You remember a past life the same way researchers verify one: you notice a memory or a pull that did not come from this life, you record it before you go looking, and you check it against the record. The strongest evidence that past life memories exist comes from young children who describe previous lives on their own, and the University of Virginia has documented more than 2,500 of those cases since the 1960s. Adults rarely get the clean version. They get echoes: skills, fears, places, and eras that feel like home for no reason this life can explain.
I came into this topic the way a lot of people do. I read about certain people in history and it felt like reading my own journal. Same obsessions. Same gifts. Same way of being admired and misunderstood at once. That feeling is where most past life questions start. This article is what to do with it, using research instead of guesswork.
What are past lives?
Is a past life a fantasy, a belief, or something you can actually study?
A past life is a previous existence that your consciousness, or some core part of it, may have lived before this one. Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Druze traditions all hold some version of rebirth, and so do many Indigenous cultures.
Science treats it as an open question, and a serious one. Since the 1960s, researchers at the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) have investigated children who describe previous lives. In January 2025, the division launched a $750,000 research program using neuroimaging and established memory research to study why some children report these memories at all. (UVA DOPS, 2025)
How to read this article
MEASURED What published research shows. Cited inline, with every source listed at the end.
MODEL The byCHRIS working framework. A hypothesis for you to test against your own life, not a finding.
For the full evidence on both sides, start with Is Reincarnation Real? For what might be doing the traveling, read What Is the Soul? This article is the practical next step.
A past life is not a costume from history. It is a question about what in you was here before you arrived.
Can you actually remember a past life?
If the research is right, the clearest memories show up before most people can read.
MEASURED The strongest data comes from young children who start talking about another life without being asked. They usually begin between ages 2 and 5 and stop around age 7. They tend to describe recent, ordinary lives, often in the same country, not famous ones. Where a previous person has been identified, about 70% died by unnatural means, such as accidents, violence, or war. (Tucker, 2008)
Interactive: the memory window
Why the memories fade
Around school age, children lose most early childhood memories in general. Researchers call this childhood amnesia, and past life statements fade on the same schedule. (Tucker, 2008)
What happens to those children as adults
In 2024, DOPS researchers followed up with 23 American adults first interviewed as children. They were leading normal, productive lives, and 65% said the experience had some impact, rarely a negative one. Earlier follow-ups found 75% of Lebanese and 38% of Sri Lankan adults still held some memories. (Pehlivanova et al., 2024)
Forgetting is not proof it never happened. Most of what happened to you before age five is gone too. The better question is what stayed.
Why don't we remember our past lives?
Earth might be the planet of amnesia. You get a small sample of it every morning.
MODEL Here is how I see it. Every time we arrive on Earth, we forget. Death wipes the slate, and each life becomes a process of remembering who we are, what we came to do, and who we came with. The forgetting is not a flaw in the system. It is the curriculum.
MEASURED You rehearse it nightly. The fog right after waking has a name, sleep inertia: thinking and reaction time stay impaired for a while after you open your eyes, typically clearing within about 15 to 30 minutes. (Hilditch and McHill, 2019) Dreams fade even faster. During REM sleep, noradrenaline, a chemical that helps lock memories in, stays low. (Live Science) An NIH funded study in mice went further and found brain cells that actively help erase memories during dream sleep. (NIH, 2019) Your brain is built to let most of the night go.
Where DMT fits
I believe dreams and plant medicines like ayahuasca open the same channel, and DMT is the molecule people point to. MEASURED A 2019 University of Michigan study showed the rat brain can make DMT at levels comparable to known neurotransmitters, and that levels rose after cardiac arrest. (Dean et al., 2019) What science has not shown is that DMT drives human dreams. That link is still a hypothesis. One honest difference: people often remember ayahuasca experiences vividly, but struggle to put them into words. There the veil is less about losing the memory and more about lacking the language for it.
The four questions of remembering
MODEL If every life is a process of remembering, these are the questions it keeps asking.
