The book written by Raymond Moody together with Paul Perry entitled “Proof of Life after Life: 7 Reasons to Believe There Is an Afterlife” (Moody 2023), reveals just what the title claims. The authors appear to believe in the reality of an afterlife as reported by those having undergone an NDE, and present what they claim to be 7 proofs of the reality of this belief.
It is a simply written and easily read book of only 210 pages. However, it is replete with rather one-dimensional reports of the arguments of “Materialists vs. Dualists”, as well as of those persons labelled as “Skeptics”. Much appeal is made to the arguments of philosophers to add ostensible credence to the author’s arguments, even though they claim there is sufficient observational evidence proving the reality of their belief that NDE’s truly are a window revealing the reality of an afterlife. So the authors present what they consider to be 7 conclusive proofs of the reality of this claim.
1 - Shared Death Experiences 2 - Out-of-Body Experiences 3 - Precognitive Events 4 - The Transforming Light 5 - Terminal Lucidity 6 - Spontaneous Muses, Healings, and Skills 7 - Light, Mist, and Music 8 - The Psychomanteum
This review examines this book to determine whether these 7 proofs really are proof of an afterlife as claimed.
Shared death experiences (SDE’) are NDE’s where one or more persons in the vicinity of a dying person actually “sees” the recognizable form of the body, a mist, or a light, departing the physical body at the moment of death. This may also be associated with other affective, cognitive, or transcendental experiences. One such profound SDE was reported by Raymond Moody describing the events around the passing of his mother during which he and five other family members gathered around her deathbed reported seeing the late husband of their mother at the moment of death together with undergoing affective and cognitive experiences (see pages xxiii-xxv in Moody 2023). A profound experience indeed. Other persons also report seeing the soul, or mist departing the body of dying relative.
The SDE presents a big problem. What are the SDE experiencers reporting? They say they “see” these things. However, they do not “see” these events with any physically verifiable vision. We know his for certain from the ages-old practice of public executions. Throughout many millennia untold millions of people have intently witnessed the death throes of their fellow humans being put to death, yet there are no ages-old consistent reports of people reporting seeing the souls of these unfortunate persons departing from their bodies at the moment of death. During the last 100 years, human vision has been supplemented by film and video recordings of the death throes of untold thousands of executed persons. Such recordings also reveal no imagery of souls or anything else departing the bodies of these persons at the moment of death. Then there are wars … For all known millennia of human history, soldiers killing their antagonists never report seeing the souls of those they kill departing their bodies. Likewise, murders never report seeing the souls of those they killed departing their bodies. Wars and murder would be unlikely if soldiers and murderers actually “saw” the souls of those they killed departing their bodies.
This is proof positive that SDE’s are the rare shared mental visions of people associated with the dying. So while they are certainly profound subjective experiences, they are no independent proof of an afterlife, or of “seeing” the soul of a dying person departing the body. Accordingly, the SDE is not proof of an afterlife.
Moody and Perry consider the OBE with veridical observations occurring during an NDE to be the most powerful proof of a separable soul and an afterlife, wholeheartedly aggreeing with a quote from Jeffrey Long (Long 2010).
However, there are several very conclusive and easily provable reasons indicating that experiences reported during an OBE occurring during an NDE have nothing whatsoever to do with an immaterial, and invisible soul, or a separable consciousness departing the body. Rather, such experiences are clear indications of retained conscious perceptions made by the body during the OBE. I will explain.
The disembodied consciousness of a person undergoing an out of body experience is invisible and has no interaction with physical matter. These things mean it cannot be seen, and cannot be photographed or imaged at any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum. Accordingly, the disembodied consciousness of a person undergoing an out of body experience does not interact with light at all, which means it cannot possibly see anything (see pages 120-123 in Read why disembodied consciousness cannot see).
The immaterial disembodied consciousness of a person undergoing an out of body experience does not interact with physical matter at all, because it can depart from the body, actually passing through the solid matter of the body, and even pass through solid walls. Accordingly, the disembodied consciousness cannot possibly hear, because it would also have no interaction with sound waves in air (Read detailed reasons why disembodied consciousness cannot hear).
A person undergoing an OBE is often clearly not conscious, and sometimes even presumed dead. This is why OBE’s are remembered experiences — they are reported to other conscious physical persons only after the person reporting the OBE has recovered sufficiently to be able to speak. The reality of the OBE and NDE being remembered events has serious implications (Kelly 2007).
Moody, along many other NDE researchers, ignores necessity for determining the location of memory altogether. However, there is concrete proof incapable of alternative explanations, that human consciousness is not located in some extracorporeal consciousness, but located firmly within the brain (Read why memory is provably located within the brain).
