Information about past lives is subconscious and can be retrieved. For obvious reasons, memory from reincarnations is erased from our available memory, but it is not lost. We don't remember past lives to prevent traumatic events that might disturb us in our current lives.
Since I had been on the brink of death for many years, in a state of deep meditation, I had several visions with images from previous lives:
- In the previous life of my current life, I died in a fatal car accident; in the car with me were my wife and two children, who also perished! Since I was young, I have feared driving at night, even though I was an excellent driver then. Accidental? Of course not. The trauma is in my subconscious.
- The fact that I came to China is no coincidence! I had constant visions of riding horses, participating in battles, and my head, the hat of a Chinese-Mongol warrior. Amazingly, my current wife, in her image, came to save me from serious injury. I had many more visions from a time that was hundreds of years back. These visions stopped after I married my Chinese wife, who saved my life. Coincidence? I believe not.
Very reliable testimonies of people who have died and returned to life exist in abundance. Science is very skeptical of NDE's descriptions. The culture (especially the West) hates the idea of reincarnation. Religious and other considerations are also involved. In a separate post, I suggested studying dying people in hospice. (Of course, with their consent)
Link: Is there life after death? (Non-philosophical answer)