Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives

By Jim B. Tucker

Book Overview

For the past forty years, doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center have conducted research into young children's reports of past-life memories. Dr. Ian Stevenson, the founder of this work, has always written for a scientific audience. Now, in this provocative and fascinating book, Dr. Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist who currently directs the research, shares these studies with the general public. Life Before Life is a landmark work-one that has the potential to challenge and ultimately change our understandings about life and death. Children who report past-life memories typically begin talking spontaneously about a previous life when they are two to three years old. Some talk about the life of a deceased family member, while others describe the life of a stranger. They may recount details about previous family members, events in the previous life, or the way they died in that life. The children tend to show a strong emotional involvement with the apparent memories and often cry to be taken to the previous family. In many cases, parents have taken their children to the places they named, where they found that an individual had died whose life matched the details given by the child. During the visits, some children have recognized family members or friends from that individual's life. Many children have had birthmarks that matched wounds on the body of the deceased individual. Researchers have studied more than 2500 such cases, and their careful investigations have produced an impressive body of work. JAMA , the Journal of the American Medical Association, stated in a review of one of Dr. Stevenson's scientific books that, "in regard to reincarnation he has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases . . . in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds." Life Before Life explores the various features of this world-wide phenomenon, describing numerous cases along the way. We meet a boy in Michigan who, after being born with three birthmarks that matched wounds on his deceased brother, begins talking about events from the brother's life; a boy in Turkey who gives a number of accurate details, including the name, of a man who lived 500 miles away and died fifty years before the boy was born; and a girl in Sri Lanka who is able to recognize the family members of a deceased stranger as they are presented to her one by one, giving specifics about their lives that she could not have known from their appearance. Dr. Tucker presents this material in a straightforward way, relating extraordinary stories that have been amassed with a scientific approach. He then considers how best to interpret the evidence, and he lets readers reach their own conclusions-which, for many, will be profound.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312321376
• ISBN13: 9780312321376
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.9" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

An Interesting, yet Scientific Look at Reincarnation

Given my Lutheran upbringing, I've always been suspicious of claims of reincarnation. These feelings have been eroded lately with my study of Buddhism and a news report that I saw where a four year old boy clearly demonstrated memories of life as a World War II fighter pilot. As such, I was pleased to find this book. It's not your typical new age psuedo-science hodge-podge of anecdotal accounts, but rather is a legitimate scientific examination of the possibility of reincarnation, explored through children's accounts of past lives, usually starting around the age of 2 or 3 and fading around 7 or 8. Dr. Tucker has documented over 2,500 cases in countries all around the globe. He examines different types of accounts and attempts to address the various explanations for each. While a book like this could come off about as exciting as reading the Yellow Pages, Dr. Tucker takes care to discuss interesting individual accounts in addition to explaining the results of his studies. If you have an open mind concerning reincarnation, this book will raise your awareness and provide you with the information necessary to develop your own informed opinion.

THIS BOOK DRAWS YOU IN ...... NEED MORE STARS!!

I am still reading it and have had trouble putting it down! I have many many books on this subject and most just left me feeling emply, needing more. This book is not that way! The people whose stories he write about glues you to the pages and make you reflect before reading on. This is the kind of book that can change the way we think about living and life in general. The messages are full of hope and give me peace of mind. SO many people THINK they are living but they are just doing that, living, going about daily taskes mindless NOT experiencing the Fullness that life has to offer. These Stories offered here open not just the heart but the mind as well and MAKE you think about why you are here and how you can improve life for others as well as your own..WELL WORTH THE READ!

FORTY YEARS OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH ARE BEHIND THIS BOOK

This book takes you methodically through individual cases of early childhood memories of past lives. These cases are thoroughly and professionally documented, researched and objectively judged as plausible or not...all in a scientific manner. More compelling proof that reincarnation exists.

Reincarnation Nearly Proven

Dr. Tucker has produced a sensible, straightforward book packed full of real-life evidence. With an easy narrative, he explains how quantum physics makes the possibilities real. There are more than forty years of research of over 2,500 children, in which Dr. Tucker gleams stories, both coincidental and precise, to support the very possibility of reincarnation. Dr. Tucker was trained as a pediatric psychiatrist and takes a very fresh look at this contentious subject. The book is very pragmatic and scientific in its approach of the subject. Some of the stories will make your hair stand on end, but one gets a real sense that reincarnation is not fantasy, but reality.

Straightforward, unbiased presentation

In "Life Before Life," Dr. Jim Tucker, successor to Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia Division of Personality Studies, presents their work in a way that is rigorous enough for the scientific community, and yet readable by the lay audience. Dr. Tucker's approach is disarmingly straightforward, as he rationally examines all sides of the issue. In a non-threatening manner, he presents evidence which, if taken seriously, is inherently radical. Where I would characterize the stance of mainstream science with red flags like "in denial," Dr. Tucker calmly acknowledges that mainstream science is by nature conservative; where I would say something like "reincarnation has been proven, already, let's get on the stick," Dr. Tucker carefully explains what the alternative interpretations are, the extent to which they are plausible, and the extent to which they probably are not. If it were possible to convince mainstream science with a calm, rational, non-threatening explanation, this book would do it. To borrow from something philosophy professor Dr. Robert Almeder told me when I interviewed him for "In Another Life," if it were possible to calmly and rationally explain to a man that his brother is a murderer, without his going into denial and ridiculing you, then Dr. Tucker is the man who could do it. In short, the information is here. The work has been done, and the results are in. To use one of Dr. Stevenson's own analogies, the tennis player has hit the winning shot, and it was in-bounds. Now it is up to the scientific community, and the society at large, to come to grips with it. In order to do that, they will have to admit that much of our currently-accepted philosophy is wrong, psychology is wrong, genetics is wrong, and much more. It's like the 75-cent accounting error that leads to the international hackers--if the materialistic view of the world is correct, this research simply shouldn't be there. But it is, and Dr. Tucker is just sitting down with you on a fine Sunday afternoon with a glass of tea, and telling you. (If you don't cup your hands over your ears and say "yah, yah, yah," though, you may spill your tea.) One of the subtle points that Dr. Tucker makes several times in this book, addresses the various objections to the work that have been put forth by skeptics. He points out that these alternative explanations, what he terms the "normal" explanations, may (if stretching) fit the facts of a particular class of cases, but not all. Another such explanation may fit another class of cases, but again, not all. If the cases are taken as a whole, however, then these explanations aren't adequate. In other words, one has to isolate out a group of cases while deliberately ignoring others, in order to infer that these explanations are reasonable, because the cases one is ignoring would invalidate the explanation. Similarly, Dr. Tucker points out that if there exists an adequate number of extremely strong cases, then by inference, most