Proof of Life after Life: Seven Reasons to Believe There Is an Afterlife
Raymond A. Moody and Paul Perry
Boulder, Colo.: Beyond Words/Atria. 2023. 240 pp., paperback, $17.
Raymond Moody is an American philosopher and psychiatrist whose 1975 book Life after Life (1975) was the first one to discuss near-death experiences (NDEs); in fact, Moody was the first one to use the term NDE. Another author of this book is journalist, author, and documentarist Paul Perry. He has written several books on NDEs; six have been cowritten with Moody. Since the author’s voice in Proof of Life after Life is clearly Moody’s, I will refer to Moody as the author below.
Many books have been published on NDE research, but what makes this one special is Moody’s willingness to state that now there is enough objective evidence to show the existence of the afterlife. As a philosopher, Moody felt for a long time that merely collecting people’s subjective, albeit impressive, experiences at the gate of death does not afford sufficient objective evidence for rational belief in life after death. Let’s see what changed Moody’s assessment.
Moody adopted the term shared death experience (SDE) in his earlier writings. SDEs are experiences in which one or more others share in a dying person’s transition. In extreme cases, this can mean that a living person can leave her body, follow the dying person to the other side, and come back to talk about it. This is a rare experience: more commonly, people around the deathbed perceive a visiting entity or apparition. They do not necessarily recognize the entity at first but may later identify it as a long-deceased relative. Some report having seen a misty formation leaving the body of the dying person, or they may observe light that is not coming from any natural source. Sometimes a dying loved one can appear from a long distance.
In addition to these experiences, Moody proposes the following lines of evidence:
Many near-death experiencers report having an out-of-body experience allowing them to observe their surroundings and activities in a way that can be verified after resuscitation. In my opinion, these are potentially the best sources of objective evidence.
The NDE experience has a transforming effect on the personality and values of the experiencer, who may, for example, change their careers to ones better aligned with their new values.
Terminal lucidity sometimes precedes death in deeply demented people and even in those considered to be brain-dead.
Some report spontaneous healing or new skills after the NDE.
Moody presents one more line of evidence from the practice of gazing into a mirror or some other reflective surface in a dimly lit room; the name for this is psychomanteum. Using this process, some have reported having seen deceased relatives in the mirror, even conversing with them. Others may not experience anything in a mirror-gazing session, although the deceased relatives may present themselves afterward.
Moody became fascinated by the psychomanteum to the extent that he built a room in his home for that purpose. He started receiving test subjects who wanted to have contact with their deceased loved ones. Moody had certain criteria for the test subjects: they had to be mature people interested in human consciousness, emotionally stable, and free from mental disorders. Moreover, he did not accept people with “occult ideologies,” since this could complicate the analysis of the results.
Moody conducted the pilot study in 1992 and reported that about half of the test subjects had seen a deceased individual in the mirror. This had a positive effect on the subjects: they ceased to fear death and achieved a kinder and more understanding outlook on life. Six subjects reported having an actual conversation with the deceased loved one.
Moody’s experiment has been replicated by parapsychologist William Roll. In a 2004 study published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, he found that 22 percent of the participants reported a strong sense of reunion with a departed loved one during mirror gazing. Moreover, these participants felt that the experience helped them in their grief process.
I found the shared-death and related experiences to be the most rewarding parts of the book. (There is other scientific research on the topic, for example the Shared Crossing Research Initiative.) I concur that SDEs strongly suggest objective evidence of the afterlife.
What could be said about this book from the point of view of Theosophy, which, after all, has detailed descriptions of the stages of the afterlife? Explaining NDEs and SDEs requires a novel understanding of what a human being is. Theosophical perspectives on matters such as etheric and astral bodies could be very valuable in this regard.
Antti Savinainen