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Summary: A Classic Study of Near-Death Experiences
Comment: As a culture we have gone from a denial of death to a fascination with the after-life. What truly happens when we die? If you have just started reading about near-death experiences then "Life After Life" is a good place to start.
This book describes everything from being declared dead to seeing a "being of light" that guides then through a life review. For the most part this is a well-organized book that has some interesting stories told by people who were changed by their experience with death.
Before reading this book I didn't know that some people heard music or other sounds as they died. Other than that I'd heard about most of the steps people go through when they die. Floating above the body seems very common and seeing relatives is also expected. Then there are a few unique experiences. For example, after their experience some people develop psychic powers and are able to read people's thoughts.
I recently read Saved by the Light: The True Story of a Man Who Died Twice and the Profound Revelations He Received which is a very exciting book that describes heaven. While "Life After Life" is still compelling it lacks descriptions of heaven or hell. For descriptions of hell you may want to read To Hell and Back: Life After Death Startling New Evidence.
~The Rebecca Review
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Summary: An Important Beginning Book
Comment: Love from Both Sides: A True Story of Soul Survival and Sacred Sexuality That's my book, and I reference because I believe in "Soul Survival." Not only did my husband "come back" to me (the story of my book) but because I had a Near Death Experience in 1966 -- an experience that I felt forced to keep to myself, lest everyone think I was crazy. It wasn't until I read "Life After Life," and Elisabeth Kuber Ross's work in the 70s that I was willing to talk openly it. That's why I think this book is important. Because long before Oprah was doing shows about Past Life Regressions, Dr. Moody was brave enough to risk his professional reputation by publishing what his "investigation" discovered.
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Summary: Life After Life
Comment: Raymond A. Moody's Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon--Survival of Bodily Death (New York: Bantam Books, c. 1975) was my first exposure to a scholarly investigation of near-death experiences, and it remains one of the more trustworthy guides to these phenomena. Moody earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1969 before going to medical school and becoming a psychiatrist. The book takes a tentative but respectful attitude towards the subject that makes it compelling, in part because Moody is less a true believer than a receptive hearer, less an advocate for immortality than a reporter telling us what trustworthy witnesses attest regarding it.
We human beings have forever pondered death's mystery. "There is a graveyard in Turkey which was used by Neanderthal men approximately 100,000 years ago. There, fossilized imprints have enabled archeologists to discover that these ancient men buried their dead in biers of flowers, indicating that they perhaps saw death as an occasion of celebration--as a transition of the dead from this world to the next. Indeed, graves from very early sites all over the earth give evidence of the belief in human survival of bodily death" (p. 13). In accord with this ancient inclination, when Moody (quite inadvertently) began to hear reports from people who claimed to have "died" and lived to tell of it, he was motivated to study some 150 such accounts.
The people he studied (mostly through personal interviews) came from remarkably different "religious, social and educational backgrounds" (p. 15). Nevertheless, they had remarkably similar "experiences" (p. 21). Crafting a composite of such experiences, summing up his findings, Moody urges us to envision the following:
A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.
After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a "body" but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before--a being of light--appears before him. This being asks him a question, nonverbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point he finds himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back to the earth, that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love, and peace. Despite his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.
Later he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so. In the first place, he can find no human words adequate to describe these unearthly episodes. He also finds that other scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still the experience affects his life profoundly, especially his views about death and its relationship to life (pp. 21-23).
Though there is a commonality to the reports, some of the book's statements are most memorable. In the section on "ineffability," for example, one woman said: "'Well, when I was taking geometry, they always told me there were only three dimensions, and I always just accepted that. But they were wrong. There are more. And, of course, our world--the one we're living in now--is three-dimensional, but the next one definitely isn't. And that's why it's so hard to tell you this. I have to describe it to you in words that are three-dimensional. That's as close as I can get to it, but it's not really adequate'" (p. 26). Recounting his out-of-body experience, a "young informant" said: "I was sort of floating about five feet above the street, about five yards away from the car, I'd say, and I heard the echo of the crash dying away. I saw people come running up and crowding around the car, and I saw my friend get out of the car, obviously in shock. I could see my own body in the wreckage among all those people, and could see them trying to get it out. My legs were all twisted and there was blood all over the place" (p. 37). Most of the witnesses say they entered into another body, different from but decidedly resembling their earthly body. It's a "spiritual body," weightless and time-transcending, but still a body! "A person in the spiritual body is in a privileged position I relation to the other persons around him. He can see and hear them, but they can't see or hear him" (p. 46).
