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Life after Life by Raymond A. Moody

A world renowned psychiatrist, lecturer, author and researcher, Dr. Raymond A. Moody is the leading authority on the near-death experience. Life after Life was published in 1975 and was a runaway best seller. His other books include Coming Back: A Psychiatrist Explores Past Life Journeys and The Last Laugh: A New Philosophy of Near-death Experiences, Apparitions and the Paranormal. In 1995, he rediscovered the use of a meditative chamber called the psychomanteum, which he calls The Theatre of the Mind. Introduction The subject of death is taboo, because it is likely to make us face the inevitability of our own eventual demise. We tend to compare death with more pleasant things like sleeping and forgetting. Another approach to death sees the survival of some aspect of our being called variously as soul, mind, spirit, self, being and consciousness, by passing into another realm of existence. This book is based on the first hand accounts given by those who died and were resuscitated and those who came close to physical death. There is a striking similarity among the accounts of the near-death experiences. One can easily pick out some fifteen elements which recur again and again. A brief, theoretically ideal or complete experience would be somewhat like this. 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 his physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his physical 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, non-verbally, 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.

2 Later he tries to tell others, but he finds no human words adequate to describe these unearthly episodes. He also finds that others scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still the experience affects his life profoundly, especially his views about death and its relationship to life. Ineffability: Those involved characterize their experiences as ineffable or inexpressible. It is as if all the words that we have are three dimensional, while the next world is definitely not three dimensional. Hearing the news: Many of the persons hear their doctors, nurses or bystanders exclaim loudly about their being dead, to the extent that they can faithfully reproduce the exact words spoken by them. Feelings of peace and quiet: Many people describe extremely pleasant feelings and sensations during the early stages of their experiences. Their pain vanishes and is replaced by feelings of peace, quiet, relief, comfort, ease, solitude and relaxation. The noise: There are various unusual auditory sensations. Sometimes these are unpleasant and are described as buzzing, loud ringing, whistling, a loud click, a roaring, a banging and as a whistling sound, like the wind. In other cases, they hear pleasant music like the tingling of Japanese wind bells or majestic, beautiful sort of music. The dark tunnel: Often concurrently with the noise, people have the sensation of being pulled very rapidly through a dark space of some kind. This has been variously described as a cave, a well, a trough, an enclosure, a tunnel, a funnel, a vacuum, a void, a sewer, a valley and a cylinder. It has been compared to a ride on a roller coaster train at an amusement park, a journey through a tunnel of concentric circles, or going down a very dark path in a very deep valley. Out of the body: When they move out of their bodies, they are in for an overwhelming surprise. They find themselves looking at their own bodies from the outside as though they are spectators, a third person in the room or watching figures in a play or a film. They are quite confused and do not link it with death for some time. Some would like to get back into their bodies, as they do not know how to proceed further. Some have concern for their bodies and would not like these to be used as cadavers. Some take time to recognize their own bodies, as they are used to looking at themselves from the front in a mirror. Others have no feelings at all towards their bodies. At some stage, the persons realize that they have died. Some welcome this realization. Others react with bafflement and even a certain refusal. One or two persons found that they had been released from their bodies and felt that they were now pure consciousness, without occupying any space. But the

3 majority found themselves into a new body, which might be referred to as the spiritual body.. Most people find the human language inadequate to describe the spiritual body. But there is a similarity in their accounts about the basic features of this body. The person is both inaudible as well as invisible to others. His body seems to lack solidity. Physical objects appear to move through it with ease, while he is unable to get a grip on any object or person he tries to touch. The body is weightless. He seems to be floating right up to the ceiling of the room or into the air. Quite a few were aware of the lack of the physical sensations of body weight, movement and position. All these features can also be looked upon as the absence of limitations. He can see and hear other persons, but they cannot see or hear him. He can cross any physical entity like a door or a wall with ease. Movement from one place to another can be extremely rapid, almost instantaneous. The spiritual body has a shape or form, sometimes a globular or amorphous cloud and sometimes essentially the same shape as the physical body. It also seems to have parts (projections or surfaces analogous to arms, legs, a head etc.). It is often said to have ends, a definite top and bottom. The spiritual body has been variously described as a mist, a cloud, smoke-like, a vapour, transparent, a cloud of colours, wispy, an energy pattern etc. Almost all accounts remark on the timelessness of the out-of-body state. It is almost as if time is standing still. Also, people seem to think more lucidly and rapidly than in physical existence. On or two subjects had no sensation of temperature, while most people felt comfortably warm. No one reported any odours or tastes while out of their bodies. The senses of sight and hearing seem to be heightened and more perfect. Vision seems incredibly more powerful. They can see very far, as if they could look anywhere and everywhere. If they want to see something at a distance, they sort of zoom up to it. Part of the body seems to go there like a tracer. Hearing is called by that name only by analogy. They do not really hear physical voices or sounds. They seem to pick up the thoughts of persons around them and there is a direct transfer of thoughts. They seem to know what the others are thinking, but only in their minds. Even severe damage to the physical body does not seem to affect the spiritual body adversely. As they are unable to speak or touch other people, they have a tremendous sense of loneliness and isolation. They may feel depressed at this failure to communicate with others.

