Raymond Moody is a Normal Guy
By Joseph ClarkHe may be researching the twilight zone between life and death, but the head of UNLV's Consciousness Studies program hasn't given in to the dark side
Here I am at the doorstep of the Houssels House on the UNLV campus, home of the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies, a center funded by multimillionaire space and paranormal enthusiast Bob Bigelow, and what I expect to be Weirdness Central. The office is occupied by Raymond Moody, world-renowned expert on near-death experiences and author of more than a dozen books on the subject. The building is a gingerbread Hansel and Gretel affair unlike any other on campus. Behind it is a small solar panel array surrounded by a high-security fence. A secret alien transmission site? A dead-relative apparition-maker?
Moody's assistant, April, is reading an Ann McCaffrey sci-fi feminist thriller while listening to Classic Lite radio. I'm feeling the vibes now--but where are the saffron-robed cultists, the replicas of the starship Enterprise? April is not even wearing Birkenstocks with socks. There is no preponderance of spider plants in the windows, no smell of patchouli in the air, not even an old three-dimensional chess set collecting dust.
I know something definitive will surface during my interview that will help explain Moody's interest in life after death and similar topics ("mirror gazing," past-life regression). There must be a skeleton or two in the closet of a man this deep into the paranormal. Moody, 56, was in college in the late 1960s--might he have experimented with mind-expanding substances (for scientific ends, of course)?
He appears and ushers me into his office looking altogether normal. He has a very pale complexion and spiky short hair gone white. His voice is soft, almost feminine, and he's dressed way down in a plaid shirt, chinos and brown ankle-high utility boots. There are no crystal balls on his desk or shelves, no pictures of UFOs or signed testimonials from near-death survivors. There is a bust of Lincoln and one small, very shy-looking gargoyle, but nothing else. Nonetheless, having come of age in the '70s and seen friends succumb to EST and the other Werner Earharts of the world, I'm on guard, looking for signs of a guru in his megalomaniac Svengali mode.
Moody's Southern drawl is smoky and smooth, like well-aged bourbon. It's a voice so sweet and unassuming that I wonder if he'll have me handling snakes by interview's end. But it is not long into our visit that I understand Moody is sweet and unassuming. And like the Zen masters and native shamans I've encountered over the years, he is self-effacing; his absence of ego seems genuine and startling. When he tells me that he needs a ride home after the interview because he no longer drives, I know I've found something rare: perhaps the only truly sane person in Las Vegas.
But I keep my eyes peeled for that weird thing I think he's holding back on.
Born in 1944, in Porterdale, Georgia, on the very day his father left for World War II, Moody went on to receive his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D in philosophy, all at the University of Virginia. He finished his doctorate in only two years, which seems impossible for any mere mortal, but Moody is a very driven and highly focused person. After teaching philosophy at East Carolina University, he went to medical school, doing his residency in forensic psychiatry at the University of Virginia.
As a staff forensic psychiatrist in a maximum-security Georgia state hospital, Moody worked on court cases determining defendants' sanity status and was sometimes called upon by local and national law enforcement agencies to help untangle the motivations of serial killers.
It was an older doctor's own story of having been confirmed dead on an operating table and then revived that piqued his interest in near-death experiences. "It was always the older doctors who told them," he says. Younger doctors are too enamored of their training to consider events outside of what is considered normal. It wasn't a subject talked about openly then, he says. "Most doctors were of the temperament to believe these stories were nothing more than hallucinations brought on by stress or anesthesia." Many times Moody was the first doctor to talk with them about their experiences. "Very often," he describes, "the person was certain they were the only one who had ever had the experience, and they are always relieved to find out the truth is otherwise."
The result of his investigations was the best-seller Life After Life, published in 1975. So far, it has sold nearly 10 million copies worldwide. He followed with Reflections on Life After Life, The Light Beyond and Coming Back. He has also written two volumes on "crystal gazing," or "mirror gazing" as he prefers to call it (more on that later), as well as Elvis After Life: Unusual Experiences Surrounding the Death of a Superstar. He has been on Oprah three times and on Today, Geraldo and Sally Jessy Raphael.
With his attention and fame, Moody helped bring life-after-death experiences into the mainstream. It is probably no accident that there is a nightly televised deluge of investigations and stories of the paranormal, from Unsolved Mysteries to In Search Of and almost any episode of The X-Files. Likewise, Hollywood's fascination with life-after-death plots must strike a nerve. Who would have predicted the plodding and shoddy Ghost would be a blockbuster? Or that they would remake Heaven Can Wait twice and each time it would be a hit? According to Moody, literature, starting with the Bible and Homer, is full of life-after-death stories. It was, in fact, his enduring love of Plato that led him to take these claims seriously. "In Plato there is a scene called 'The Myth of Urr,' a story of a soldier who comes back from the dead with details remarkably similar to those told by near-death witnesses. Also, the image of the shadow silhouettes on the cave wall that the character mistakes for the real thing--these, too, can be perceived as apparitions of the dead."