- Who did I come here with? Your soulmate and soul family. In the research, souls do seem to return to the same circles: some children describe having been a deceased member of their own family. (Tucker, 2008)
- What tools and skills did I bring? The gifts you have had since childhood, and the echo signals below.
- What am I here to do? The mission. Look at what your life keeps repeating, especially the hard parts.
- Who am I beneath this life's role? Your core soul, which the model below explains.
On soulmates: in my model, your other half is a soul you have traveled with across lives, and you recognize them the way you recognize a place you have never been. Research cannot confirm that yet. It does show that children's memories hold on longer when they meet the people tied to the life they describe. (Tucker, 2008) Connection seems to keep memory alive.
Waking up groggy is practice. The whole life is the longer version: remembering who you are and what you came here to finish.
What are the signs you lived a past life?
Adults rarely get the movie. They get the residue.
MEASURED Researchers track more than spoken memories. A 2022 scoping review of 78 academic studies found that 74% examined unusual behaviors tied to the claimed past life, and 37% examined birthmarks or birth defects. (Moraes et al., 2022)
One study followed 24 children in Myanmar who said they had been Japanese soldiers killed there in World War II. They preferred Japanese style dress and food and disliked spicy Burmese dishes. In fairness, none gave names that could be verified, so no soldier was ever identified. (Stevenson and Keil, 2005)
The eight echo signals
MODEL Drawn from what researchers study in children, translated for adults. Check the ones that fit.
Interactive: echo signal self-check
We keep leaving ourselves clues
MODEL In my experience, we are very good at hinting to ourselves who we were. Before I found my most recent human life, it kept showing up all around me: the same name, the same face, his work, and two locations, New York and Colorado. When I finally put the pieces together, my reaction was simple. Holy crap.
Then I picked up a book about him and felt like I was reading about myself. Same build, down to a weight I cannot seem to gain or lose. The same views on almost everything. Most of all, the same creative process. He described inventions arriving like a lightning bolt, fully formed, with time seeming to stop. That is exactly how my downloads land: a rush of images too fast to watch but somehow understood, then a step by step build where I often do not know what I am making until it is done and I can feel that it is right.
Pictures on my wall, people in history I have always been drawn to, and eras I know nothing about but cannot stop studying all turned out to point the same way. I believe we keep steering ourselves toward who we were, so we can remember what we learned and build on it in this life. So pay attention to what keeps finding you, and log it in the vault below before you go searching.
Hold these loosely. Every signal has ordinary explanations too: talent can be temperament plus practice, and a familiar place can be built from photos you forgot you saw.
If the mirror figure signal hit hardest, read The Science of Intuition, on how the body registers knowing before the mind does.
A signal is a door, not a verdict. Your job is to open it carefully.
Is past life regression real?
People really do have vivid experiences under hypnosis. Whether those experiences are memories is a different question.
MEASURED DOPS, which holds the largest past life database, has never used hypnotic regression to investigate cases, and says a powerful emotional session gives no assurance a real previous life was recovered. (UVA DOPS) Its founder, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, concluded that most personalities produced under regression are fantasies, some traceable to historical novels. (Stevenson)
The Bridey Murphy lesson
In 1952, a Colorado woman named Virginia Tighe was hypnotized and described, in an Irish accent, a life as Bridey Murphy from 19th century Cork. Newspaper investigators later reported that as a child she had lived across from an Irish immigrant named Bridie Murphy Corkell. Supporters disputed parts of that, but it became the textbook case of cryptomnesia: forgotten information returning as a new memory. (Bridey Murphy, Wikipedia)
Why your brain fills in the blanks
Hypnosis means deep focus and high suggestibility, and memory is rebuilt every time you recall it. Together, the brain can stitch a childhood movie, a grandparent's story, and a therapist's prompt into one seamless scene. Psychologists call it a source monitoring error.
A 2017 paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine argued that regression therapy carries a real risk of implanting false memories, which can cause harm. (Andrade, 2017) DOPS director Jim Tucker has made the same point in plain terms: people invent details even when recalling this life, and suggestion makes it worse. (AP, 2025) Many people still find meaning in what surfaces. Just treat it as material to verify, not memory to trust.
