Among mothers who knew of the existence of past-life memories, 4% reported that their children had spoken of them between ages three and twelve. Ohkado Masayuki conducted an internet survey asking thousands of Japanese mothers whether their children remembered being born, or being in the womb, or the intermission between the present and past lives.
Strong, confirmed cases such as those published by Stevenson and others must be much rarer. It should be noted that these are claims of remembering past lives, not verified memories. Clues are provided by surveys carried out in 1974, which reported incidences of 2% in Iceland and 8-9% in Charlottesville, Virginia in a further survey in Iceland in 2007, the figure was 10%. No survey has yet measured the prevalence of claims of past-life memories globally. Prevalence and Patterns of Past-Life Memory 3 Accordingly, while reincarnation cannot be explained away on the grounds of amnesia, explanations must be sought both for the past-life memory and for the forgetting of it. It can be argued that it first arose as early tribal peoples observed phenomena such as childhood past-life memories, birthmarks resembling past-life wounds, behavioural similarities to a recently-deceased person or announcing dreams. 2 Reincarnation belief accompanied by awareness of its indications – which are similar and found worldwide – is very ancient, likely predating state-level societies. An axiom in anthropology is that the more widespread a belief, the further back in time it dates. Reincarnation cases have been found to show certain patterns across cultures and across time, as one would expect in a natural phenomenon. In addition, there are accounts from the twentieth century prior to Stevenson’s work and even some from earlier centuries. Ian Stevenson and others have collected over 2,500 cases of children who recall a previous life of these, some 1,700 of are solved – meaning the child’s memory was sufficiently clear to enable the previous incarnations to be identified with reasonable certainty, to the exclusion of other possible identities. 1 But it is complicated by evidence that some people do remember one or more past lives.
The point was made as far back as the third century CE, when the Christian philosopher and reincarnation sceptic Tertullian made it part of his critique, and has subsequently been voiced repeatedly up to the present day. Sceptics of reincarnation point to the fact that people do not generally remember having lived a past life.
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