The recent box-office smash The Sixth Sense (no one saw that coming either) proposes ideas Moody has encountered in his own studies. Namely that people who have had near-death visions often claim to see "lost souls," people caught between life and death for one reason or another. Regardless of religious affiliation, most near-death survivors do not describe their experience as one of having seen angels, nor do they believe they have been to heaven or hell. It is a way station, an "in-between place," they remember. If anything, they feel as if their eventual demise will probably be as ecstatic and enlightening as the first.
If there is an underlying motive to the Hollywood plotlines, it might simply be to tap into the psychological gold mine and wish-fulfillment involved in wanting dead loved ones to reappear. Moody has another theory: "The science of grief recovery is relatively new," he says. "Twenty-five years ago, people knew very little about the stages of grief, and people who failed to get over it were often chastised and shunned. Now we understand that the death of a loved one is one of the most difficult transitions a person will have to face in their lifetime. When it involves the death of a child, the scarring and pain is almost unfathomable."
According to Moody's research, life-after-death experiences mainly follow predictable and consistent stages, whether it happens on an operating table or in a car wreck.
First, people describe feeling that they are moving out of and away from their bodies. Sometimes they move through a spinning vortex, or what is referred to as "the tunnel." Once free of their bodies, they are able to move in and out of rooms. Many actually hear the doctors pronouncing them dead.
In the second stage, a formless being of pure white light hovers over the victim and speaks in a telepathic way. They feel immense love coming from this entity. This is usually the presence in these stories that tells victims, You are not ready to die yet.
Third, there is often a "my life flashed before me" review of the person's life. After these incidents, very early childhood memories are often recalled in surprising detail.
The fourth facet of the experience is that of corroborating evidence: The victim knows exactly what a nurse or doctor said and is able to describe the often esoteric resuscitation procedures done to them. Sometimes they can recall the words of a relative in another room.
In the barn of his Alabama farm, Moody has constructed a Theater of the Mind. It consists of a soundproof room covered in black velvet, with a single chair and a stained-glass lamp hidden from view. A large mirror has been attached to the wall, and the viewer is positioned so he or she can gaze into it without seeing themselves. In his book Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones, Moody writes, "I have directly observed more than 300 individuals as they were mirror-gazing, and afterward interviewed them about the experience." The focus of this ritual is for people to "communicate" with dead relatives. Most participants average two or three hours in the room, and a high percentage claim to have seen or talked with either a dead relative or "something" in the mirror. Moody says that rather than use the room for mystical or irrational ends, he is trying to create situations to stimulate creativity and provide healing for grief recovery. References to mirror-gazing exist in classical Greek texts, the Bible and in many other books throughout history, he says. Diane Sawyer visited the black room to tape a segment for ABC's old newsmagazine show The Turning Point. She spent 20 minutes in the room but came away without a vision.
Befitting his twilight area of research, Moody isn't without detractors. Robert Todd Carroll, author of the online Skeptic's Dictionary, dismissively credits Moody with creating the "myth" of the typical near-death experience. "Characteristic of Moody's work is the glaring omission of cases that don't fit his hypothesis," Carroll writes. "If Moody is to be believed, no one near death has had a terrifying experience."
Las Vegan Bob Bigelow, however, isn't a skeptic. Seven years ago, the Budget Suites hotel magnate, philanthropist and funder of paranormal research (he bankrolls the National Institute for Discovery Science, which investigates unusual phenomena) visited Moody in Alabama. So it was no surprise that the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies, for which Bigelow provided $4 million, later chose Moody to replace the original chair, the controversial parapsychologist Charles Tart. Bigelow visited the farm several times for what Moody referred to as "intense but informal discussions." When pressed as to whether Bigelow had gone into the Theater of the Mind, Moody turns unusually vague. "I can't recall if he did or not. It was so many years ago now."
Earlier in the week I sat in on Moody's Philosophy and the Afterlife class. (His other classes this semester have titles such as Theories of the Paranormal and Alternate States of Consciousness.) Instead of standing behind a lectern, he positions a small chair in the middle of the huge stage and faces the 40-odd students waiting in the room, well over half of whom are in their 60s or older. Although the central theme of the course is life-after-death experiences, Moody is giving them a very thorough grounding in the philosophical underpinnings of how these ideas have been analyzed over the centuries.
Toward the end, he asks if there are any topics they would like to cover before the end of the semester. "Yes, Dr. Moody," a 60ish-looking woman says. "Serial killers."