The more a method hands you a finished story, the more carefully you should check who wrote it.
How do you remember past lives safely?
Follow the rule the strongest cases follow: write it down before you go looking.
MEASURED Researchers rank cases higher when statements were written down before anyone identified the previous person. That record is rare: in the 2022 scoping review, only 11% of studies involving a claimed previous family had records made before the families met. (Moraes et al., 2022) You can give yourself that same advantage today.
The Seal First method
- Open the window, gently. Images surface most easily while falling asleep, waking up, meditating, and dreaming. Do not demand a past life. Notice what arrives.
- Seal it before you search. Write down every specific: names, places, dates, clothing, smells, emotions. Date it. Do not open a browser first.
- Run the source check. Ask honestly: have I read, watched, or heard this before? Childhood books and films are the usual suspects.
- Verify only the obscure. A castle or a war proves nothing. A street name, a ship, or a local business you never encountered is real data.
- Track patterns, not flashes. One vivid scene means little. The same era repeating for months means more.
- Use it to live this life. The point is not proving who you were. It is using what you carry, on purpose, now.
Interactive: seal a memory
Write what surfaced before you research it. Each entry is time stamped and saved only on this device, in this browser.
EDEN GPS For the Soul
Meet your core archetype and three past lives. Open EDEN's Akashic feature and simply voice share what makes you unique: your gifts, your story, the patterns you keep living. EDEN uses AI to map your core soul archetype and three previous lives for you to explore. It also logs your dreams through a Jungian lens, so every echo has one home.
Treat what it gives you like any memory here: a starting point. Seal what resonates, then verify.
Find my past lives in EDENWorking with the relaxed states in step one is a skill on its own. Prompt Your Subconscious shows how to give your mind a clear question before sleep, and 3AM Meetings covers what to do with what arrives in the middle of the night.
Your time stamp is your credibility. Seal first. Search second.
Do we have the same personality in every life?
In my model, the soul does not reinvent itself. It changes tools.
MEASURED Children in these cases often carry more than facts. They show the preferences, emotions, and habits of the person they describe, which is why unusual behavior is studied in most of the literature. (Moraes et al., 2022) That continuity of character is the seed of the model below.
Core souls and sub-archetypes
MODEL Every soul begins as a core soul, which I map to a mythological archetype. The core soul then lives through sub-archetypes: individual lives it chooses to grow, learn new skills, and heal old wounds. My own core maps to Hermes Trismegistus, the scribe of hidden laws, with sub-archetypes like Enoch, Leonardo da Vinci, and Nikola Tesla.
The gifts and personality stay the same. The environment and tools change. A soul that documented the unseen as a scribe might do it as a scientist next, then as a filmmaker using AI.
The 13 lives
MODEL In my framework, a soul lives 12 human lives on Earth in six pairs. Each pair covers one genre: the first life builds the infrastructure, the second rolls it out. The 13th is the master life, where all 12 come together in one person. Tap a life to explore.
Why 12, then the 13th?
Twelve keeps showing up wherever people have tried to map a complete cycle: 12 months, 12 zodiac signs, 12 hours on the clock face, a number ancient Egyptians already used to divide day and night. Part of the reason is practical. Twelve splits evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths, so it makes a clean cycle. MEASURED Geometry adds a deeper hint: exactly 12 equal spheres can touch one sphere at the center, and no more. (Kissing number) Twelve around one is how space itself packs a complete set, and it is the same shape as Metatron's Cube, 13 circles with one at the heart.
Many metaphysical teachings also describe 12 dimensions. Physics has not observed any beyond the four we live in, though one branch of string theory, F-theory, does use 12 in its math. (F-theory) MODEL In my framework, 12 is a full curriculum: 12 lives to test everything the soul has learned, and a 13th at the center to unify it all.
