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Life Before Life: Children's Memories of Previous Lives Paperback – April 1, 2008
by Jim B. Tucker M.D. (Author), Ian Stevenson M.D. (Foreword)
4.3 out of 5 stars 686 ratings
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This popular examination of research into children's reports of past-life memories describes a collection of 2,500 cases at the University of Virginia that investigators have carefully studied since Dr. Ian Stevenson began the work more than forty years ago. The children usually begin talking about a past life at the age of two or three and may talk about a previous family or the way they died in a previous life. Their statements have often been found to be accurate for one particular deceased individual, and some children have recognized members of the previous family. A number have also had birthmarks or defects that matched wounds on the body of the deceased person.
Life Before Life presents the cases in a straightforward way and explores the possibility that consciousness may continue after the brain dies. It is a provocative and fascinating book that can challenge and ultimately change readers' understandings about life and death.
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272 pages
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English
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Editorial Reviews
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“In this very elegant book, Dr. Tucker offers the most convincing scientific evidence for the fact that our consciousness survives physical death. And indeed, takes quantum leaps of creativity in the form of reincarnation. The model that Dr. Tucker presents opens a new vision of who we are, limitless beings that fill up all of space and time.” ―Deepak Chopra, author of Life After Death: The Burden of Proof
“[A][ solid case for reincarnation…. Tucker introduces powerful grounds for credulous speculation.” ―Booklist
“Jim Tucker gives us a clear, concise and eminently rational insight into a 40 year investigation of what is unquestionably the best evidence for the existence of reincarnation. We are lucky to have in him a worthy successor to Ian Stevenson.” ―TOM SHRODER, author of Old Souls: Compelling Evidence From Children Who Remember Past Lives
“Anyone with an open mind, on reading Dr. Jim B. Tucker's Life Before Life, will realize that our conventional concepts of life and death are ripe for revision. The possibilities raised by this book for human destiny are as hopeful as the current view is grim. Life Before Life is extraordinarily important.” ―Larry Dossey, M.D., author of The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things, Reinventing Medicine, and Healing Words
“With his training as a pediatric psychiatrist, and the mind of an inquiring scientist, Dr. Jim Tucker takes a fresh look at one of life's most intriguing questions: 'Does consciousness survive death?' Through the hundreds of case studies of his predecessor, Dr. Ian Stevenson, and his own cases, Dr. Tucker adds new insight to this amazing research, and draws us closer to understanding this perennial mystery.” ―CAROL BOWMAN, author of Children's Past Lives and Return From Heaven
“Life Before Life adds to the increasingly impressive science of consciousness and the continuity of mind/memory…this book is the tip of an important iceberg that will continue to expand our knowledge of the spiritual reality of Life.” ―C. NORMAN SHEALY, M.D., Ph.D., President, Holos University Graduate Seminary; Founding President, American Holistic Medical Association; author of Youthful Aging―Secret of the Fountain
“Jim B. Tucker's fine presentation of Ian Stevenson's decades of rigorous scientific research into evidence of children's apparent past-life recollections expresses the true spirit of scientific skepticism, rather than the knee-jerk materialism that all too often waves that proud banner.” ―B. ALAN WALLACE, President of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies
About the Author
Jim B. Tucker, M.D. is a child psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, where he directs research into children's reports of past-life memories at the Division of Personality Studies and serves as Medical Director of the Child & Family Psychiatry Clinic. He is the author of Life Before Life and the New York Times Best Seller Return to Life.
Product details
Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (April 1, 2008)
Language : English
Paperback : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 031237674X
ISBN-13 : 978-0312376741
Item Weight : 8.5 ounces
Dimensions : 5.63 x 0.74 x 8.27 inchesBest Sellers Rank: #140,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)#90 in Near-Death Experiences (Books)
#221 in Reincarnation (Books)Customer Reviews:
4.3 out of 5 stars 686 ratings
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Jim B. Tucker
Jim B. Tucker, M.D. is Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is continuing the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson at the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies with children who report memories of previous lives. His overview of the research, Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, has been translated into ten languages. His latest book, New York Times Best Seller Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives, is a collection of recent American cases he has studied.
Dr. Tucker was raised Southern Baptist and never considered the possibility of past lives before reading one of Dr. Stevenson's books. He became so intrigued by Stevenson's research that he eventually gave up a successful private practice of child psychiatry to join him in the work.
He lives with his wife Chris in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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past lives ian stevenson previous lives jim tucker past life case studies believe in reincarnation university of virginia young children life before life scientific approach open mind remember previous children who remember writing style carol bowman must read well written thought provoking previous life
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Dennis Zeunert
4.0 out of 5 stars Have We Had Past Lives?Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2015
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Jim Tucker documents past earthly lives remembered by very young children, ages 2-7 years old. His team visits each child and researches the “past personality” of the child, often confirming such stated details as names of the child’s former self and past family members, the town and home of residence, and manner of death. So far, the team has compiled 2500 cases, from across the world.
This is commonly called reincarnation, where a soul or consciousness survives physical death, then later, enters the mind of an emerging baby from the womb, and takes on another physical body. Of course, this concept, or belief, is not accepted by the Abraham religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), whose members comprise 74% of Americans and 55% of the world. Therefore, the University of Virginia and Tucker’s team are certainly brave, breaking new ground, attempting to prove that this core belief of Hinduism and Buddhism, representing about 21% of the world’s population, could be factual. Also, most spiritual organizations, psychics, and followers of the paranormal believe in reincarnation.