Virtually all the people encountered a bright, warm, loving being of light. Some think it was an angel. Others think it was Jesus. Subsequently, they all considered loving others and gaining knowledge the great purpose of life on earth. Many who had little interest in such things come back to life with a deep determination to spend the rest of their days loving and learning, activities that will flourish in the hereafter. As a Christian, I find Moody's account fascinating--not as the basis for, but a corroboration of, my faith.
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Summary: The Original, if Not Totally Objective, Study of NDEs
Comment: I read Raymond A. Moody, Jr.'s LIFE AFTER LIFE after a friend recently recommended it to me. The book first came out some 25 years ago, and this new edition comes with an update in the form of an Afterword by the author. I was pretty familiar with the contents of LIFE AFTER OF LIFE already, for when it was first published in 1975 the book received considerable media attention and the idea of "near-death experiences" (NDEs, a term coined by Moody) was thoroughly discussed in the press. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading through the book and refreshing my memory about the touchstones of the NDEs, such as the tunnel, being out of the body, the being of bright light, and the warm, euphoric feelings attending the experience particularly towards the end.
LIFE AFTER LIFE begins with a description of how Moody came about doing research in this area. He then gives as much of a common picture of the NDE experience as his 150 examples allow. Moody proceeds to give examples from specific cases of people he interviewed who claimed that they had had an NDE. (It might be possible that Moody might have been "leading" his subjects in the interviews, but it's clear that Moody regarded his role as an interested but neutral listener.) The author describes similar experiences described in religious and other nonfiction literature, some better known than others. (I found it curious that he did not cite works of fiction, such as Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," which, too, reflects some of the experiences described in Moody's book.) Finally, Moody lays out the various types of explanations for NDE--that is, aside from the idea that these people actually died and really experienced an afterlife--mainly with the aim of showing how the various scientific explanations fall short. Moody is careful to claim that he is "not trying to prove that there is life after death" (p. xxvii), but it is apparent where his sympathies lie.
Moody is right to suggest that the reductionist explanations from physiological, pharmacological, and neurological standpoints really haven't yet explained why people have these kinds of experiences. On the other hand, Moody adopts the classical concept of a mind-body dualism in discussing why people with NDEs describe, albeit with difficulty, having a new body, that in the midst of the NDE they can see their physical body, and how their minds feel unusually free, unclouded and ready to learn new things. This dualism is not well supported by science (it's not just the brain that "thinks"), and contemporary theology, too, would argue against it ("The only reality is the unity of the living creature called man..."--Wolfhart Pannenburg). It also raises the basis question in consciousness studies: can there be consciousness apart from the physical brain? I don't think it's too much of a leap to suggest that most brain researchers would probably say no, though many people with religious convictions would hold on to the idea that at the least something of one's personal identity--the "I"--survives death. Hence the question of life after death remains, essentially, a religious one.
There are those who might be drawn to the stories in this book as comfort in the face of the very natural fear of death. I would point those individuals to an online article by Kevin Williams, who accepts NDEs as actual life-after-death experiences, but who also maintains a healthy skepticism. He explains why it's irrational to fear death. See: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/articles007.html.
As I noted above, I found the book interesting to read, and might have appreciated it more if I didn't have such a déjà -vu feeling in reading it. Again, I think most people nowadays are familiar with the NDE concept. But this is where it all started, and it's good to have the baseline of this book as a reference to what's been discussed since.
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Summary: Insightful
Comment: I have read many books on near death experiences and the accounts in this book ring true. I have lost loved ones and I know there is life after death, because I have received after death communications. I would recommend this book to the bereaved and to those facing the impending death of a loved one.
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