Raymond Moody

Raymond Moody (born June 30, 1944) is a psychologist and medical doctor. He is most famous as an author of books about life after death and near-death experiences (NDE), a term that he coined in 1975. His best-selling title is Life After Life.

Contents  [hide]  1 Life 2 Career 3 Elements of the near-death experience 4 References 5 Partial bibliography 6 Interviews (Video and Podcasts) 7 External links

[edit] Life

Moody studied philosophy at the University of Virginia, United States, where he obtained a B.A. (1966), an M.A. (1967) and a Ph.D. (1969) in the subject. He also obtained a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of West Georgia, then known as West Georgia College, where he later became a professor in that topic.^[1] In 1976, he was awarded an M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia.
After obtaining his M.D., Moody worked as a forensic psychiatrist in a maximum-security Georgia state hospital. In 1998, Moody was appointed Chair in Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Moody was born in Porterdale, Georgia and currently lives in rural Alabama. He has been married three times. As of 2004, he is married to Cheryl and they have an adopted son, Carter, and an adopted daughter, CarolAnne. In an interview in 1993, Moody stated he was placed in a mental hospital by his family for his work with mirror gazing.^[2]

[edit] Career

Moody's most famous book was made into a movie of the same name, Life After Life, for which he won a bronze medal in the Human Relations Category at the New York Film Festival. He was also awarded the World Humanitarian Award.
His much later book The Last Laugh, containing, as he states, material edited out of Life After Life, confused some of his admirers as to his own personal view of NDE phenomena, which he had done so much to publicize. In this book, he says he does not consider them to be conclusive proof of life after death, and is disturbed by the use of his works by religious fundamentalists and New Age gurus to further their causes. The book is so titled because he ends almost every anecdote in it with the phrase "Needless to say, I had the last laugh".
Nonetheless, Moody's own beliefs on NDEs can be summed up with the following quote from his interview with Jeffrey Mishlove:

I don't mind saying that after talking with over a thousand people who have had these experiences, and having experienced many times some of the really baffling and unusual features of these experiences, it has given me great confidence that there is a life after death. As a matter of fact, I must confess to you in all honesty, I have absolutely no doubt, on the basis of what my patients have told me, that they did get a glimpse of the beyond.^[3]

In 2010, Moody published Glimpses of Eternity which describes the "shared death experience", in which people gathered at the bedside of a dying loved one sometimes describe being lifted out of their bodies and accompanying their loved one part-way into another realm. Moody describes seven key elements of the shared death experience which are very similar to those of the near-death experience.^[4]
The Dr. John Dee Memorial Theater of the Mind is a research institute in Alabama that was founded by Moody as a place where people can experience an altered state of consciousness with the intention of invoking apparitions of the dead. One of the methods used to obtain this altered state is crystallomancy, or "mirror gazing".
Moody has also researched past life regression and believes that he personally has had nine past lives.^[5]

[edit] Elements of the near-death experience

From a study of 150 people who had clinically died or almost died, Moody concluded that there are nine experiences common to most people who have had a near death experience. These are:

1. hearing sounds such as buzzing
2. a feeling of peace and painlessness
3. having an out-of-body experience
4. a feeling of traveling through a tunnel
5. a feeling of rising into the heavens
6. seeing people, often dead relatives
7. meeting a spiritual being such as God
8. seeing a review of one's life
9. feeling a reluctance to return to life

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Raymond Moody

[edit] References

1. ^ Chris Aanstoos, A Brief History of the West Georgia Humanistic Psychology Program, "The West Georgia Story." The Humanistic Psychologist, 17(1). 77-85., 1989. Accessed 2010-08-09.
2. ^ Sharon Barbell, Play and the Paranormal: A Conversation with Dr. Raymond Moody, 14850 Magazine, November 1993. Archived on 2011-07-07.
3. ^ Life After Life:Understanding Near-Death Experience With Raymond Moody, M.D
4. ^ Moody, Raymond; Perry, Paul. Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a loved one's passage from this life into the next. Guideposts. ISBN 0-8249-4813-0.
5. ^ Moody and Perry, Coming Back: a psychiatrist explores past life journeys, pp. 11-28.

