Raymond Moody MD

[Deb]

I finally finished Raymond Moody's book, Glimpses of Eternity, Sharing a Loved One's Passage From this Life to the Next. It's about shared death experiences (SDE), meaning that someone is dying and another person who is present at the time has an experience similar to those reported by dying people. Such as, they will have an OBE and go with the dying person to the "beyond," witness some things and then return alone. Or a dying person would hear music or see spirits of people from their past, and there will be a witness, not dying, that will see or hear them too. 

Another thing that came up repeatedly in the book was people seeing a mist leave a body at the time of death, or some will even see a likeness of the dead person leaving the body, or already out of it. These reports often come from doctors and nurses, but also loved ones or friends.

Moody shares what what SDEs have in common. Most common:

  • witness hearing a buzzing sound
  • soon after that, OBE, often viewing the scene from above
  • room distortion and/or a tunnel of light opens up that they travel through
  • life reviews, most often of the person dying (in which case scenes the observer has not seen before), but sometimes of the person not dying
  • being on the "other side," seeing a lot of light, hearing beautiful music, brighter colors, beauty, feeling of love
  • seeing dead relatives or "beings of light"
  • non-dead person eventually stopped from going farther and they return to their bodies

SDEs happen to men and women equally, and atheists as well as believers. Moody says religious people will usually equate beings of light to religious figures or angels, while atheists will just call them beings of light.

There were some pretty amazing stories in the book. There were even stories of loved ones not being any where near the dying person, not knowing anyone was dying, and had visual or audio communications from the dying person.

Here's just part of one, a teenage boy who was an identical twin:

"One weekend my brother went to another state for a high school football game and I stayed at home. He drove there with friends, and on the day he was returning, I was lying on the couch watching sports when I suddenly had the sensation of leaving my body and moving toward a bright light. As this happened I flashed back on events that had taken place with my brother. I relived several events from our childhood, including some things that were so insignificant that I had forgotten them. These were all memory images, but none of them were daydreams or the same as sleeping dreams. They were so vivid that I really thought I was reliving them."

He found himself back in his body and feeling deeply disturbed. He immediately told his mother about it. About an hour later his mother received a phone call from the police in another state that her son had been killed in an auto accident.

I give the book a thumbs up!

I just had a thought: the old saying when someone thinks they are on the verge of death, such as in an accident, they saw their "life pass before their eyes."  Sounds like a life review to me.

[jbseth]

Hi Deb, Hi All,

Yes, that was one of my favorite all time books on the subject of death and NDEs.
I seriously think that it is one of the best. So many awesome stories.

I'm glad that you read it and posted this, as this confirms my strong personal feelings about this book.

Definitely a big thumbs up.

-jbseth