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| The Last Laugh: A New Philosophy of Near-Death Experiences, Apparitions, and the Paranormal | 
 enlarge | Author: Raymond A. Moody
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing Company
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95 (30.49 RON)
Buy New: $10.36 (24.39 RON)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 635699
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 1571741062
Dewey Decimal Number: 133.9
EAN: 9781571741066
ASIN: 1571741062
Publication Date: May 1999
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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| Customer Reviews:
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 This book changed my perspective on life May 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is brilliant. The people who give this book negative reviews are probably members of one of the three categories the author exposes for clowns (parapsychologists, skeptics, and funda-Christians). I should know, I was one of them before I read this. Those people need to take Dr. Moody's prescription and lighten up.
Anyone who is interested in the history, philosophy, and psychology behind the human desire for the paranormal needs to read this book. For those of you with an open mind, it will make you laugh, but most of all, it will make you think critically about the way in which we tackle the subject of the paranormal in society today.
Turn off Ghost Hunters, put down the Bible, and stop listening to Richard Dawkins on audio book and buy The Last Laugh. It just might change your life!
Some Don't Get It June 17, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is to be read with your online dictionary up and running. It reminds me of when I learned to read 50 years ago -- an enlighted teacher told me, "If you want to understand what the writer is saying, then never skip a word that you do not understand (is beyond your vocabulary)." In this book (unlike his others) RA Moody uses vocabulary like a scalpel under a magnifier, and editors were not allowed to "dumb it down" to Jr. high reading level. I agree with him on the three classifications of personality types that marshall into their camps on NDE. I agree with his observations and analyses, as well as his recommended approach to break up the unending "logjam," so we can each move ahead in exploring NDE and other phsychic phenomena from a more relaxed (less uptight, dogmatic, open-minded, free from emnity, etc.) approach. This is a great book for those who are not offended by having their "correct" interpretation of paranormal challenged. Go back and read the first sentence again. The English language is wonderful and so occidental.
 Long on Integrity, short on style March 16, 2006
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
One cannot escape a sense of wonder when reading the various descriptions of NDEs by those who have had them. These experiences are invariably fascinating, often life changing for those who have them, and reading about them nudges us toward cautious optimism, for exactly what, we do not know. An undirected, unspecific and limited optimism is the most we can take from these experiences without overreaching.
Moody tells us that the trouble comes when we embrace these NDEs as proof of life after death, to legitimize our work or opinion about them or when we use their subjective quality and lack of scientific access to dismiss them altogether. And of course, science (scientific method) has been unable to explain either what they are or to explain them away.
It is easy to agree with Dr. Moody's sense that those fundamentalists who dismiss these experiences as the work of the Devil are the most deplorable of the lot of interested parties. Still, all of these groups holding claims as to what NDEs really are, or are not, share more with one another than they would have you believe. The all make emotional investments in their positions regarding NDEs than is justified by what is known about them. Even with regard to science, as long as there is the unknown, which there undoubtedly always will be, it, too, is ultimately an "ism" or "belief".
Just as mystical union, enlightenment, the spontaneous mystical experience and Deity itself, are beyond the domain of proof or dismissal, so should we deem the mysterious, even if tantalizing, NDE. Moody encourages us to take comfort from NDEs, laugh at them or be skeptical, but not to take ourselves any more seriously than is merited by what we really know about them. Clearly, the interested parties, whether parapsychologists, fundamentalists or skeptics, feel obliged by the strength of their emotional investments regarding NDEs to say more about them than is justified by any real understanding.
One can feel the disappointment, even anger, in the reviews of those whose prejudices have been challenged by Moody's plea to consider NDEs in a more honest, realistic and humorous context. It is one thing to be inclined toward one or the other of the major positions regarding NDEs but is another to claim definitive knowledge of what they are and what they are not.
I would have given 5 stars for this book if Moody's awkward, certainly odd, writing style and attempts at humor (faults mentioned by other reviewers) weren't so distracting, not to mention tedious. It's one thing to talk about humor, another to be humorous. Nonetheless, this work earned a solid four stars for its integrity, a quality that is too often missing in this genre.
 This book was not for me! September 19, 2005
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book was not at all what I had expected or hoped. I thought it was a scientific look at paranormal phenomena, but this was not that at all. It's not that the book is badly written, or that it's uninteresting and without merit, but it's nearly 200 pages of Mr. Moody's thoughts and research on the history and definitions of the paranormal and the groups of people who are interested in the paranormal and why they are interested. I wasn't interested in reading a thesis of the Paranormal and the Men and Women who love it. If you are the kind of person who loves to tear things apart and study them piece by piece you will enjoy this book very much.
I bought a book about NDE's, apparitions, and the paranormal and I got a thesis on the history of the paranormal and why people are interested. Regardless of how well thought out Mr. Moody's ideas are, and regardless of how accurate these ideas may be, this book is not at all what I expected. It's my own fault, the back cover clearly states what this book is about. But I saw the words "paranormal," and "NDE's" and figure the book was about those things. The back cover is somewhat misleading, however, about this new NDE phenomena that he calls an "empathic near death experience." Moody hardly does more than mention it really. I was terribly disappointed. Moody is not the first author to bring this phenomena up, either. Oriah Mountain Dreamer talks about her experience with this in her book "The Invitation." Hers is a first person account of an empathic near death experience, although she doesn't give it a name. I learned as much or more about it from her in her book than from what Moody talks about in his.
The Last Laugh is prefaced by Neale Donald Walsch, which is why I bought this book in the first place. How wrong I was! I won't be trusting Walsch's judgment on books anymore.
Another problem I had with this book was the way the author seems to delight in bashing Christian Fundamentalists. While I understand the sentiment, I thought it was in rather bad taste. Neale Donald Walsch is a huge proponent of religious tolerance, I'm surprised he added his seal of approval to this book. Perhaps he felt that as Christian Fundamentalists are religiously intolerant by definition that the CF bashing in this book was fair play. To be fair, Moody does take the time to warn Christian Fundamentalists not to read past a very specific point because they aren't going to like what follows. And he's right, they won't.
In summation, don't buy this book if you are hoping for a scientific look at NDE's, apparitions, and the paranormal. Do buy this book if you would like to read a thesis on who is interested in the paranormal and why.
 Moody doges and weaves April 8, 2005
38 out of 38 found this review helpful
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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