[edit] Partial bibliography

• Raymond Moody, Life After Life: the investigation of a phenomenon – survival of bodily death, San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. ISBN 0-06-251739-2.
• Raymond Moody, Reflections on Life After Life, Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1977. ISBN 0-8117-1423-3.
• Raymond Moody and Paul Perry, The Light Beyond, New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1988. ISBN 0-553-05285-3.
• Raymond Moody and Paul Perry, Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a loved one's passage from this life to the next, New York, NY: Guideposts, 2010. ISBN 0-8249-4813-0.
• Raymond Moody and Paul Perry, Reunions: visionary encounters with departed loved ones, New York, NY: Villard Books, 1993. ISBN 0-679-42570-5.
• Raymond Moody and Dianne Arcangel, Life After Loss: conquering grief and finding hope, San Francisco : HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. ISBN 0-06-251729-5.
• Raymond Moody and Paul Perry, Coming Back: a psychiatrist explores past life journeys, New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1991. ISBN 0-553-07059-2.
• Raymond Moody, Laugh after laugh: the healing power of humor, Jacksonville, FL: Headwaters Press, 1978. ISBN 0-932428-07-X.
• Raymond Moody, The Last Laugh: a new philosophy of near-death experiences, apparitions, and the paranormal, Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Pub., 1999. ISBN 1-57174-106-2.
• Raymond Moody, Elvis After Life: Unusual psychic experiences surrounding the death of a superstar, New York, NY: Mass Market Paperback, Bantam Books, July 1, 1989. ISBN 0-553-27345-0.

[edit] Interviews (Video and Podcasts)

• What Being a Skeptic Really Means Featured Interview of Moody on www.Skeptico.com
• Play and the Paranormal A Conversation with Dr. Raymond Moody

[edit] External links

• Moody's website: lifeafterlife.com
• The International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc., Building Global Understanding of Near-Death Experiences
• On-line video interview for Czech TV (14. 8. 2011)

[hide] v t e Parapsychology Topics Apparitional experience Astral Projection Aura (paranormal) Clairvoyance Cold reading Energy (esotericism) Extrasensory perception Ganzfeld experiment Near-death experience Past life regression Plant perception (paranormal) Precognition Psychic Psychic reading Psychokinesis Psychometry Reincarnation research Remote viewing Telepathy Organizations American Society for Psychical Research International Association for Near-Death Studies Koestler Parapsychology Unit National Laboratory of Psychical Research Parapsychological Association Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory Society for Psychical Research People Loyd Auerbach Daryl Bem Hans Bender Susan Blackmore Stephen E. Braude Etzel Cardeña Whately Carington Hereward Carrington Théodore Flournoy Nandor Fodor Randall Fontes Leonard George George P. Hansen László Harasztosi Alister Hardy Hans Holzer Charles Honorton James Hurtak James H. Hyslop Thomson Jay Hudson Alexander Imich Brian David Josephson Stanley Krippner Lawrence LeShan Rufus Osgood Mason R. A. McConnell James Hewat McKenzie Michel Moine Raymond Moody Robert L. Morris Thelma Moss Gardner Murphy Frederic William Henry Myers Andrew Nichols Ciarán O'Keeffe Tommaso Palamidessi Joseph Gaither Pratt Dean Radin James Randi Konstantin Raudive Carl Reichenbach Joseph Banks Rhine Kenneth Ring D. Scott Rogo William G. Roll Rupert Sheldrake Henry Sidgwick Matthew Smith Ian Stevenson Russell Targ Charles Tart Michael Thalbourne Rudolf Tischner Jim B. Tucker Jessica Utts René Warcollier Karl Zener Publications Extrasensory Perception Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century Journal of Consciousness Studies Journal of Near-Death Studies Journal of Parapsychology Journal of Scientific Exploration Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence For Past Lives Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind The Roots of Coincidence Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation Varieties of Anomalous Experience Category Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Moody