Objective and subjective anomalous knowing

In his 2012 book Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the After Life, Raymond Moody reminds us that those sharing in the death experience, as caregivers or loving relatives, are not experiencing the body and physical brain damage that may interfere with the normal brain functioning of a dying patient. While we may presume both caregivers and relatives are emotionally involved while experiencing in diverse ways the dying of a patient, there is no reason to conclude their perceptions or memories were physically impaired. Moody, therefore, asserts: “Some parts of these experiences are objective (for instance, people’s claim that the room changed shape or that they saw a bright light that drew them toward it), while others are subjective (as in witnessing a dying person’s life review that reveals previously unknown secrets).

Raymond A. Moody with Paul Perry, Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife (HarperCollins, 2012), 236.

Often the evidence from a shared near-death experience is both objective and subjective. The mother of a newborn boy named Jason, who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) a week after his mother had a surprise visit from her deceased father . . .

I was sitting in my living room reading a paperback book. The baby was asleep in his crib, and I was resting because I had been up half the night with his fussiness. As I was sitting there in the quiet, I had the feeling that I was not alone. I wasn’t afraid, I just wasn’t alone.

I looked up and there was my father. He had been dead for a year, but there he stood. For some reason I wasn’t surprised at all. He was just there for a second or two, but I heard him tell me, “Jason is coming with me.” I knew exactly what he meant. He meant that my baby was going to die.

Melvin Morse with Paul Perry, Parting Visions: Uses and Meanings of Pre-Death, Psychic, and Spiritual Experiences (Villard Books 1994), 66.