Life After Life
By: Raymond M. Moody Jr. M.D.
I am an atheist. Therefore, I believe in no afterlife. But a question that I dwell upon frequently would be one that everyone thinks they know, but do they really? Is there life after death: or does the natural intention to believe in something to calm our nerves about circumstances unknown take over to make us believe in something that may not exist? Raymond M. Moody Jr. M.D. examines this phenomenon using relatable writing styles to represent his scientific findings on the human experience concerning survival of bodily death.
Using repetition to produce a life-like interview, the audience’s understanding of human senses becomes their reality. Unlike third person written lab reports on a students chemistry experiment or creative mystical novels told in multiple perspectives; Moody talks to his reader directly using a first person point of view. This enthralls his intellectual audience by helping grasp the enlightened information that Moody proclaims during his miniature interviews about human experiences that random people encounter daily.
I say “intellectual audience” due to compelling questions that he asks his readers in addition to his captivating, yet scientific conclusions. Common questions that arose were “What were these people’s religious affiliations?”, “If different religious affiliations, how are their experiences shaped by that?”, and “How do you know that these stories are fictitious or factious?” But, how do you relate science to faith? Moody utilizes his knowledge of supernatural, natural, and psychological facts to answer these religious based questions. Moody describes supernatural explanations as either God-directed or Satan-directed to see what the actions of the person involved would be after their experiences. When illustrating a natural (scientific) explanation, he claimed that the experiences occurring were caused by drugs (either therapeutic or prescribed) administered to the person at the time of the crisis. When detailing psychological explanations, he states that these will vary widely according to the school of thought to which the explainer belongs (conscious lying or unconscious embellishment). These three “explanations” help to answer the difficult questions.
Although it seems that Moody was scientifically objective and logical in his research, he was unaware of the scientific techniques that we utilize today. Interviewing a large amount of people, Moody was, slowly, but effectively able to gain the knowledge about different types of near-death experiences of the human race. Though not the most up-to-date novel, Moody wrote an intelligent piece of work discussing experiences relating to survival of bodily death. With riveting stylistic choices, and persuasive perspective view points -- Moody engaged his audience by telling them the story of people whose lives have been impacted by near-death occurrences. The question he ends on is the question we all ask; Is there Life After Life?
