Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $3.99 shipping
90% positive over last 12 months
Usually ships within 4 to 5 days.
& FREE Shipping
88% positive over last 12 months
Usually ships within 3 to 4 days.
& FREE Shipping
87% positive over last 12 months
Follow the Author
OK
Life Before Life: Children's Memories of Previous Lives Paperback – April 1, 2008
|
Price
|
New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$0.00
|
Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Mass Market Paperback
"Please retry"
|
$877.95 | $644.53 |
|
Audio CD, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$22.74 | — |
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
-
Print length272 pages
-
LanguageEnglish
-
Publication dateApril 1, 2008
-
Dimensions5.63 x 0.74 x 8.27 inches
-
ISBN-10031237674X
-
ISBN-13978-0312376741
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
-
Apple
-
Android
-
Windows Phone
-
Android
|
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
Review
“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
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
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 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#187,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #135 in Near-Death Experiences (Books)
- #318 in Reincarnation (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
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.
And, it get to the point where it sounds like he's repeating the same stories ber n over n over.
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 . . .”
Top reviews from other countries
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.
