"OK," he says as he writes it in his book. "Are there any others?" In quick succession, three older students suggest the insanity defense, collective unconscious and out-of-body experiences. Moody dutifully notes each, seeming pleased by the response.
When the Consciousness Studies chair was first proposed, there was some controversy about which academic department it would belong to. "The psychology department wanted nothing to do with it," says Maurice Finocchiaro, former chairman of the philosophy department. "Too many unscientific connotations. ESP and parapsychology just don't fit well with the standard approach of most mainstream psychology."
He met Moody two years ago and liked him. "He approaches these phenomena of puzzling things, applying logic and reasoning to very unusual subjects not normally investigated." None of Moody's courses can be used to fulfill a degree requirement in either psychology or philosophy. "All those courses would be considered as electives," Finocchiaro says. "Dr. Moody does approach the subject in a proper way, but these things do attract certain people who are not very scientific in their approach."
After driving him home through the near-psychotic, road-raging Las Vegas streets, I discover that his house is as middle-class and ordinary as its owner. No ritualistic pagan masks, no gothic symbols, although he does adhere to one rather odd postmodern ritual: He leaves CNN's Headline News on the television all day long. When I tell him what I'm thinking, he says, "My take on the question of normal or not normal goes like this: A 'normal' person is simply someone you don't know very well."
Moody grows sad as he describes portions of his personal life. "After my first divorce I had a brief rebound marriage that was all wrong," he says. He met his current wife, Cheryl, while taping an interview on her Florida television show. They have an adopted 2-year-old son, Carter. Of the years prior to his recent marriage, he says, "I am mellower now and less angry. Coming from the South you learn to lie to people, to tell them what you think they want to hear because that is considered good manners. I just held everything inside and it was killing me." Since I have discovered no outward or even inward signs of weirdness in Moody--his life seems pretty banal--this statement is the closest he's come to admitting or showing an aberration.
We're sitting on a flower-print sofa next to a room chock full of toys when the discussion turns to his mission in life. I bring up the Native American, even Jungian, idea of what a shaman is. At first, he sidesteps the implication. "In the past few years I've seen more and more people come up to me and say, 'I'm a shaman. Yeah, I went through a weekend workshop and we chanted and we hugged, and on Monday I'm a shaman.' Unfortunately, the word has so many negative connotations because of all the charlatans and ego people."
The classic definition of a shaman is a healer who, unlike adherents of Western and strictly rational medical approaches, takes a more holistic and open view of wellness--dealing with everything from disease to depression. A shaman is someone who acts as a facilitator and heals through herbal medicine, suggestion, symbolism and even allegorical stories. "The one thing a shaman can never have is ego," Moody adds. "I know it sounds egotistical to say it, but I mean it when I say I've given up on ego. I just got sick of myself. Ego equals pain. When you are in an ego situation, it is generally an experience of pain and suffering and really just not worth it in the long run."
Moody, of course, would never call himself a shaman, but we agree that his outlook on his work could be called shamanistic, and he certainly fits the definition of an alternative healer. "The main reason for my research," he says, "is healing, and greater understanding of things that traditional science and psychology have dropped the ball on."
He expects to stay on as the Consciousness Studies chair "as long as I am asked to." His cherished old millhouse in Alabama, with its mothballed Theater of the Mind, is rented out to a friend, although he aims to retire there someday.
For now, he loves Las Vegas, a city he calls "futuristic and cutting-edge," and Nevada, though not necessarily for its Area 51 and X-Files-type stories. "I've never seen anything like a UFO, although anyone who looks at the sky for any length of time is bound to see something unusual or extraordinary. I don't believe it is plausible that there is any conspiracy to cover up alien visitations. My experience as a forensic psychologist taught me that not many people can hold a plot together. But I may be wrong. The only thing I know for certain is that when we do make contact with other beings and civilizations, we will set our clocks to the year zero. Anno Domini will be replaced by some new postcontact way of measuring time. It will be very exciting and raise all sorts of questions for the human race. I hope it happens in my lifetime."
Could that be it? Could an unrequited yearning for a close encounter be the strangest, most abnormal thing about Raymond Moody?
As it turns out, no.
At our next lunch, he finally gives up the goods: He's a big fan of the World Wrestling Federation. He sometimes takes visiting friends and colleagues to matches at the Thomas & Mack.
"I'm fascinated at studying the crowd response and how they still have a great time even though they know it's fake," he says, gamely applying an analytical gloss to his enthusiasm for the "sport." After all, it's not exactly Platonic dialogue, is it? But it turns out that what he really loves is how the WWF is a "direct link" to the ancient Greek and Roman spectacles. Of course. "It's all so primal and weird," he says. "I really love it."
• Story originally published by •
Las Vegas Life Magazine - July 2000 •
