189 The Final Words Project with Dr. Raymond Moody & Lisa Smartt
Dr. Raymond Moody is a bestselling author of twelve books, including Life after Life and Reunions, which have sold over 13 million copies worldwide. He has also authored numerous academic and professional articles on near-death experiences and the relationship of language to consciousness. Dr. Moody continues to draw enormous public interest with his ground-breaking works on the near-death experience and other transpersonal aspects of grief and the dying process.
Award-Winning Author
Raymond Moody received the World Humanitarian Award in Denmark in 1988. He was also honored with a bronze medal in the Human Relations category at the New York Film Festival for the movie version of Life After Life.
World-Renowned Scholar and Researcher
M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia
Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Virginia
M.A. in philosophy from the University of Virginia
B.A. with Honors in philosophy from the University of Virginia
Dr. Moody is the leading authority on the ‘near-death experience’—a phrase he coined in the late seventies. Dr. Moody’s research into the phenomenon of near-death experience had its start in the 1960’s. The New York Timescalls him “the father of the near-death experience.”
Dynamic Lecturer
Dr. Moody has enlightened and entertained audiences all over the world for over four decades. He offers a variety of lecture/workshop presentations on the topics of: life after life experience , near-death experiences, death with dignity, life after loss, surviving grief & finding hope, visionary encounters with departed loved ones, the healing power of humor, the loss of children, language and consciousness, and catastrophic tragedy causing collective grief.
Expert Trainer and Instructor
Dr. Moody trains hospice workers, clergy, psychologists, nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals on matters of grief recovery and dying.
Featured Expert in the Media
Dr. Moody has appeared three times on Oprah, as well as on hundreds of other local and nationally syndicated programs such as MSNBC: Grief Recovery,NBC Today, ABC’s Turning Point, Donahue, Sally Jessy Raphael Show,Geraldo, and The Joan Rivers Show.
Lisa Smartt, MA, is a linguist, educator, and poet. She is the author of Words at the Threshold: What We Say When We’re Nearing Death(New World Library 2017). The book is based on data collected through The Final Words Project, wwwfinalwordsproject.org, an ongoing study devoted to gathering and interpreting the mysterious language at end of life. She has worked closely with Raymond Moody, guided by his research into language, particularly unintelligible speech. They have co-facilitated presentations about language and consciousness at universities, hospices and conferences.
“It’s very beautiful over there.”— final words of inventor Thomas Edison
A person’s last words can often be enigmatic, confusing or powerfully meaningful; they can also offer tantalizing clues about the ultimate fate of the human soul. Until now, no author has systematically studied end-of-life communication by collecting and analyzing the final utterances of the terminally ill. When her father faced his final weeks, linguist Lisa Smartt began transcribing his conversations and noticed that both his language and personality underwent inexplicable changes. Smartt’s father, a skeptical man with a secular worldview, developed a deeply spiritual outlook in his final days — a change reflected in his last words. Baffled and intrigued, Smartt began to investigate the near-death utterances of others, collecting over a hundred case studies with interviews and transcripts. In Words at the Threshold, Smartt decodes the symbolism of those last words, showing how the language of the dying points the way to a transcendent world beyond our own