LIFE AFTER LIFE by Raymond A Moody, Jr., MD/PhD - book review and personal postscripts

This book was originally published in 1975 and has had several revisions including the one I read, issued in 2000. Over 13 million copies have been sold. Dr. Moody, an MD/psychologist, heard many reports of "near death" from his patients. He started collecting the stories and published them. Later he studied the death beliefs of other cultures, from ancient Greeks to Tibetan writings. After obtaining a PhD he developed a way to induce "out of body" experiences without the trauma of sickness or an accident. He has published 7 books.

**

While reading this book, I suddenly remembered an "out of body" experience that happened more than 70 years ago. I don't think I ever told anyone of this, not even my first wife, who was indirectly involved. We were living in the large farmhouse, not the smaller house where I was born, so I may have been 11 or 12 years old. I was sleeping with my older brother. (I usually slept on a cot in the hall but that night we had visitors, a family with 3 children. Their two boys slept on a pallet in the hall and their daughter, later to become my first wife and mother of my children, slept on my usual cot.)

All at once during the night a large tube or pipe, spiral-wrapped like BX cable, appeared at the window screen. It was large enough for my body to enter, and bright on the inside with a bright light at the far end. It slanted up at about a 45 degree angle in a northerly direction.

Just as I was entering the pipe my mother touched me and asked, "Why are you crying?" I had a bad case of heat rash on my chest and stomach and had scratched my body until it was bleeding. My crying woke her. She covered me with cornstarch and that stopped the itching. It was not exactly a near-death experience but is still very vivid in my memory.

**

To go from childhood to my cynical present state of mind, I will share another story, originally told by my uncle. He was visiting his brother, who had a blacksmith shop in Cost, Texas (east of San Antonio). Standing outside the shop he overheard two old men sitting on the "whittling bench." Across the street was a vacant lot where a revival preacher had put up a tent and held two-a-day services. The preacher had just finished his altar call and the song leader was singing, "When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be."

"What do you think of that?", one old man asked the other. The second man shifted his chew of tobacco to the other side of his mouth, spit out a stream of tobacco juice, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and answered "He's gonna wake up one morning and find out he's dead'er than hell."

OK, I WAS WRONG

On this blog I previously made several observations about the Kennedy Assassination including one saying he was not killed by a bullet fired from the 6th floor of the Book Depository building.

On November 16, 2008 the Discovery Channel showed the results of a test. A Lincoln convertible similar to the death car was used, and actors played the roles of the 6 occupants of the car. From a home movie they knew the exact spot on the street where the fatal shot hit the president. The Dallas police halted all traffic. A professional shooter sighted through a scope from 4 locations and determined that the Book Depository was the only location from which the bullet could have come. Then the team went to Australia, where a company constructed a plastic head that would shatter like a human skull. It was covered with plastic skin and filled with plastic similar to brain tissue. In the desert in California they placed the mannequin in a box the size of the inside of the car. A marksman was elevated the height and distance from the box of the 6th floor window. A fan was placed in front to simulate the speed of the car and a bullet similar to the death bullet was used. The impact caused the same destruction of the skull and the scattering of bone and brain matter was similar to what two men saw when they examined the car at the hospital.

The Discovery Channel program did not discuss several things. Were there three or four shots fired? From where came the bullet that hit Kennedy in the throat? From where was the bullet fired that hit Gov. Connally? Was the rifle planted on the 6th floor the gun that fired the three or four bullets? Why was so much evidence destroyed? About 30% of the public believed the assassination was a conspiracy.

On the next night PBS did a 90 minute discussion of the assassination. They added nothing new and said that Oswald acted alone.