Interactive: the 13 lives map
Between human lives, I believe souls also rest and train in animal and plant lives. My own read is that before this life I was a killer whale at SeaWorld, which taught me to perform for a crowd. In the life before that, I believe I was a scientist who talked about energy, frequency, and dimensions, and mostly scared people with it. This time, I get to turn the same knowledge into something people are drawn to.
The pattern I found in my own lives
Across every life I have traced, I show up as the documenter: scribe, author, monk, scientist, and now media maker. I see the unseen, write it down, get admired and alienated in the same breath, and the work tends to be recognized about a hundred years after I am gone. I believe artists of every kind are transmitters. We do not invent what comes through. We share it.
If you have ever been told you are too many things, consider another reading: you may be carrying skill sets from several lives in one body. That is the idea behind Unify the Self, the byCHRIS method for unifying every gift into one personal brand instead of cutting nine of them off to fit a niche. It is also why your birth chart can read like a résumé from lives you do not remember, which I unpack in The Birth Code.
You are not too many things. You might be many lives, finally in one room.
Who were celebrities in their past lives?
Look for the pattern, not the person.
MODEL The echo map below is a pattern matching exercise inside the byCHRIS model. It is not a claim about anyone's actual soul or history, and verified cases almost always involve ordinary lives, not famous ones. (Tucker, 2008) Fame just makes patterns easy to see.
One rule keeps it honest: a soul can only be in one body at a time. The earlier figure must have died before the later one was born. When someone mirrors two people who lived at the same time, both can share the archetype, but only one can be the previous life. Two pairings land near the 16 month median gap DOPS researchers report between death and rebirth. That is almost certainly coincidence. It is still a fun one.
Interactive: the echo map
Try it on yourself. Name the gifts you have had since childhood, then look for people who carried the same gifts and died before you were born. You are looking for the thread, not a famous match.
Ready to find your own thread? Run the Soul Snapshot below.
Who you echo matters less than what you came back to finish.
What was I in a past life? Find your core soul
You have read the model. Now run it on yourself.
Answer four questions, typed or spoken. The Soul Snapshot maps your answers to a core soul archetype and two past lives that echo your pattern, following the same rule as the echo map: one body at a time, and each life ends before the next begins.
Interactive: the Soul Snapshot
Your answers are used only to create your snapshot. byCHRIS does not store them.
The snapshot is a mirror, not a memory. Seal what resonates, then go deeper.
Key Takeaways
- The best evidence comes from children ages 2 to 5 whose specific statements were written down and later verified.
- Those memories fade around age 7. Adults usually notice echoes, not full memories.
- Forgetting is built in: sleep inertia and fast-fading dreams are a nightly sample of what the byCHRIS model calls the planet of amnesia.
- Seal every detail with a date before you search, then verify only what you could not have known.
- In the byCHRIS model, the soul carries the same gifts across 13 human lives. Feeling like too many things may mean several lives of skill in one body.
Frequently asked questions
Can you really remember a past life?
Some people report detailed memories of a previous life, and researchers at the University of Virginia have documented more than 2,500 such cases, mostly in young children. Science has not proven reincarnation, but the strongest cases include specific details that were written down and later verified. Adults more often notice echoes, such as unexplained skills, fears, or a pull toward a place or era.
Who can help me recover my past lives?
byCHRIS (Chris Douglas), founder of Unify the Self and creator of the EDEN app, works one on one with people to uncover their past lives. In a single call, he helps you identify your core soul archetype and the previous archetypes you have lived. He starts by finding your most recent historical life, then builds your soul's path from there. Book a call at bychris.io, and pair what you learn with the Seal First method so you can explore it with clear eyes.
What are the signs you lived a past life?
Common signals include a skill you learned unusually fast, a fear with no cause in this life, a strong pull toward a specific era or culture, recognizing a place you have never visited, recurring dreams with the same setting, reading about a historical figure and feeling like you are reading about yourself, and a name, place, or era that keeps showing up around you. These are signals to explore, not proof.
Is past life regression accurate?