4 Meeting others This feeling of isolation does not last long, as very soon the subject sees or meets or hears other spirits or spiritual beings, who comfort him or answer his queries and comfort him. Sometimes they reveal themselves as guardian spirits or spiritual helpers. They are apparently there to ease him through his transition into death or tell him that his time to die had not yet come. The subject recognizes many relatives and friends who have ready died. It seems to him to be a joyous occasion like a homecoming. The being of light The element which has the most profound impact on individuals is their encounter with a very bright light. At first the light is dim, but it rapidly gets brighter till it reaches an unearthly brilliance. Although the light is white or clear, it does not hurt their eyes or dazzle them or keep them from seeing other things around them. They refer to it as a being of light, a personal being as it has a definite personality. It exudes love and warmth which completely surround the subject and put him at ease. He feels accepted and is irresistibly drawn to the being. The identity of the light is determined by the religious background of the person involved. Christians identify the light as Christ. A Jewish couple identified it as an angel. No one claimed that the being had wings, played the harp or even had a human appearance. The being starts to communicate with the person through a direct, unimpeded transfer of thoughts, in a clear way with no scope for misunderstanding or of lying to the light. The being asks a question which has been variously translated as Are you prepared to die? Are you ready to die?, What have you done with your life to show me? and What have you done with your life that is sufficient? The questions are not about preparation and accomplishment. It is a single question which asks whether the individual is satisfied with the way he has lived till then and whether he is therefore prepared to die. The question is not asked to accuse, threaten or condemn the individual concerned. There is a feeling of total love and acceptance, whatever his answer might be. It is a Socratic question, asked not to elicit information but to help him to proceed along the path by himself. The review The questions posed by the being of light are the prelude to a moment of startling intensity, during which the being presents to the person a panoramic review of his life. It is obvious that the being can see the individuals whole life displayed and he himself does not need information. His only intention is to provoke reflection The review is extraordinarily rapid. The memories follow one another swiftly either in chronological order or without any temporal order. The remembrance is instantaneous and the individual is able to take it all in one mental glance. The experience is over in an instant of earthly time. The review is a display of visual imagery and is incredibly vivid and real. Sometimes the images are reported to be in vibrant colour, three-dimensional and even moving. Although they are flickering

5 rapidly, each image is perceived and recognized. Even the emotions and feelings associated with the images may be reexperienced as one is viewing them. As they witness the display jointly, the being seems to stress the importance of two things: learning to love other people and acquiring knowledge. The being points out that one should try ones best to do things for other people. Even when certain negative features are seen, he does not make any accusation. His attitude is that one learns from such experiences too. The being stresses the need to continue learning, which keeps on happening even after death. Sometimes the review takes place without the being, but the review done in his presence is a more overwhelming experience. The border or limit In a few instances, persons seem to be approaching what might be called a border or limit of some kind. This has taken the form in various accounts of a body of water, a grey mist, a door, a fence across a field or simply a line. These could possibly represent varying individual ways of interpreting, wording or remembering the root experience. Coming back The most common feelings in the first few moments following death are a desperate desire to get back into the body and an intense regret over ones demise. But once the dying person reaches a certain depth in the experience, he does not want to get back. This is especially the case for those who have encountered the being of light. The reluctance is because of the wonderful feelings of calm, joy and ease in the presence of the being. Some of them return voluntarily, because they have left some task such as education unfinished, or would like to look after their children or an ailing wife. They feel that they have themselves voluntarily taken the decision to return and God has permitted them because of the unselfish motive they had. One young mother was mystified whether God had sent her back to look after her two small children or because he did not find her fit to be let into heaven. In a few cases, they had been pulled back because of the prayers of their loved ones. About the manner of return, there are different experiences. Some fall asleep and wake up in their bodies. Others are brought back rapidly with a jerk. In one case, the person felt that his spiritual body seemed to have a large and a small end. When it left the physical body, it seemed that the large end left first. Coming back in, the small end seemed to come in first. Typically, the moods and feelings associated with the experience are so wonderful and indescribable that these linger on for quite some time. Telling others Most of the subjects were persons having stable personalities and they were fully capable of distinguishing between a dream, a fantasy, a hallucination and a real

