The New York Times: The scientists who seriously investigate whether there is life after death

The question of life after death has been an existential preoccupation for humans throughout history, and reincarnation is a central tenet of belief in many cultures. The New York Times published a comprehensive investigation on the scientists who investigate whether there really is life after death.

The mysterious lock and the search for life after death
In an ordinary-looking office in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, a small leather box rests on a filing cabinet. Inside is a combination lock, which has not been opened for over 50 years. The man who locked it is no longer alive.

The lock itself is quite simple – one you’d use in a gym. The code, consisting of a six-letter word converted into numbers, was known only to psychiatrist Dr Ian Stevenson who determined it long before his death, and years before his retirement from the position of director of DOPS – a parapsychological research unit he founded in 1967 at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

Dr. Stevenson called this experiment the “combination lock test for survival.” He believed that if he managed to pass the code to someone from the next world, it might help answer the questions that preoccupied him in his life: Is communication from the “past” possible? Can the personality survive the death of the body Or simply: is reincarnation real?

This last enigma – the survival of consciousness after death, continues to be at the forefront of the department’s research. The team has documented hundreds of cases of children claiming to remember past lives from every continent except Antarctica. “And that’s only because we didn’t look for cases there,” said Dr Jim Tuckerwho has investigated past life claims for over two decades. He recently retired from his role as DOPS director, which he held since 2015.

“As far as reincarnation itself, I never had any particular interest in it,” said Dr. Tucker, who originally intended to be just a child psychiatrist and was, at one point, chief of the Department of Child and Family Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. “It never occurred to me that I would end up in that position. this”.

Now, at the age of 64, having traveled the world documenting cases of possible past life memories, and with his own books and articles on the subject of past lives, he has stepped down.

“There is a level of pressure in medicine and academia,” he muses. “There are always things you’re supposed to do, articles you’re supposed to write, prescriptions you’re supposed to give. I enjoyed my daily work, both at the clinic and at DOPS, but you get to a point where you’re ready to not carry so many responsibilities and demands.”

According to a job ad published by the medical school, in addition to academic reputation, the ideal candidate to replace Dr. Tucker must have “a history of rigorous investigation of extraordinary human experiences, such as the mind-body connection and the possibility of the survival of consciousness after physical death.” None of the eight main team members have the required academic status for the position, which necessitates finding someone from the outside.

Each of the department’s researchers has dedicated his career – and to some extent, risked his professional reputation – to the study of the so-called “paranormal”. This includes near-death and out-of-body experiences, altered states of consciousness, and past life research, all of which fall under the umbrella term “parapsychology.” They are scientists who deviated from the normal course.

DOPS is a curious institution. There are only a few other laboratories in the world that conduct similar lines of research. For example, the Kestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh. However, DOPS is definitely the most prominent research institute. Although technically part of the University of Virginia, DOPS occupies four spacious apartments within a residential building. It is noticeably distant from the university’s main campus, and at least a few miles from the medical school.

“Nobody knows we’re here,” said Dr Bruce Grayson78, a former DOPS director and professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, who began working with Dr. Stevenson in the late 1970s. Grayson. “He kept a very low profile.”

Dr. Grayson faced a lot of opposition before joining DOPS. He worked at the University of Michigan for eight years early in his career, but his interest in near-death experiences began to attract controversy, similar to what happened to Dr. Stevenson.

The atmosphere within DOPS is one of educational tranquility. There are few signs of staff activity. In the laboratory on the basement floor is a Faraday cage (a device that prevents electric fields from penetrating into it), a copper lining used to evaluate subjects in out-of-body experiences, and foam doll heads with electroencephalogram caps (used to record the electrical activity in the brain). Upstairs, along the entire wall of the Ian Stevenson Library, which contains over 5,000 books and articles relating to past life research, is a glass display case containing a collection of knives, swords and hammers – weapons described by children who remembered gods in their past lives.

“It’s not the actual weapon, but the type of weapon that was used,” explained Dr. Tucker. Each object is labeled in intricate, sometimes gory detail. One display told the story of a young Burmese girl who was born with deformities in her fingers and birthmarks on her back and neck. Villagers,” the label reads, “the man whose life she remembered was murdered, his fingers chopped off and his throat cut with a sword.” This is accompanied by a picture of the girl’s hands.

The fact that children claim to remember past lives is most frequent in South Asia, where reincarnation is a central tenet of many religious beliefs, which critics have used to refute the studies. After all, it is surely all too easy to find supporting evidence in places with an existing belief in reincarnation.

The question of life after death has been an existential preoccupation for humans throughout history, and reincarnation is a central tenet of belief in many cultures. In Buddhism, where they believe in a 49-day journey between death and rebirth. In Hinduism, with the concept of samsara, the endless cycle. And in Native American and West African nations, they all share similar core concepts of the soul or spirit passing from one life to another. Meanwhile, a 2023 Pew Institute poll found that a quarter of Americans believe it is “definitely or probably true” that people who have died can be reincarnated.

When it comes to past life claims, the DOPS team works on cases that almost always come directly from the parents. Common characteristics of children who claim to have lived a past life include verbal maturity and behaviors that are inconsistent with the rest of the family. Unexplained fears were also considered to be carried over from a previous existence. In some cases, the memories are accompanied by extreme clarity: names, professions and strange habits of another set of relatives, or the details of the streets they once lived in and sometimes even the mention of remote historical events – details the child could not have known about.

To this day, DOPS is still funded solely by private donations. In the department’s early years, Dr. Stevenson traveled the world and documented more than 2,500 cases of children recalling past lives. In this pre-internet era, discovering so many similar reports and trends strengthened his thesis. The findings from these travels, collected in the neat manuscript of Dr. Stevenson, are stored by country in filing cabinets and are in the slow process of being digitized.

Every year DOPS receives more than 100 emails from parents about something their child said. Contacting the department is often an attempt to gain clarity, but researchers never guarantee answers. Their only promise is to take these claims seriously.

Research continues today under new leadership, with the same commitment to rigorous scientific study of phenomena that are not yet fully understood by modern science.