Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Moody doges and weaves, April 7, 2005
A very odd book.
I do not take exception with Moody for "backtracking" on, or no longer appearing as a true believer in, NDE's reality. That would be his right if he chose to do so, but it isn't clear to me that he is in fact backtracking. In fact, that's the entire problem with this book - not that Moody is suddenly undermining the valdity of the NDE by calling it entertainment, but more that it simply isn't at all clear what he's doing here - if anything.
Moody is not being explicit enough about what is the exact target and logical scope of his claim that "It's all entertainment".
It is one thing to say: "I don't know if NDE is real or not, but the human discussions of NDE are a form of entertainment." But at times he gets slippery and seems to imply that not only are the human discussions of the NDE a form of cultural (human created and exploited) entertainment, but that in addition, the NDE experience itself is somehow being offered to us by some transcendent power or will in the universe in order to entertain us.
That last is a very different and rather interesting and radical claim, if he's really making it. The book is so badly written that it appears he never draws a clear distinction between the NDE (and other paranormal stuff) as a cultural topic within the normal human material and semantic space vs. the NDE as a (possible) "real" ultimate experience with its own transcendent validity (which again may also be 'entertainment' in a cosmic sense, but that concept is radically different from the claim that NDE accounts and speculations function as an entertaining topic in ordinary live human discourse.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but it is a real logical confusion. Suppose I bought a book on earthquakes. For me at least, the aspect of greatest interest would be the reality of earthquakes, their frequency and severity, research on early warnings, building reinforcement methods and so on - things deriving from an understanding that earthquakes are real.
But if the books author went on and on about the entertainment value of earthquake movies and stories and the shock value of dramatic photos and what not, saying that these materials function culturally to enteratain us, and then only hinting slyly that earthquakes might or might not be real (and if real, they might or might not be experienced as a kind of entertainment) - I guess I'd agree but who cares?
I want to know: Do earthquakes really happen? And if they do, let's just talk about them straighforwardly rather than get into this side discussion of the possible entertainment value of earthquake related derivative works. It isn't exactly false, it just doesn't matter much. Anyway Moody just doesn't make clear whether he's making the radical claim that the universe/God itself is providing a true death survival mechanism for us humans (in order to entertain us), or if it is merely the prosaic claim that we humans are entertaining (or scaring) ourselves with such stories.
At a high level though, Moody has a good concept with an ancient pedigree - the ancient Hindu's clearly labeled all of material creation as "lila" - the great play of the gods.
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Are we having fun yet?, December 15, 1999
By A Customer
I admit to being extremely surprised by the basic premise ofRaymond Moody's new book, which is that near-death experiences and"paranormal" phenomena in general do not prove the existence of life after death, spirits, etc. His logic is sound; I just didn't expect him, at this late stage in the game, to pull back from what 100% of his readers have always believed was his viewpoint. Moody uses a satiric, bubbly tone, similar to the way philosopher Mary Daly writes: word play, puns, alliteration and rhymes; and his aim, like Daly's, is to skewer mainstream thought and convention like meat on a spit and then roast it over the coals of his acrid wit and insight. Moody also knows a lot about mythology, history, sociology and of course psychology, and ties these fields into the discussion in a very interesting inter-discliplinary fashion. His premise is that as a species we are permanently fascinated with the paranormal because it entertains us, because it's fun, and that this is reason enough to continue studying it, despite the fact that we can't prove its claims one way or the other. I give Moody credit for having the courage to express ideas which many of his fans will find offensive and shocking. My complaint is that the writing style is dense, full of asides and overblown with academic syntax. I had trouble following him at times (and I'm no dummy). And despite his claims to the contrary, his discussion of such notables as Dannion Brinkley and Betty Eadie does come off sounding as though he thinks they're fakes, which is going to be hard for many serious students of the paranormal to swallow. I appreciated Moody's assessment of the three main players in the paranormal game, which never resolves itself and never goes forward: the paranormalists themselves, striving for credibility; the professional skeptics whose religion is not objective investigation but "Scientism"; and what he calls the funda-Christians, who see Satan in every fun and pleasant thing the world has to offer, paranormal experiences included. If you're expecting another of Moody's treatises on NDE phenomena, skip this one. But if you're willing to put aside your assumptions and beliefs and consider a totally new way of thinking about the paranormal, this book is worth the effort.
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37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
hmmmmmmmm.........., May 26, 2004
By A Customer
I am an NDE-er. I have NOT read this book, I stopped reading books on the subject several years ago when I also decided the IANDS - international association of near death studies - was of no use to ME. Having died I am here to tell you YES we CAN die and come back to "life" aaaaaaaaaaaand once that's REALLY happened you KNOW there is no such thing as what people think of as DEATH. And that's all, it's simply not an issue anymore. I, like most actual NDE-ers, had difficulty re-entering a world full of people living in fear of each other, the future, the past, life, death, God, evil, the stars and just about anything else you can think of. Once I realized that LACK OF "NORMAL" FEAR was the problem I was fine. SO read this and anything else you can get your hands on so you can calm down and LIVE, that's all there is - LIFE! And life is GOOD!
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