6 experience. They were very clear in their mind that they had had this experience while in a normal frame of mind and that they had not made it up. They realized that our contemporary society is just not the environment where such stories would be received with sympathy and understanding. They felt that if they narrated their experiences, most people would wonder whether they had lost their minds. If they tried, people looked at them as if they were crazy. It was, therefore, not surprising that most people had the notion that they were unique and no one else had undergone what they had. But when they were informed that others had reported exactly the same events and perceptions, they expressed profound feelings of relief. They realized that they were not crazy or mentally deranged Some were also reticent because the experience was so indescribable, so far beyond human language, that it was fruitless even to try. Effects on lives The effect of the experiences seemed to be that their lives had been broadened and deepened by the experience. They became more reflective and more concerned with ultimate philosophical issues. They realized that there was more to life than Friday night movies and football matches. They started acting after due reflection and not in selfish terms as they used to before. Life became much more precious for them. They started concentrating on the present rather than brooding on the past. They now gave less importance to the body and more to the mind. Some of them developed certain intuitive faculties bordering on the paychic.They had a calming effect on others. They were more in tune with people. They could read faces and guess that some people needed help. They could pick up peoples thoughts. Most of them learnt some lessons, especially about the importance of cultivating unselfish love and seeking knowledge. They decided not to stop learning, as learning was a process that went on till eternity. Their vision left them with new goals, new moral principles and a renewed determination to try to live in accordance with them, but with no feelings of instantaneous salvation or of moral infallibility. New views of death The experience has a profound impact on the way people perceive physical death. They are no longer afraid of it. They do not actively seek death or wish to commit suicide, but they are firmly convinced that death does not represent the end. There is life after death. Even if a gun is pulled on them, they are not afraid. They know that they will live somewhere. They do not feel bad at funerals, but kind of rejoice at them. To people who have been mortally afraid of death all their lives, it is as if God has sent this experience to them because of the way they felt about death. Their parents could at best comfort them, whereas the Lord showed them.

Persons who have died no longer use sleeping and forgetting as models of death. They choose analogies which portray death as a transition from one state to another, or as an entry into a higher state of consciousness. They compare death to a homecoming, awakening, graduating and to an escape from a jail. Death is for them now a graduation from one thing to another, like from grammar school to high school to college. Not one person has painted the mythological picture of what lies hereafter. No one has described the heaven of pearly gates, golden streets and winged, harp-playing angels, nor a hell of flames and demons with pitchforks. The reward-and-punishment model is abandoned. The subjects find to their amazement that when their most apparently awful and sinful deeds are made manifest, the being of light responds not with rage and anger, but with understanding and even with humour. The new model of the world beyond does not feature unilateral judgement, but rather cooperative development towards the ultimate end of self-realization. Development of the soul, especially in the spiritual faculties of love and knowledge, does not stop at death. It continues on the other side, perhaps eternally. Corroboration The evidence from other sources corroborates much of what the subjects experienced. The attending doctors are baffled as to how their patients could have watched events or heard conversations while they were dead. So are their near relatives. But these corroborations do not constitute proof. Parallels The Bible In Christianity, there is an interesting episode in the life of the apostle Paul, when he has a vision and conversion on the road to Damascus. He sees a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun. He hears a voice, although he does not see any form. When Paul tries to tell others he is mocked and labelled as insane. Nonetheless, the vision changes the course of his life. (Acts 26:13-26) He also talks of there being differences between the natural body and the spiritual body. Whereas the physical body was weak and ugly, the spiritual body shall be strong and beautiful. (Corinthians 15:35-52) Plato Plato believed that the physical realm could be understood only by reference to higher planes of reality. He believed in the incorporeal conscious component of man--- the soul--- and saw the physical body only as the temporary vehicle of the soul. Several of his dialogues--- especially Phaedo, Gorgias and the Republic---deal in part with the fate of the soul after physical death. He defines death as the separation of the soul from the body. The soul is subject to fewer limitations than the body. The spiritual realm is eternal and time is not an element there. After death, the soul may meet and converse with the departed

