Paranormal

My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife

By: Raymond Moody MD, Paul Perry

Narrated by: Tom Parks

Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's Summary

The best-selling author of Life After Life, Raymond Moody, offers a stunning, myth-busting memoir of everything he has learned in a lifetime studying "the other side" and our connection to it. 

The grandfather of the NDE (near death experience) movement, Raymond Moody has, in the words of Dr. Larry Dossey, author of The Power of Premonitions, "radically changed the way modern humans think about the afterlife." 

Paranormal, essential listening for fans of Dannion Brinkley and Jeffrey Long, is "a thrilling and inspiring literary experience. Anyone who is not grateful for Moody's immense contribution to human welfare ought to check his pulse."

©2012 Raymond Moody and Paul Perry (P)2020 Tantor

Engaging memoir of near-death researcher

If you're like me, you came to this book, Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife, after reading Raymond Moody's first book Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon - Survival of Bodily Death (1975).

And you probably had similar questions after finishing it. Like how did a med student end up writing the first popular book on near-death experiences in the west? And if near-death experiences are real, why did the first best-selling book on the subject only come out in 1975?

Paranormal is Raymond Moody's chance to answer those questions and others besides. And, as he reports, writers and thinkers have been talking about and documenting near-death-like experiences for millennia but those accounts tend to be scattered across texts that I, at least, am not likely to pick up any time soon. He refers to the Ancient Greeks a lot.

I found this memoir to be an excellent follow-up to Life After Life because it tells the story of Raymond Moody's life and how small events and anecdotes--a neighborhood dog left for dead miraculously returning--started to build up in the young Moody's imagination and create an interest in the afterlife. Is there life after death?

At some point, Moody heard his first near-death experience, though it wasn't called that then. Moody himself coined the term in Life After Life. The first story was just interesting to him. But then Moody heard another. And it clicked. If these folks had near-death experiences, did others as well? So he set about, as a med student, tracking down people who NDEs and recorded them. In Paranormal, he revisits stories told in Life After Life as well as some told in another of his books, Glimpses of Eternity (which I'm currently reading on Kindle).

These stories are always fascinating. Moody doesn't try to sell the truth of NDEs. He lets readers decide for themselves. But he anticipates doubts and tries to answer them.

Some people have labelled Moody and researchers like him crackpots. So the author takes a big gamble when he starts the memoir with his suicide attempt in the 1990s. He was on a tour promoting another book, and not only was his life falling to pieces but his mental state was in a shambles because of a thyroid problem that threw him into wild mood swings.

Anyway, if there's even a little bit of a skeptic in you, you're thinking: And I'm supposed to trust what this guy is saying about NDEs???

It took courage for Moody to put that story in there and right up front because, in a way, he's setting himself up as a potentially unreliable narrator. Yet then he spends the rest of the book going through his life story and his quest to understand NDEs and bring this phenomenon to the attention of a wider audience.

I had one big gripe with this memoir. Moody tells the suicide story in the first chapter. He ends it with a cliffhanger. Then he comes back to it the end of the book to let the reader know what happened to him. Only he regurgitates the whole suicide story, almost word for word, before he reveals the conclusion. An editor should have pared this down to just a few phrases to jog the reader's mind. I would have skipped ahead but I didn't want to miss the outcome.

Also, toward the end of the book, Moody goes off into other areas of interest. His research into past-life regression. And his attempts to create a process whereby people can communicate with the dead. Some reviewers on Goodreads said this was where Moody lost them. That was just too far out for them.

The narrator Tom Parks was perfect for this book. He gives a nice straight narration, not monotonous, not dramatic, just where it needs to be to keep you interested.

Repeat Performance

Except for two notable additions, this book is pretty much a rehash of Moody's original breakout success, Life After Life, first published in 1975.

The notable additions are a closeup look at his childhood and personal adult life, and a fairly recent foray into woo-woo land. Crystals, mirror imaging in which one attempts to summon the dead - this aspect of his outlook suggests a shift into instability.

He should have stopped with Life After Life.

Ended Too Soon

Wish Moody would have went into more detail, and added 10 more chapters on reincarnation.

Explains his thyroid disease and how it effected his life.

Absolutely a must read!

Love the look back to the Greeks for meaning. Moody is the Mickey Mantle of his era. I must add, Greeks believe the soul rises within 40 days after passing. So I we can conclude that the spirit is alive. tallking to us and with us prior to and within 40 days. Beautiful listen. thanks ! D. Katsefes

fascinating

a bit repetitive at times, but grippingk to hear the experiences that he has had. The narrator was excellent.

Most fascinating book I’ve read in my life

Dr. Moody’s book is the most fascinating book I’ve ever read. I look forward to reading more of his work. He has an analytical mind like mine, and I’m always searching for answers. I love the fact that he is not set an anything being definitive as far as the afterlife because how do we know and that’s what makes it so interesting to continue to research.

Dry and clinical.

The information was very interesting but dry and clinical. I had a hard time finishing. Some of the information presented was difficult to believe. Not an audio book that I will listen to again.

moody raymond

sweet fella... I detect <o>
a fine hear
I believe in Light
I believe in Life

My opinion is meaningless---by comparison

Ever review must contain at least fifteen words:
My opinion is meaningless---by comparison:
FIFTEEN !