|
The Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) was founded at UVA in 1967 by the late Dr. Ian Stevenson as a result of a grant from the inventor of the Xerox process. Dr. Stevenson passed away February 8, 2007. For 35 years, Dr. Stevenson was director of DOPS. Upon Dr. Stevenson's retirement in 2002, Dr. Bruce Greyson, faculty member at the Division and long-time editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies, was appointed as Director of the Division and assumed the Carlson Professorship. The research facilities were updated with a NeuroImaging Laboratory and an expanded Ian Stevenson Memorial Library. DOPS researchers are dedicated to the use of scientific methodology in their investigation of a range of such phenomena that so far have defied adequate explanation. In particular, the Division's research has focused on the apparent persistence of perception and consciousness after the death of the physical body. |
Dr. Ian Stevenson’s series of detailed books about persons who claim to remember
previous lives includes Cases of the Reincarnation Type;
Volumes 1 2 and 3.
In total, they detail 32 cases. Dr. Stevenson also published 35 new cases and
reported on each in a widely read publication, titled
Telepathic Impressions.
However, his best known work is Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.
I meet with Dr. Stevenson in his office at
The University of Virginia, where he is
head of the Department of Psychiatry, in 1998. His chief concern was to not have his
work presented in
non-scientific publications, especially ones dealing in parapsychology or the
occult. He emphized to me that all his studies were objective and
that he made no
assumptions about the factual existence or non-existance of reincarnation. He wanted
to make sure I didn’t allow his work to be
misrepresented. I felt a scientific kinship
with him and we had a far ranging interview which reinforced my faith in scientific
investigation
of the paranormal. Sometime during our lunch I was sure he was a skeptic
and other times I thought he might be a believer
.To be clear, he was
a believer in the
existance of the unexplained. These volumes add evidence to our belief that some persons
can describe the life of a deceased
person they did not know. How they can do this is not
yet known. Dr. Stevenson suggests that reincarnation may be the best explaination, although
it is not the only one possible.