Experiencing the Next World Now [Paperback]

Michael Grosso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2004

From the scientific underground of psychic research comes a stunning report on the evidence for life after death. But all the proof in the world is nothing when compared to actual experience with the place beyond. This book takes the reader to the next level -- and offers a more personal kind of journey. If there is a "next world," it must be nearby, and the path leads through the gateways of our own minds. Philosopher Michael Grosso shows us how to open these passages -- or at least peek through a keyhole -- and glimpse what may lie beyond. This is the guidebook for an adventure that nobody can refuse.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Grosso, a parapsychology commentator trained as a philosopher, exhorts readers to "stick our own heads through the crack in the cosmic egg" by seeking first- or secondhand experiences of disembodied consciousness or life beyond death. The book's argument begins at a measured pace, with an emphasis on scientifically observed cases; but after the first few chapters Grosso's standards of evidence, or conceptual consistency, become quite relaxed. Interpreted as signposts to the afterlife, these experiences and stories appear to point in divergent directions: ghostly survival, reincarnation, union with the Light, out-of-body experiences, altered states, uncanny dreams, UFO encounters, past-life memories and spontaneous or induced mystical experiences. These phenomena are so diverse that collectively they seem to have, if no natural explanation, no coherent supernatural explanation either. Fans of the paranormal may appreciate Grosso's wide-ranging survey, which includes not only familiar cases but some rescued from historical obscurity. But readers of a critical-let alone skeptical-bent will be nonplussed by Grosso's tendency to place all these reports on the same footing: they are treated equally whether attested by witnesses or little more than rumor, whether supported by documented evidence or passed on as fairy tales. Readers looking for a serious how-to of otherworldly experience will probably be disappointed by the book's final section, "In Practice," which describes initiation rites and ascetic practices at the extremes of human experience but gives only a few specific suggestions for appropriating these techniques in daily life.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Larry Dossey, M.D. author of Healing Beyond the Body, Healing Words, and Reinventing Medicine A daring new vision of consciousness is currently taking shape, in which the mind transcends the physical brain and body. This new picture of the mind holds the promise of survival of bodily death -- immortality... Dr. Michael Grosso is one of the leading architects of this new paradigm, as this book shows.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books; Original edition (January 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743471059
• ISBN-13: 978-0743471053
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,009,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Look, January 22, 2004

By 

Harold Wantiez (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Experiencing the Next World Now (Paperback)

Dr. Michael Grosso's "Experiencing the Next World Now" contains a wealth of material which, when taken together, suggests that the conscious minds of sentient beings may survive the death of their physical bodies. Its eleven chapters cover such topics as ghosts and spirits, mediums, evolution, mental bridges to the next world and techniques for preparing one to experience in this life what the next world may hold in store for us. It discusses in detail the difficult problems of authenticity when considering evidence which may be suddenly thrust upon an unsuspecting observer. It also presents objections to the survival hypothesis as might be raised by an informed yet sincere skeptic. I found the book to be both readable and thought provoking and believe that Dr. Grosso has fully achieved his stated objective of offering the reader a glimpse of an enlarged philosophy of human faculity or potential. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in seeing what could be waiting for us on the other side of the veil.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Imagination Survives Death, April 21, 2007

By 

Henry Reed "Creator Spirit" (Mouth of Wilson, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Experiencing the Next World Now (Paperback)

Imagine The Other Side of Death's Door
Will we survive? Will global warming wipe us out? Will the U.S. government go bankrupt? Will New Orleans recover? Will an asteroid, a volcano, an earthquake or Tsunami destroy life as we know it? How much life support can we offer to a person in a vegetative state? Is there life after death? Tremulous times we live it, for sure, and in so many ways to we face the question of survival. No wonder we seek comfort in miraculous reports of transformative miraculous near-death experiences and heart warming stories of mediums reconciling the bereaved with the spirits of their relations recently passed over. We need to believe that life goes on. Wouldn't it be even better to know, from our own experience, that life continues beyond the death of the body?
It is such a quest that drove Michael Grosso, Ph.D., to explore how such experientially based knowledge might be obtained. In his book Experiencing the Next World Now (Paraview Pocket Books), he shares with us his discoveries, and they are worth examining. It would seem that we do have the ability to experience the after-life now, even though it may require faith in one's intuitive abilities to trust the validity of the experience.
Grosso's exploration of the possibility of survival begins by reviewing the various human experiences that are suggestive of life after death: out of body experiences, ghosts, deathbed visions, mediumship, spirit photography, and memories of past lives, to name a few. Although, as he judiciously points out, these experiences fall short, to a logical mind, of actual proof of an existence after death, we should not underestimate their value in exciting our imagination and enhancing our intuitive sense of an afterlife.
He concludes, along with Edgar Cayce, the Tibetans, mystics and poets, among others, that it is our creative consciousness, our imagination, that survives the death of the body. To quote the mystic artist-poet William Blake, "This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity, it is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetative body." In other words, death is a change in consciousness.
Equipped with this understanding, Grosso then examines the various techniques, practices and rituals developed over time to alter consciousness so that the subliminal consciousness ordinarily hidden behind the veil becomes clearer in awareness. After examining shamanic ecstasy, lucid dreaming, and yogic practices, His explorations finally focus on cultivating the imagination to discover the inner experience of light. He concludes that becoming aware of the afterlife domain is ultimately a function of attention. Where attention points, there lies our experience. And where attention points, he notes, in agreement with Edgar Cayce and William James, is a function of our will.
Grosso's final chapter is not devoted to what you might expect. His focus on the use of the will takes him into the territory of daily life. Are we so much "in this world," he asks, that we have become too much "of this world"? He argues persuasively that our contemporary excesses of overeating and overwork block out the space needed to allow our subliminal imagination to bubble up with messages from that other world. He describes the experiences of those who practice fasting, of those who spend time alone, in silence, doing nothing, showing that glimpse beyond the veil are easy to come by to those whose brains are not overstimulated by TV, consumption, work, and socializing. What drives these earthbound behaviors? How can these compulsions be arrested, tamed, or redirected? He doesn't say, but I found an important clue in an earlier portion of his book, having to do with the impact of our judgments.
The spiritual traditions that advocate preparing oneself to become a conscious spirit that can migrate seamlessly into the afterlife emphasize the development of the imagination. The practices involve not simply learning to experience oneself more as an immaterial than a material being. They also require working to get beyond judgments, to reconcile opposites, to get beyond the sense of separation that judgment creates and that is supported by the materialistically bound physical senses. These judgments drive our eating and working beyond necessity. "Love and light," terms that sometimes seem clichéd in the New Age communities, eventually come to be experienced as the ultimate reality. Grosso quotes Al-Ghazzali the Sufi philosopher, "I owed my deliverance not to concatenations of proofs and arguments, but to the Light that God caused to penetrate my heart." So it would seem that the easiest bridge to the other side is to make time in our day, in our attention, in our awareness, not to the life outside us, but to that within. [...]

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars , April 1, 2007

By 

Michael S. Grossman (Warwick, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Experiencing the Next World Now (Paperback)

I am a skeptic when it comes to anything having to do with the paranormal. I have read several books on the subject but Experiencing The Next World Now is the first one that has made me pause and reconsider my opinions. Michael Grosso has done a masterful job of analyzing and describing several paranormal incidents in which his conclusion that some sort of energy or life force from an unseen dimension was experienced in this one, by extremely credible witnesses, is plausible. I highly recommend this book to anyone curious about the paranormal; even hardcore skeptics like me.