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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Peake Experience, April 17, 2009
The essence of Peake's theory is that death is something that happens to other people. There are many threads in Peake's argument, which he tries to bring together at the end of his book. En route it's an interesting journey through the twilight zones of quantum physics, the science of the brain, and human experience, mostly documented by individuals and therefore "unproven." Peake seems keen to prove that all of human experience takes place within the brain, which is in his view the seat of consciousness. But, in contrast with other materialists, Peake uses scientific evidence to argue that there is no death, as far as the individual is concerned. At the point of death, he argues, the chemicals in our brains which affect our perception of time slow that perception down to a virtual standstill. At this point our brains run through what he calls a Bohmian Imax (named for the physicist David Bohm) , creating a "virtual reality" replay of our entire lives. Everyone else watching us sees us die, but from our point of view we never do. I am of course oversimplifying a theory that takes Peake several hundred pages to elucidate. But that is the nub of it. There are a number of obvious queries that arise from it. The most obvious is the sheer solipcism of the whole thing. If we are hallucinating our lives as we lie on the ground somewhere bleeding to death, what are we to make of the people with whom we imagine we are spending our lives ? How can they be anything more than 'sims'? If Peake or any of his followers sincerely believe that they are experiencing the Bohmian IMAX, how can they treat anyone else with the respect that a real human being might expect? Peake claims to have dealt with this question in his book, but this reader at least didn't get it. At one point he brings in the concept of parallel universes, to suggest that when we die, a new world branches off in which we "escape" from the danger that kills us in one world. But this would appear to be a different road completely than starting our lives all over again "eternal return" style. Does he mean that we actually keep going on one road and start all over again on another? Peake claims somewhat annoyingly that parallel universes are a proven fact, but it's also a fact that a lot of physicists don't believe in them. There are other problems. Do we always know when we are going to die, so that we can slow time down quickly enough (!) to live our lives over and over again? It is hard not to believe that there are many times in which sudden death would win the race with the brain chemicals. Peake argues that the "life review" which people who have near-death-experiences describe is proof of his theory. In my opinion, it's not. Descriptions of life reviews usually involve some sense of observation, whereas Peake's proposal involves a three-dimensional re-experience of one's whole life, repeated ad-infinitum. On the other hand it must be said the author raises enough questions and highlights enough bizzare phenomena for us to at least be forced to admit that something is happening Mr Peake ... but we don't know what it is. Is There life After Death? is like a more erudite version of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. And his attempts at holism are admirable. He has since published another book, which I have not read, called The Daemon, and he does say that he and a colleague are working on the original theory with a new line that seems to involve some sort of collective unconscious. How this would be sustained in his materialistic model of life I'm not sure. Peake rejects telepathy, ghosts, reincarnation and indeed anything outside the brain in Is There Life After Death?, when I believe his model would be well-served by adopting the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake, and conceding that there are waves and fields which don't have a material existence and don't required the continued existence of brains to sustain them. For a longer version of this review, and other chats, visit my blog, wwmentaltraveller.
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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and thought provoking., June 7, 2007
Is There Life After Death by British author Anthony Peake is a brilliant book. It is a very hard, but extremely interesting read and would be helped greatly by a table of contents and index. However, it is a must read by all people interested in this genre, absolutely and unequivocally. In this book, Peake attempts to update the ideas of J.W. Dunne in the light of the latest theories of quantum physics, neurology and consciousness studies. The basic premise is that nearing the point of death, you actually never die and the brain gushes with glutamate, as it did once before, during birth, and you re-live your current life again in a virtual reality generated by the brain (or something else) - a Groundhog Day existence, so to speak. This is due to the fact that time dilates and you literally enter a time-less state or at least a state where time is near endless. This is alluded to by the way your perception of time changes dramatically throughout your life for one reason or another - dreaming, playing, getting bored, endangered, excited, sad and so on. Dropping out of time is what Peake calls it. Come the near time of your virtual reality death, the process is repeated, ad infinitum so it seems. The doctrine is called Recurrence and it seems the ancient Greeks and others alluded to it, so we find Peake uses Greek terminology for some of his concepts. Peake uses the fact that time is not constant as well as the NDE, deja-vu, epilepsy and a host of neurological diseases to convince you to believe Recurrence. He does this quite well, but as with anything, the judgement is up to you. In fact, I found that some of the arguments materialists use to bludgeon a random and meaningless existence where they are the final arbiters of truth and the high priests of knowledge and wisdom, Peake uses to good effect in proving his point which is contra to theirs. He uses quantum physics theory and its interpretation to convince us that the virtual life and all those thereafter are not exactly the same, as you have the freedom to choose and thus enter a different parallel universe with each choice you make. Deja-vu is a glitch in the system, when you actually remember the previous Recurrence of your virtual life. NDE is more or less another glitch in the system where your next Recurrence is prematurely triggered and you come back and call it a "Life Review". You're actually alive and the next virtual life starts running. Prophecy alludes to Recurrence too, according to Peake and his argument here is that prophets like Nostradamus, are exceptionally good at predicting future events within the time span of their lives, but hopeless once past their date of death. That's because they're somehow remembering their previous Recurrence and can't gather information outside their existence. Get a young prophet is the message here as they should be able to see more years into the future, their future as well as yours. Don't be fooled, while I believe the title is quite banal, the book reeks of freshness and originality. In fact it's the first non-study book, I'm going to read again (over 400 pages worth) and take notes, so that I can remember the concepts. I hope I have them correct for the purposes of this review.
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Spoiler Alert: The answer is Sort of..., February 9, 2008
In order to argue his theory that such phenomena as deja vu, near death experiences and precognition can all be explained by understanding that anyone who has had such experiences is reliving their entire life in the last few seconds of their previous one, Peake brings together a mishmash of quantum theory, neuroscience, personal accounts of paranormal experiences and bad logic. He has the usual crank theorist characteristics of jumping to unwarranted conclusions and being highly selective about evidence. Examples: Many people who experience NDE's report journeying to a paradisical place - Peake ignores this because it doesn't fit in with his theory. He quotes from a Gnostic gospel to suggest that the Gnostics believed in "eternal return" - the quotation doesn't in fact support this, and even if it did, it wouldn't count as evidence. He misconstrues scientific theories and facts... For instance, he says that a radioactive half life implies that there will always be a quantity of a given radioactive substance - not so, a billion atoms of cobalt 60 will eventually be reduced to one, and then none. I could go on and on. Nevertheless, his theory (which might be better argued), is intriguing and disturbing. If nothing else it will have me thinking hard for ways to refute it.
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