What lies beyond? Is communication with the dead possible? This guide addresses questions which have been asked since the dawn of humankind, and reports on such recent trends as the increase in near-death experiences due to the use of defibrillators. Beliefs about life after death that have developed in virtually every culture, religion, philosophy and psychic dimension are also explored. The guide contains nearly 250 entries arranged in alphabetical order, and includes biographies of prominent figures in the field of psychic research, such as Edgar Cayce and Ruth Montgomery, with data on groups like the International Association for Near-Death Studies. It also contains definitions of terms such as channeling, and "deja-vu", and theories such as evolution of the soul, together with an exploration of various cultural and belief systems, including Christianity, Islam and Voodoo.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
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A foreward by Raymond A. Moody, author of Life after Life and other works about near-death experiences, makes plain this work's perspective. It is written from the believer's point of view. This is not to say that the skeptic or person with a particular religious view will not find useful information here, provided this is kept in mind.
The approximately 250 articles are in dictionary format. They range from a few lines to several pages, and each has a list of sources. Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion is used heavily in articles on religious topics. There is an appendix listing related organizations and an index. Within articles, cross-references refer to terms that have their own separate articles.
Some of the articles suffer from their generalizations, such as that on Africa, where the beliefs of all of Sub-Saharan Africa are summed up in nine pages; this cannot do justice to the rich variety of African belief systems. The article on Buddhism suffers from the same problem, although the author does concentrate on the Tibetan tradition, probably the most complex Buddhist death tradition. Topics range from the very broad to the obscure, including the Raelian Movement (a flying-saucer religion). There are biographies of many people in the psychic and near-death-experience fields, including Edgar Cayce, Elisabeth Ku{}bler-Ross, and William Crookes.
Some articles, such as those on Virgil and Dante, seem to be included because an afterlife was mentioned in their works, although their political nature is not mentioned. The reproductions of black-and-white line drawings and photographs illustrating the book are not always good, with some quite fuzzy. There is some confusion of -ise and -ize endings that suggests that more copyediting needed to be done. The question of fraud is not addressed, although the author mentions problems the Spiritualist movement had with frauds in the 1920s. An article on how readers might protect themselves from frauds might have been useful.
This is not a necessary purchase, but if there has been some demand for circulating works on the afterlife, this book can fill reference needs in public libraries.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best written, best organised, and most comprehensive guide!,
By OAKSHAMAN "oakshaman" (Algoma, WI United States) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Encyclopedia of Afterlife Beliefs and Phenomena (Paperback)
_First of all the forward is written by Dr.Raymond Moody, and while a lot of "researchers" throw his name around carelessly, the good doctor is careful of the work that he actually endorses. This well organised and truly encyclopedic guide is clearly worthy of his endorsement. In over a decade of personal research, this is the best single reference work on death and the afterlife that I've found. All the entries are well written, professional, and scholarly. Indeed, just by browsing through this thick volume you begin to see connections between subjects that may never have occured to you before (such as between shamanism and the mystery religions.) The highest praise that I can give this book is that it contained a sizable amount of information that even I wasn't familiar with- definately worth investing in for your library._After all, what subject is ultimately of greater importance?
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