NDE’s with OBE’s occurring during cardiac arrest take place during a condition of so-called ”clinical death”. There is no heartbeat and no flow of blood through the brain if no cardiac massage is applied to sustain the circulation until heartbeat is restored. According to nearly all NDE researchers such as Moody and many others, cardiac massage applied during cardiac arrest is insufficient to restore coherent consciousness and the ability to form memories (Greyson 2003, Lommel 2001, Lommel 2010, Parnia 2007, page 228 in Holden 2009).
Unfortunately these authors seem not to have kept abreast of the world scientific medical literature on this subject for quite some years before making this statement. They all omit to tell the reader that the very process of cardiac massage sometimes restores a significant flow of blood to the brain (Swenson 1988), and even restores the electrical activity of the brain in some cases (Elton 1961). Cardiac massage is sometimes even so efficient that some people are visibly conscious, even though they have no heartbeat at all (Gray 2018, Tobin 2008). Consciousness during resuscitation for cardiac arrest was also clearly demonstrated by the landmark AWARE study of 2060 cardiac arrests published by Sam Parnia during 2014 — there were 330 survivors, and of the 140 survivors willing and able to be interviewed, 55 reported being partially or fully conscious during resuscitation, and only 9 of these 55 had an NDE (Parnia 2014). This knowledge means that some survivors of cardiac arrest will be conscious during resuscitation for cardiac arrest, and able to remember their experiences.
The impossibility of perceptions of the physical world, and the fact that memory is not extracorporeal but located firmly within the brain means that the OBE occurring during an NDE is not a manifestation of the soul, or separable consciousness. Instead, it is an internally generated autoscopic hallucination combined with perceptions of the world outside the body.
It could be claimed that if OBE’s are internally generated hallucinations, then it may be possible that the vertidical and precognitive observations are due to psi, or paranormal perceptions. This point was also made in the book “Irreducible Mind” (Kelly 2007).
An interesting hypothesis. However, more than 100 years of intense research since the founding of the English and American societies for pyschical research have failed to provide with any definitive, and resproducible proof of the reality of psi perceptive and precognitive abilities. The current situation regarding the reality of psi abilities is as quoted below:
This is the reality of psi abilities such as: precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc, etc. … Accordingly, such precognitive events cannot be considered proof of precognition or of an afterlife.
NDE’s are generally transformative experiences — they are associated with visions of lights and tunnels, and charcter changes in the persons after recovery from the cause of the NDE. As was pointed out in one review of the NDE, many of these changes are products of the cause of ther NDE, and have a good physiological explanation (Mobbs 2011). For example:
Bright light is reported by about 20-40% of people reporting their NDE’s. NDE’s are often associated with arousal states or brain oxygen starvation, and both situations cause the pupils of the eyes to widen, resulting in a sensation of bright light, and reported as a bright light.
Tunnel experiences are only reported by about 30% of people reporting their NDE’s. Brain and body oxygen starvation is a common cause of NDE’s — NDE’s occur during cardiac arrest, pneumonia or other severe lung infections, drowning, high mountains, etc, etc. The outer retina of the human eye fails to function at lower levels of oxygen starvation than the central retina, giving rise to the well-known “tunnel vision” caused by oxygen starvation. This explains many of the tunnel experience reports.
Tansformation of character is a common result of severe disease, and certainly of severe brain oxygen starvation (Srivastava 2017). The brain effects of sudden severe oxygen starvation last many months, and are sometimes permanent. Generally the effect does not improve brain function. However, the big problem with people claiming improvements after an NDE is that no-one tests them beforehand to investigate their mental function. So these changes are only reported after the NDE. Furthermore, the experience of undergoing an NDE is often a profound event which of itself can cause a psychological transformation. All these things mean that not too much credence need be placed upn such transformations.
Brain function during the dying process is not always constant, nd gives rise to the sometimes wondrous effect of terminal lucidity. Terminal lucidity is observed in many nursing homes and hospitals. The explanation of temporarily increased heart function, or changes in the functioning of some parts of the brain, explains terminal lucidity better than postulating some soul-body interaction (Cobb 2000). Indeed, such a soul-body interaction cannot occur, as an independent and separable consciousness with the properties postulated by Moody and many other believers in the ostensible reality of NDE experiences simply does not exist.
I need not continue any further analysis. The so-called “proofs” presented in this book are not proof of an afterlife as postulated by Raymond Moody and Paul Perry. Instead, they are no more than an expression of a belief system founded upon a systematic misinterpretation of evidence as presented by themselves, together with selective ”cherry-picking” and ignoring of other aspects of decades of scientific investigation. This is not a book that advances any serious study of the possibility of an afterlife as is clearly and so ardently hoped for by the writers of this book – a hope also beautifully and fervently expressed by the ancient Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE).
The “proofs” presented in this work cannot be considered proof of an afterlife. However, this does not mean there is no afterlife, only that if any sort of afterlife exists, it will be very different to any afterlife as discussed in this, and other books on the NDE.