Dr Jim Tucker spent 15 years interviewing young children who came to have been reincarnated. For his book, Life After Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, Dr Tucker interviewed 2,500 youngsters who show signs that they have been reincarnated – such as having memories that they had never experienced or having scars or birthmarks identical to the person that that they have supposedly been reincarnated from. The psychiatrist from the University of Virginia says that reincarnation is possible thanks to consciousness being energy on a quantum, sub atomic level which is simply contained in our bodies, and not a part of them. Exactly what consciousness remains a mystery to scientists, with researchers struggling to pin down exactly what it is.

GETTY Dr Jim Tucker set out to prove that reincarnation is real

GETTY Scientists are still unsure as to what exactly consciousness is

According to some well-respected scientists, quantum mechanics allows consciousness to live on following the body’s eventual demise. Dr Robert Lanza coined the phrase ‘biocentrism’ which is a theory that the consciousness is released into the universe through sub-atomic particles after death. Dr Tucker has adapted this theory, and says that this stream of energy can find a new host.

Speaking to NPR, he said: “Some leading scientists in the past, like Max Planck, who's the father of quantum theory, said that he viewed consciousness as fundamental and that matter was derived from it. “So in that case, it would mean that consciousness would not necessarily be dependent on a physical brain in order to survive, and could continue after the physical brain and after the body dies. “In these cases, it seems - at least, on the face of it - that a consciousness has then become attached to a new brain, and has shown up as past life memories.”

GETTY Consciousness can find a new host after death

One of the people he interviewed was a young boy named James Leninger who was “the son of a Christian couple in Louisiana”. The young boy, who was two years old at the time, was obsessed with his toy planes, and eventually started having nightmares where he was in a plane crash. Dr Tucker continued: “During the day, he talked about this plane crash and said that he had been a pilot, and that he had flown off of a boat.

GETTY Some scientists state that consciousness remains in the universe after death

“And his dad asked him the name of it, and he said Natoma. And he said he had been shot down by the Japanese; that he had been killed at Iwo Jima; and that he had a friend on the boat named Jack Larsen. “Well, it turns out that there was an aircraft carrier called the USS Natoma Bay that was stationed in the Pacific during World War II. In fact, it was involved in Iwo Jima.

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