This thought-provoking documentary first screened in
2005 was part of the television
series ”Extraordinary People” broadcast on Channel Five in the UK. The
programme, entitled “The Boy Who Lived Before” featured the
investigation of the case of Cameron Macaulay by Dr. Jim
Tucker, medical director of the Child and Family
Psychiatry Clinic, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and
Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of
Virginia. It raises an interesting
challenge to common Western scientific notions
of consciousness.
Dr. Jim Tucker
Synopsis: Cameron Macauley is a young boy in Glasgow; he lives
with his single mother and his older brother. But Cameron
inexplicably remembers another life before his current one. That
life was on a remote Scottish island called Barra. He
remembers his Barra mother and dad, his Barra brothers and sisters,
and his black-and-white Barra sheepdog. He remembers living near
the beach in a white house close to where planes would land.
Cameron is insistent that he really lived this other life, and he
longs for it terribly. His mother, Norma, does not know what to
make of these strange memories. Cameron’s unhappiness leads her to
consult Dr. Jim Tucker, a child psychiatrist and a researcher into
children’s past-life memories. He accompanies Norma when she
decides to take a trip with Cameron to Barra and finally learn the
truth.
Dr. Tucker’s main research interests are children who seem to
remember previous lives, and prenatal and birth memories. He is the
author of Life Before Life: A
Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous
Lives, which presents an overview of over 40 years of
reincarnation research at the Division of Perceptual Studies. In
his book, Dr. Tucker challenges the notion that consciousness
is only the result of a functioning brain and suggests that
consciousness can be considered separately from the brain, which
provides a basis for claims of reincarnation.