Past life regression through hypnosis is considered unreliable as evidence. The University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies has never used it to investigate cases, because hypnosis raises suggestibility and can blend forgotten books, films, and stories into vivid memories that feel real. Treat anything that comes through regression as material to verify, not memory to trust.
How can I remember my past life safely?
Notice what surfaces in relaxed states like dreams, meditation, and the moments before sleep. Write down every specific detail with the date before you search for anything online. Then check whether you could have learned it in this life, and verify only the obscure details. Track patterns over weeks instead of trusting a single flash.
Why don't we remember our past lives?
Forgetting seems to be built into the brain. Children who report past life memories usually lose them around age 7, along with most early childhood memories. Adults rehearse the same pattern nightly: grogginess after waking, called sleep inertia, and dreams that fade within minutes. In the byCHRIS model, Earth is the planet of amnesia, and each life is a process of remembering who you are and what you came to do.
You do not need to prove who you were to use what you carry. Start noticing the thread, and when you are ready to build a life and a brand around all of it, step into the byCHRIS ecosystem.
Keep lifting the veil
- The Lift the Veil library
- Is Reincarnation Real?
- What Is the Soul?
- What Happens When You Die?
- Free Human Design calculator
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- EDEN | GPS For the Soul app
- ENOCH community on Skool
- Free ebook: The Unified Field Theory
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- Tucker, J. B. (2008). Children's Reports of Past-Life Memories: A Review. Explore, 4(4), 244 to 248. med.virginia.edu (PDF)
- Moraes, L. J., Barbosa, G. S., Castro, J. P. G. B., Tucker, J. B., and Moreira-Almeida, A. (2022). Academic Studies on Claimed Past-Life Memories: A Scoping Review. Explore. med.virginia.edu (PDF)
- Pehlivanova, M., Cozzolino, P. J., and Tucker, J. B. (2024). Impact of Children's Purported Past-Life Memories: A Follow-Up Investigation of American Cases. Frontiers in Psychology, 15. frontiersin.org
- Stevenson, I., and Keil, J. (2005). Children of Myanmar Who Behave Like Japanese Soldiers: A Possible Third Element in Personality. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19(2), 171 to 183. med.virginia.edu
- University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies. Concerns about Hypnotic Regression. med.virginia.edu
- Stevenson, I. A Case of the Psychotherapist's Fallacy: Hypnotic Regression to "Previous Lives." American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. med.virginia.edu
- Andrade, G. (2017). Is Past Life Regression Therapy Ethical? Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, 10, 11. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies (2025). UVA's Division of Perceptual Studies Launches Major Research Initiative on Children's Past-Life Memories. med.virginia.edu
- Associated Press (2025). Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It. Via Boston.com. boston.com
- Bridey Murphy. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
- Kissing number (the most equal spheres that can touch one central sphere; 12 in three dimensions). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
- F-theory. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
- Hilditch, C. J., and McHill, A. W. (2019). Sleep Inertia: Current Insights. Nature and Science of Sleep, 11. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Live Science. Why Can't We Remember Our Dreams? livescience.com
- National Institutes of Health (2019). Brain May Actively Forget During Dream Sleep. nih.gov
- Dean, J. G., Liu, T., Huff, S., Sheler, B., Barker, S. A., Strassman, R. J., Wang, M. M., and Borjigin, J. (2019). Biosynthesis and Extracellular Concentrations of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in Mammalian Brain. Scientific Reports, 9, 9333. Summary via neurosciencenews.com
About the Author
byCHRIS | Building Legacies. Chris Douglas (byCHRIS) is a Creative Technologist in Austin, TX. He built Unify the Self, a personal brand ecosystem that helps multi-passionate people unify who they are into one brand and a practical business, and he designs the content, web, and software to run it. With a degree in life sciences biology and a background in nursing, he writes Lift the Veil to make the unseen simple and practical.
By being who YOU are, you'll naturally do what YOU do.
Lift the Veil | Science | Technology | Metaphysics | AI | byCHRIS, Austin, TX