8 souls of others and be guided through the transition to the next realm by guardian spirits. The body is the prison of the soul. Birth is the sleeping and the forgetting, while death is an awakening and remembering. Soon after death, the soul faces a judgement in which a divine being displays before the soul all the things, good and bad, which it has done in its life and makes the soul face them. The myth of Er in Book X of the Republic recounts at length the experiences of Er, a Greek soldier who dies and gets revived on the funeral pyre. The Tibetan Book of the Dead This remarkable work was compiled from the teachings of the sages over many centuries. They regarded dying as a skill, which could be done artfully or in an unbecoming manner. The book was read out as part of the funeral ceremony or to the dying person. The idea was to help the dying person keep in mind the nature of each new wondrous phenomenon as he experienced it and also help his relatives think positive thoughts and not hold back the dying person with their love and emotional concern. According to this book, after death, the soul enters a swoon and finds himself in a void. He may hear alarming and disturbing noises and sounds, described as roaring, thundering and whistling noises and usually finds himself enveloped in a grey, misty illumination. He hears his relatives and friends mourning over his body, but when he tries to respond, he finds that they neither hear nor see him. He is depressed about his state. He finds himself in a shining body, which does not appear to consist of material substance. He can go through rocks, walls and mountains without encountering any resistance. Travel is almost instantaneous. His mind becomes more lucid and his senses seem more keen and perfect. He may encounter other beings in the same kind of body and may meet a clear or pure light. The dying person experiences feelings of immense peace and contentment. There is a kind of mirror in which his entire life is reflected for both him and the beings judging him. There is thus a remarkable similarity between the experiences of the subjects of near death experiences and the accounts given in this ancient manuscript. Explanations There are alternative explanations of near death experiences available. Supernatural explanations It does not appear reasonable to suppose that these experiences are directed by inimical forces. If it were so, the affected persons would have followed a course of hate and destruction. The Pharmacological Explanation Although there are some superficial similarities to the hallucinations of persons who have taken medicines or drugs, there are important differences too.

In drug-induced altered states of awareness, the brilliant light is not personified and no ineffable feelings of peace and happiness result. The description of the after-death world is literalistic with reference to the subjects religious training. The beings are identified as angels. The individual talks of going to heaven, which is in an up direction. She repeatedly stresses the vagueness of her experience and it apparently had no impact on her belief in an afterlife. In many cases no drugs had been administered prior to the near death experience. Physiological explanations It is often proposed that since the oxygen supply to the brain is cut off during clinical death, the phenomena perceived must represent some kind of last compensatory gasp of the dying brain. The main thing wrong with this hypothesis is that many of the near death experiences happened before any physiological stress of the required type took place. Neurological explanations There are some similarities with the experiences of neurological seizures occasioned by a focus of irritation in the brain, where past memories are seen. However, these images do not come in the order of their lives, nor are they seen all at once, in a unifying vision. These events were not the highlights or the most significant occurrences of their lives. They were not presented to them for judgemental or educational purposes. Psychological Explanations There are various psychological theories. Some critics have a feeling that the subjects are lying. Others think that they are unconsciously embellishing whatever experience they had. Many of the symptoms have been replicated in people subjected to isolation.. But in as much as isolation research has not come up with any satisfactory explanation for the experiences of those subjected to isolation, giving isolation as the explanation for near-death experiences would only convert a mystery into an enigma. Nor can we treat these experiences as delusions, as the accounts tally too much. The subjects are emotionally stable, normal people who can distinguish between dreams and reality. Their accounts also receive corroboration form independent observers. We should at least leave open the possibility that near death experiences represent a novel phenomenon for which we may have to devise new modes of explanation and interpretation. Conclusions Moody says that he is not under the delusion that he has proved that there is life after death. At the same time, the inability to construct a proof may represent a limitation of the currently accepted modes of scientific and logical thought.

10 Studying near-death experiences is important because it might throw light on the nature of death. If these experiences are real, they have profound implications for what every one of us is doing with his life. Post script In the edition printed in the year 2000, Moody makes three points. First, NDEs have been proved to be part of a broad spectrum of alternate states of awareness related to death and dying. One of these is the startling phenomenon of the empathic death experience, in which someone sitting at the bedside of a dying person participates empathetically in the dying experience. Secondly, it has now become possible to provide first hand contact with lifelike apparitions of departed loved ones. Thirdly, Moody has been able to produce a multimedia self-instructional programme that takes the participants safely over to the other side and back. Books recommended by Moody Ordered to Return: My Life after Dying by George Ritchie (Hampton Roads Publishers) Life at Death by Dr. Kenneth Ring Mindsight: Near-death and Out-of-body Experiences in the Blind by Dr. Kenneth Ring Transformed by the Light: the Powerful Effect of Near-death Experiences on Peoples Lives by Melvin Morse Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-death Experiences of Children by Melvin Morse The Last Laugh: A New Philosophy of Near-death Experiences, Apparitions and the Paranormal by Raymond Moody (Hampton Roads Publishers). ***********************************