the baby to meet the friends and neighbors in their Jewish ghetto and an old peasant women with a gleam in her eye said something to the effect (paraphrased) ' he is going to be a great man' and ...well some wouldn't call him great but he certainly became very famous!
Funny how those early childhood messages (with adults encouraging the message) turn into self fulifilling prophecy. I don't think things were so different back in Sid's day. All that stuff under the bodhi tree at the age of 35 or so was just the fruition of a long and productive search. Very similar to what occurs in the process of self-analysis and/or primal or regression therapy. Many of us probably agree Buddha didn't really sit there having flashbacks of previous lives.....rather flashbacks of early childhood.
Its a great story!