Moody gathers hundreds of testimonies from people who experienced clinical death and returned with consistent descriptions: separation from the body, panoramic life review, presence of a luminous consciousness, and a dissolution of fear.

The book shows that when the physical body collapses, awareness does not disappear. Instead, a deeper layer of being becomes visible — one that is free from personal identity, time, and narrative.

These accounts echo the initiatic formula “die before you die,” offering empirical glimpses of what traditions describe as the death of the ego and the revelation of the immortal field.

Moody explores what he calls “shared-death experiences” — cases where people who are not dying temporarily enter the perceptual field of someone who is.

These witnesses report elements identical to near-death experiences:
– expansion of awareness
– perception of a luminous presence
– panoramic life review of the dying person
– dissolution of ordinary time
– sensations of traveling with the departing consciousness

The book demonstrates that the boundary between one person’s awareness and another’s dissolves at the moment of transition.

This suggests that consciousness is not confined to the brain and that the “death moment” opens a field of shared perception — a portal traditionally associated with mystical initiation.