What Exactly is an NDE? " I don''t mind saying that after talking with over a thousand people who have had these experiences, and having experienced many times some of the really baffling and unusual features of these experiences, it has given me great confidence that there is a life after death. As a matter of fact, I must confess to you in all honesty, I have absolutely no doubt, on the basis of what my patients have told me, that they did get a glimpse of the beyond. " --Raymond Moody, author of Life After Life: Understanding Near Death Experiences , in an interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, for the Intuition Network''s Thinking Aloud The phrase "Near-Death Experience," or NDE, was coined by Raymond Moody in his 1975 best-selling book, Life After Life . Born in 1944, Moody earned doctoral degrees in both Philosophy and Psychiatry, as well as an MD, but is best known for popularizing his convictions, based on years of research and thousands of interviews with patients, that physical life is not the end. In his book, and countless interviews since, he recounted story after story of those who died, often in a hospital under carefully scrutinized conditions, and then, after being revived, returned with stories about unique, but somehow very similar, experiences. The stages of those experiences are now well-known, consisting of detachment from the physical body, a sense of peace, unconditional acceptance and love, a tunnel leading upward or outward, a bright light, a welcoming, comforting, radiant being, a vision of loved ones or entities of some kind, a life review, and a final, usually reluctant, decision to return. In some cases, patients were able to describe with extreme accuracy the conditions and activities in the operating room, usually from the vantage point of up near the ceiling. Many were even able to pinpoint specific features outside the room - features that were later verified.

In one now-famous account, a patient spotted an old sneaker outside on the hospital roof. It was impossible to see from inside, and had probably been deposited there years before by a construction worker. But when a curious researcher crawled out on the roof to confirm the story, there was the sneaker. Time after time, Moody heard stories about an experience that can only be described as a feeling of exiting the physical body, which led to a totally different kind of sense perception and a totally different kind of communication. This experience abruptly ceased when the patient returned to life. But the lack of ability to accurately portray what was an entirely new existence didn''t mean the people came back to life unchanged. Whatever their religious affiliation, or complete lack of one, virtually everyone testified that they were now believers. They were not converted to a particular religious tradition, mind you, but rather to a certainty that life does not end in death.

They no longer feared the end of life on earth. Indeed, most looked forward to it. They had undergone a profound moral, ethical, and spiritual transformation. They felt their life now had purpose and meaning, all wrapped up in the idea of love. Love is the single most-used word that they used to describe what they felt life was now all about for them. All these stories ultimately convinced Moody that death is not an end, but rather a transformation of consciousness. The material body is left behind as human consciousness morphs into a totally different kind of body, often called a "spiritual" body, which, since it is outside our normal perception realm, cannot be described by language that was invented to talk about experiences in our material reality. After 1975, when Moody''s book became a best-seller, thousands upon thousands of people felt free, now without fear of public ridicule, to at last describe what they had experienced, sometimes years or even decades before.

Most hospitals now routinely interview patients who have died and been revived. Countless YouTube videos fill the Internet. Medical professionals who don''t believe there is life outside of their materialistic pedagogy often do their best to explain such stories as an illusion brought on by lack of oxygen to the brain, or memories of pre-birth trauma and a passage through the birth canal. Some insist that the stories are induced by auto-suggestion and a desire to believe we somehow survive death. But their voices are increasingly drowned out by example after example of facts that cannot be denied.