In his work, Raymond Moody, a philosopher, psychologist and psychiatrist, was the first to describe and explore the so-called near-death experience, or near-death experiences. He analyzed more than a hundred reports from patients who had experienced clinical death and identified common motifs that recurred in their stories, such as a loud hum, a bright light, a tunnel, leaving the physical body, meeting deceased loved ones waiting “on the other side,” and some beautiful luminous beings, a retrospective review of a lifetime and an unwillingness to return back to our world... First published in 1975, this book immediately became a worldwide bestseller and forever changed society's attitude not only to death and dying, but also to life. This edition includes a classic foreword by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the creator of the concept of hospice care for the dying, and a new foreword by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, as well as a commemorative afterword by the author, written 40 years after the book was first published.