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.