Birthmarks fascinated Tucker. This area of investigation covered many cases, especially in India and Sri Lanka where parents accept children’s comments about past lives. He found that a child’s birthmarks were often the result of the sudden death of the last personality. Since “the median time between the death of the previous personality and the birth of the subject is only 15-16 months,” a child’s recitation of a past life to the team could be easily verified since often the family residence of the previous personality is relatively close to the subject child.
In the case of Purnima Ekanayake, a Sri Lankan girl, her body at birth revealed “colored birthmarks over the left side of her chest and lower ribs.” When four years old she recognized a temple on television, saying that in her recent past life she was a man living close to that temple. He had made incense sticks in his in-laws business, sold them via bicycle, and was killed in an accident with a big vehicle. The father of Purnima asked a friend, who planned to travel to the temple’s location on business, to check his daughter’s statements. While interviewing local incense makers, he found one where the brother-in-law of the owner had been killed by a bus while taking incense sticks to market on his bicycle two years before Purnima was born. Later, Purnima visited her previous family, correctly identifying her former mother and wife. The previous personality’s autopsy report documented fractured ribs on the left, a ruptured spleen, and abrasions running diagonally from the right shoulder to the left lower abdomen.
Interestingly, Tucker attempts to find the most logical explanation for this phenomenon, including fraud, fantasy, knowledge acquired through normal means, faulty memory by informants, genetic memory, extrasensory perception, possession, and reincarnation. He concludes “If we stand back and look at this worldwide phenomenon as a whole, then we see a pattern of remarkable events. Even though the cases are only evidence and not ‘proof’ of a paranormal process, when we consider the weaknesses of the normal explanations . . . reincarnation provides a much more straightforward explanation overall . . .”
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Lynda Stevens
5.0 out of 5 stars The case for reincarnationReviewed in the United States on March 5, 2017
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Psychiatrist Jim Tucker has been carrying on the tesearch first initiated by his colleague Ian Stephenson. I understand Stevenson's work on childhood memories of previous lives was exhaustive and many, many pages long. This book, presenting some of the most compelling cases on record, is succinctly written as well as accessible to the lay reader.
There are children whose birthmarks reflect the violent way they died in previous lives, others whose special interests and phobias likewise mirror what haven't to them in their earliest incarnations.
The reader is invited to decide for themselves what these stories might imply about life, death and the possibility of reincarnation. Tucker does postulate that the brain, rather than being the seat of consciousness, might instead be a transmitter of an external consciousness. Otherwise his approach to the topic is strictly scientific: all cases have had to be verified via external witnesses and children not given the opportunity to have ideas out in their heads by family, for example. Tucker conservatively concludes this book only demonstrates evidence rather than absolute proof that reincarnation may occur in certain cases, specifically where the previous life ended traumatically. He does not state any belief in the findings of regression therapists, nor in what the major world religions have to say on the matter
I find that scientific approach hugely refreshing, as there is none of the moralizing and evangelizing on karma and so forth that you might get from Believers. In fact, the only 'karma' Tucker recognises is that trauma of any kind needs to be processed before the individual experiencing this can move on.
In this spirit Tucker does point out that it makes best sense to move on from past lives too. It makes no sense to retain a past German identity for example where there is the need to adapt to a new cultural identity in a new lifetime, or to cling to a former parent if in that lifetime the parent had not wanted the child in that lifetime. Tucker also dies not preclude the idea that each new lifetime does offer a soul more time in which to learn from experience a d hopefully become a better person.
Tucker also points out that there is such a thing as scientific fundamentalism too. Both he and Stephenson have I believe been very brave in publishing research that may well still fly in the face of many basic assumptions about the nature of life and consciousness.
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VXW
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, sober, scientific and very readable book on one of life's greatest mysteries.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2018
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A fascinating and well written book summarising and relating extensive scientific studies into reincarnation/childhood memories of previous lives by the author and his research team. This is one of a few books on this and closely related subjects by this author and his colleagues. The evidence presented is utterly compelling. If reincarnation is not a genuine phenomenon, there is certainly something strange going on. After reading this book, it is hard not to be convinced that some people are either reincarnated or somehow capable of receiving verifiable life-memories that belonged to other people. Whatever the truth is, the evidence presented here in a balanced and calm manner really demands and explanation. Very readable.
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kate
4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth readingReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2019
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This is a serious book on reincarnation to be taken seriously. The information is presented in a detailed systematic way with arguments about reincarnation put succinctly and cogently. So it was disappointing to see that past life and between life regression was dismissed cursorily by the author.
The book production was not of the highest quality, sadly. The paper was rather dark and made reading each page more of a trial than a joy.
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Mary Bessenich
5.0 out of 5 stars A revelation on the subject of reincarnation. Tremendous.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2018
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Fascinating topic. For people who believe reincarnation to be a taboo read this book. Researchers at the University of Virginia carried out extensive research into a much maligned subject only to be surprised themselves. This is a life changing book.
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Sunslave
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping despite being a scientific book. The slowest parts ...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 20, 2017
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Gripping despite being a scientific book. The slowest parts are the longish confirmations of the various evidence testing methods. But it is a scientific books. The rest will make your hair stand on end. Put it this way, reincarnation is more likely than unlikely. Honest.
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Stuart and Leanne
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good bookReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 20, 2017
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Really enjoyed this book and it's subject. ReD a fictional book about reincarnation which then led me to this book. Very informative and allows you to draw your own conclusions. Would definitely recommend .
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