Moody - Life After Life

A world renowned psychiatrist, lecturer, author and researcher, Dr Raymond Moody is the leading authority on the near-death experience. He has published six books since Life After Life first appeared in 1975 and now runs a research institute called The Theatre of the Mind in Alabama which offers workshops for educators and professional clinicians.

In this fascinating book, Dr Moody reveals his groundbreaking study of more than 100 people who experienced clinical death and were revived. Their amazing testimonies and surprising descriptions of death and beyond are so strikingly similar, so vivid and so overwhelmingly positive they have changed the way we view life and death, and the spiritual hereafter. Life After Life will intrigue and offer strong reassurance to anyone who has wondered what comes next?

There have been very many people who have given me assistance and encouragement during my research and writing, and I could not have completed this project without them. It was my good friend John Ouzts who talked me into giving my first public talk on this subject. John Egle of Mockingbird Books first encouraged me to commit my findings to writing, and has provided support and encouragement throughout. Leonard, Mae, Becky, and Scott Brooks provided room, board, and taxi service for me on many occasions when I needed them. Kathy Tabakian accompanied me on several interviews, and I benefited from long discussions of them with her. Russ Moores, Richard Martin, and Ed McCranie, all of the Medical College of Georgia, offered valuable suggestions and referred me to much relevant literature. My wife spent long hours editing the manuscript and typescript. Finally, I should like most of all to thank all those who told me of their encounters with death. I can only hope that this book is worthy of all the confidence that everyone mentioned above has placed in me.

THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING
Sogyal Rinpoche

What is it I hope for from this book? To inspire a quietrevolution in the whole way we look at death and care for the dying and the whole way we look at life, and care for the living

An acclaimed spiritual masterpiece, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is a manual for life and death and a magnificent source of sacred inspiration from the heart of the Tibetan tradition. Sogyal Rinpoche delivers a lucid and inspiring introduction to the practice of meditation, to the nature of mind, to karma and rebirth, to compassionate love and care for the dying, and to the trials and rewards of the spiritual path. This jewel of Tibetan wisdom is the definitive new spiritual classic for our time.

THE PROJECTION OF THE ASTRAL BODY
Sylvan Muldoon & Hereward Carrington

In this work Dr Carrington, one of the worlds foremostpsychic researchers, brings his vast knowledge of scientific investigation to bear in editing the remarkable account of Sylvan Muldoons out-of-the-body experiences. Mr Muldoon gives not only a vivid account of his own astral experiences, but instructions to the student in the technique of projecting the astral body. He makes no attempt to prove to sceptics the truth of the phenomena. In his own words: I stand on a clear-cut issue. I say experience it! The proof of the pudding is in the eating... You want proof and I say you can have it but you must experience it. You want to know how to experience it, and I tell you how to go about it. I can do no more.

THE NEW NATURAL DEATH HANDBOOK
Edited by Nicholas Albery and Stephanie Wienrich of the Natural Death Centre

Woodland burial where a tree is planted instead of having a headstone is the fastest growing environmental movement in the UK.

There was only one woodland burial ground in 1993, now there are about 100, with many more at the planning stage. They are all detailed in this handbook, as are the mail-order sources for cardboard coffins, regular coffins and shrouds.

Princess Dianas funeral and her burial on an island reminded people that a funeral can be more than a drab 30 minutes at the crematorium. This book suggests how a family can organise inexpensive and very personal funerals, with or without the help of funeral directors. It is also an authoritative source on the laws and recommendations surrounding burial on your own land as well as how to set up your own woodland burial ground.

What comes next in investigating the extraordinary phenomena of human consciousness that take place on the threshold of death? The republication of Life After Life seems a good occasion to report briefly on three further developments in my research.

First, it is now clear that the familiar near-death experience is part of a much broader spectrum of alternate states of awareness related to death and dying. The spectrum includes, most interestingly, a startling phenomenon I dub the empathic death experience.

It is very common for someone at the bedside of a person who is dying to participate empathetically in the dying experience of that other person. Hundreds of wonderful people from all walks of life have related to me that, as a loved one died, they themselves lifted out of their own bodies and accompanied their dying loved ones toward a beautiful and loving light. They also describe seeing deceased relatives coming to greet the one who was passing away. In fact, all of the elements commonly thought of as defining the near-death experience also are mentioned by those who report empathic death experiences.

Interrelated demographic factors are bringing about a tidal wave of empathic death experiences. I first learned of the phenomenon in 1973 from one of my professors of medicine, who told me of her own experience that took place during an unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate a close relative who had suddenly collapsed and died. Since then tens of millions of baby boomers have entered midlife, a stage of life during which it is very common to lose ones parents and other loved ones. At the same time, hospital practices regarding the terminally ill have changed significantly. When I was in medical school, doctors and nurses generally were the ones present when a patient died. Medical personnel intervened toward the last to escort family members out of the room on the theory that the actual death would be too overwhelming an event for them to bear. Nowadays it is common practice for the doctors and nurses to encourage the patients families to be there with them until the end. This, and the fact that such a large segment of the population is now faced with the issue of mortality, guarantees that empathic death experiences will be a major subject of research in the coming decades.

Second, I have developed and tested a system that safely enables people to see firsthand what a major component of a near-death experience is like. Specifically, many who return from close brushes with death say that during the interlude they saw and conversed with the spirits of loved ones who had already passed away. Medical studies have also shown that a high percentage of psychologically normal individuals have visionary encounters with departed loved ones in the wake of a death.

Whether these apparitions of the deceased occur within the context of a near-death experience or of bereavement, they help people move more successfully through the process of grieving. Therefore, it is of great interest to know that in the ancient world, procedures existed that permitted people who were in a waking state of awareness to see and talk with full-sized, moving, three-dimensional apparitions of those they had lost to death.