Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a Loved One's Passage from This Life to the Next

This book pleasantly surprised me. Having associated Dr. Raymond Moody with the near-death experience, I assumed that the book was about NDEs. And having read all of Moody's books on the subject as well as three other recently-published books about the NDE by distinguished authors, I doubted the book had anything new to offer. But I assumed wrong. While a certain kind of NDE is discussed, the book is primarily about shared death experiences, which falls more into the area of death-bed visions than NDEs. Shared death experiences were discussed many years ago by pioneering researchers Frederic W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Sir William Barrett, but there has been very little, if anything, written about them in recent years. Moody and Paul Perry recount some of those old experiences after relating a number of intriguing cases Moody has collected. In effect, shared-death experiences involve visions or experiences shared by the dying person and another person who is not near death, usually a loved one or someone tending to the dying person. While many of them happen when they are together in the same room, some take place when they are miles apart. The phenomena include seeing strange bright lights in the room or misty vapors rising from the dying person, observing deceased relatives or loved ones in the room, encountering "heavenly realms," hearing strange music, and even the non-dying person witnessing the dying person's life review or having a life review of his or her own. "Shared death experiences deal with the notion of a variety of extra senses, including telepathy, clairvoyance, remote viewing, astral projection, spontaneous out-of-body experiences and perhaps other that I have not yet anticipated," Moody explains. It is all a bit mind boggling, but some very credible people are quoted. For example, Dr. Joan Borysenko, a Harvard University psychology professor and author of several popular books, tells of being at her mother's bedside as she was dying and having an out-of-body experience in which she (Borysenko) witnessed all of her good and bad deeds, including fights with her mother and mind games they had played with each other. There are a number of stories related by fellow physicians, including one by an anesthesiologist who reported crossing into another dimension after touching a dying patient's hand, then seeing what he took to be deceased members of the patient's family. Moody tells of his own experience involving strange happenings at the bed of his dying mother, experiences witnessed not only by him but by other family members. A number of the stories involve more than one person witnessing a particular phenomenon. After examining and dismissing the arguments skeptics will likely have against the reality of the shared death experience, Moody opines that they tell us more about the afterlife than the NDE and that they are "the key to proving the existence of an afterlife." This book is advertised as "groundbreaking." Actually, Myers, Gurney, and Barrett broke the ground more than a century ago, but, unfortunately, the land was vacated soon thereafter. Hopefully, some real building will start with this excellent book.

I have read almost all the books Dr Moody has written and thinks this is the best book of all. In all the other books, including his first book on NED -- Life after Life -- he maintains kind of a scientific objectivity stating that he is not trying to prove anything about the life hereafter, but simply presenting the facts. After having read many of the very authentic accounts of the NDErs Dr Moody presents, it was somewhat annoying to see how Dr Moody had distanced himself from stating that all his findings substatiate life-here-after. However, my annoyance was compensated by his live presentations and interviews on the subject where he was more forthcoming in substantiating the after life through the accounts he has collected over many years of his research. The live presentations are simply excellent. Out of all of his other books, this books stands out because here he emphatically substantiate the afterlife from all the shared death experiences he has presented, including his own. I highly commend this book to anyone interested in the after life.

This book is filled with Dr. Moody's examples of personal family accounts of those who all perceptibly shared in the departure of their loved one's soul from his or her body at its mortal death and the soul's passage into the non-physical spirit world!! This occurs to hospice staff members as well as family members. Unfortunately, as with near-death experiences, this happens in only a small percentage of deaths. However, it shocks all to whom it does happen, which includes all kinds of people from academically-rigid medical school professors to ordinary families, from all cultures, religions, beliefs, and countries around the world. Shared-death-experiences have no scientific explanation. Yet they are immensely reassuring of reunions with loved ones in Heaven.

I have three copies. One is for somebody else, who has just lost their partner to the grave, and I knew that they'd derive great feelings of comfort from reading this book.I've read it twice, now. I recommend it to everybody.This is still an emerging wing of the massive body that is the Paranormal. This is NOT "near death" experience...this is "SHARED DEATH" experiences - told by healthy people partially pulled into another person's death, only to REMAIN ALIVE and able to describe what happened! Don't mistake this book for yet another on "near-death".

As in court cases, a lone witness's testimony has to be trusted to a large degree.Cynical people do sloppy research and have then smeared Dr Moody's reputationwith their assumptions.Near Death Experiencers are on a par with inspired inventors, musicians and artists.Normal reasoning based on physical evidence alone will gradually lead you away from truth.An honest scientist will carefully research newly discovered truth even when it breaks the mould of his old notions.Many predjudiced know-it-all 'scientists' have, on first hearing, immediately mocked new ideas.Eventually the sheer volume of evidence or wealth of testimony begins to open their minds and cause them to doubt their old paradigms.

This is a fascinating follow up to Raymond Moody's 'Life After Life', published in 1975. He was a pioneer in collecting evidence, some very convincing, that the spirit goes on after death. This book tackles the interesting phenomena of 'shared death experiences', when relatives, or medical staff, from all over the world, witness similar unexplainable events at the moment of death, sometimes travelling with the departing soul for some of the way.Raymond Moody is an intelligent, energetic seeker of truth, who confesses that it took an awful lot of evidence before his scepticism turned to belief. Catch him on Youtube and read this book and the original one with an open mind.

An excellent guide to help give some meaning to the mystery of death,a valuable guide to love and eternity.As a recently widowed man this book helped me to retain some form of sanity to give explanations to some of the weird, strange and wonderful things that happened to me after my beautiful wife's passing.

Raymond Moody - eminent Professor writes so very well. A fascinating read.Everyone should read this and all his books. Perhaps then there would be no wars, no greed and we could all simply love each other.