Customer Reviews

After Death: How People Around the World Map the Journey after We Die

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Sukie Miller has produced an excellent survey of beliefs and experiences relating to the afterlife. She distills from this collection four stages in the process of transitioning to spirit life. These stages go well beyond the merging with the Being of Light that is well known from the Near Death Experience.

Stage I is a Bardo state of waiting, as one adjusts to the transition from physical to spirit existence. Stage II is one of judgment and life review, an immersion in the deeper truth of the meanings of one's total life experiences. Stage III is a less homogeneous collection of beliefs and reports (Miller does not distinguish between the two in this discussion), that may include heavenly realms, encounters with angels, and varieties of other visions. Stage IV is the return to physical existence, in another incarnation.

Far beyond the contributions of this book in cosmologies are the richly detailed anecdotes of Miller's explorations and work with people who have had glimpses into the infinite in the last stages of their lives. She also shares the stories of others who, like her, work in these areas between life in the flesh and life in spirit worlds. Here are a few of these stories.

This book is highly recommended to anyone working in end of life midwifery.

I don't know about the rest of the religions presented in this book, but Sukie Miller's claim that Jews do not believe in an afterlife is just plain WRONG! True, SOME Jews do not believe in an afterlife, but others most certainly do. Unfortunately, her academic credentials (quite bona fide) have made this book something of a classic in the field, with the result that it continues to mislead the general public about Jewish beliefs.

When I met Sukie at a conference in Las Vegas a few years back, I asked her if she had interviewed any Hasidic rabbis or other Orthodox Jews for her study. No, she replied, she had not. Who, then, did she actually survey? Mostly secular colleagues at various academic institutions. Therefore, in my opinion, her presentation of Jewish beliefs is not valid, because it does not in any way represent a true cross-section of Jews. It merely represents a limited, specialized sample of secular Jewish academians on college campuses. Pretty sloppy research if you ask me, especially since she went out of her way to contact believing members of the other religions. The fact that Sukie is herself Jewish makes it even worse. She should have known better.