Customer Reviews

Heaven: An Illustrated History of the Higher Realms

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This is a really remarkable book that explores the concept of heaven through the ages in all of humankinds' major cultures. Even if this little book was totally without illustration it would be a compelling read, but combined with the many, many well chosen full color illustrations it is a true illustrated, spiritual, work of art.

The topic is covered in six well-organized sections: 1) What is Heaven Like? 2) The Inhabitants of Heaven, 3) Getting into Heaven, 4) Ancient Heavens, 5) Modern Heavens, and 6) Beyond Heaven. The entire range of human thought on these matters down through human history is examined with an open mind. Surprisingly, at their deepest level, there is much fundamental agreement between the major traditional views of heaven and an afterlife between cultures. Even the concept of the near death experience (NDE) is discussed in terms of what it may tell us of an afterlife. An example of the completeness of the study is the fact that the materialist/scientific dismissal of God and heaven is also examined.

The section on ancient heavens alone contains individual chapters on the Nordic and Celtic, Egyptian, Classical Greek, Asian, and Aboriginal afterlives. It is significant that all nearly primal peoples held that death was a spiritual initiation leading to rebirth in another world. We pass from this world of darkness into the other real world of light.

If books are food for the mind then this book is a box of candy - sweet but not nourishing. It is a small book, as tall as a paperback, but square. Forty seven of the ninety five pages have color reproductions of artwork, including 16 full-page and 6 double-page illustrations. The book attractive to look at, but light on text.

It is divided into twenty four chapters that range from 1 to 4 pages in length. With small pages, short chapters and lots of illustrations each topic is treated quickly and without depth. Yet it is fun to read. In 9 pages you can learn the differences between Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish concepts of Heaven. Another 12 pages takes the reader through 5 chapters that compare the ancient Heavenly concepts of Asian, Celtic, Egyptian, Greek, and Primal Peoples. The authors know their topic and chose highlights well. So if you are looking for fun and a brief introduction to the topic, this is a great book.

There is a one page listing of Further Reading, but only one book is specifically about Heaven. The rest are either classic texts of major religions or books about death and dying.

On the negative side, the illustrations, though beautifully colored, often suffer a loss of detail from their small size. The full-page art is better than the postage stamp sized reproductions on some other pages. Also, although the text is good at treating all cultures equally, the majority of the art is from the Christian tradition.