Patterns & Statistics

If you are like most people in the West, you deal with the fact that at some point you will die by simply not thinking about it. Death is humanity’s worst fear, and what makes it scariest is that it is a certainty. We shield ourselves from this awful truth by shutting it out of our minds, by not talking about it, by ridiculing it, and all other manner of coping mechanisms.

Infographic courtesy of the Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia

Perhaps what is most scary about death is that since there are so many contradictory claims about what happens after it that it is… a big unknown. Presented with contradictory options we find ourselves feeling we cannot know—and fear of the unknown is one of humanity’s great fears, too.

What is our best weapon against lack of knowledge? 

Science, of course.  And through science we do have some idea of what happens after death. 

Reincarnation By The Numbers

The “Tucker” referred to in the infographic is the Director of the Division of Perceptual Studies and ICRR Science Council Member: Dr. Jim Tucker.

But it only scratches the surface of what has been learned through statistical analysis or surveys.

Infographic courtesy of the Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia

Key Stats We Have Learnt So Far

  • In American households with children 3-10 years old, up to 6% have a child talking about past lives. This accords reasonably well with a Japanese survey showing that some 4% of Japanese kids recall past lives.
  • The culture with the highest prevalence of past-life memory worldwide, according to Stevenson, is: the Tlingit First Nations tribe of northwest Canada/US.
  • Of 43 Tlingit cases that Stevenson studied, ten (23%) were planned reincarnations, meaning that before death a person had stated intentions about their next incarnation, and after their death a child was born whose memories proved that the intentions had been fulfilled. Of the ten, eight accurately named the family into which they would reincarnate.
  • Of 31 sets of twins that Stevenson studied for which both twins’ past incarnations were identified, 100% of them had known each other.
  • The length of time between lives, while it averages out at 16 months, varies in a way that matches the beliefs of the subject’s culture
  • Recent cases and historically-recorded cases, even from hundreds of years ago, show the same features.

More interesting statistics

  • the percentage of children who claim to have chosen their current parents
  • the percentage of people who recall traumatic events in past lives who also have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms
  • whether past-life regression is an effective healing method over the long-term
  • how much gender identity disorder correlates with remembering a past life in the preferred gender
  • whether sexual orientation remains the same over multiple lives

These last five studies are among the many important ones that have not yet been done.

That’s the first reason that ICRR came into being.

However, the main point here is that reincarnation shows consistent patterns both across different cultures and different eras. That’s how natural phenomena, things that really happen, look when examined scientifically.

We invite you to think about this next time you think about dying.

We also invite you to ask yourself if this many people could be wrong when we look at beliefs across the world…