Life After Death: The Burden of Proof (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In India death is perceived very differently than in the West, "as a brief stopping point on an endless soul journey," says Chopra in this introduction to life beyond bodily existence. Chopra, a medical doctor and world leader in mind-body medicine as well as author of more than 45 books, now ventures to answer: what happens after we die? For Chopra, death deserves to be called miraculous, a "doorway to a far more important event—the beginning of the afterlife" and a mode of being that "can be as creative as living." Chopra effectively uses the classic Vedanta story of Savitri—a woman who comes home to find death, Lord Yama, waiting to take her husband, and who seeks the monk Ramana's advice to outwit death—to frame each chapter. Chopra grounds each topic in the long arc of this singular story, which is the perfect springboard for Chopra to introduce concepts such as Akasha (the highest stage a soul can attain) and Eternity within the Indian tradition (where we are beyond death, life, maleness, femaleness, and the experience of time). Chopra presents a fascinating account of life after death for Westerners that will certainly please his avid fans and draw in new readers as well. (Nov.)
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Review

“A must read for everyone who will die.” —Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., author of Molecules of Emotion

“A penetrating and insightful investigation into the greatest mystery of existence. This is an important book because only by facing death will we come to a deeper realization of who we are.” —Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now

“If I had any doubts about the afterlife, I don’t have them anymore. Deepak Chopra has cast his inimitable light on the darkened corners of death. I think this is his greatest contribution yet.” —Marianne Williamson, author of The Gift of Change

“Deepak Chopra . . . takes us to the edge of our own deepest inner truth about life after death by sharing with us his vision and his wisdom, which, as always, is breathtaking, healing, and soul-opening.” —Neale Donald Walsch, author of Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends

“Deepak Chopra has written a masterpiece that is long overdue in our spiritual culture. Life After Death: The Burden of Proof is a bold and comforting guide into the afterlife.” —Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Sacred Contracts

“By marrying science and wisdom in Life After Death, Chopra builds his case for an afterlife in which our most essential self, the seer that observes our experiences in this temporary home that we call the self, uses the end of this lifetime to pass over into the next. This is an intellectual and spiritual tour de force.” —Professor Robert Thurman, Columbia University, author of Infinite Life and The Tibetan Book of the Dead


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307345785
• ISBN-13: 978-0307345783
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #136,351 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Helped Me with Grieving, April 28, 2007

By	David S. Jackson (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

My wife died two years ago from breast cancer, and I've been studying spiritual principles more deeply than ever since then. For me, the biggest change has been living less in my mind and more in my body, and turning my awareness less to my thousands of daily thoughts and more to my feelings and spiritual awareness. Deepak's book has helped me find hope for fusing scientific thought in the West with the spiritual practices of the rest of the world. He helps me see a balance between science and faith.

In this book, he has introduced me to Vedanta and compared Indian spiritual traditions to other traditions. He helps me visualize a consciousness that lives through all of us and to which we return after death. He has described how this conscious field of being appears from different levels of consciousness and how these different "appearances" manifest to different people at different times to explain the huge variety of religious experience in our spiritual and scientific literature. For example, Near Death Experiences (NDEs) from Jewish people contain Jewish symbology while Christian NDEs reflect Christian symbology and NDEs from other backgrounds reflect the symbology particular to those backgrounds.

Deepak has also helped me visualize a universe that consists largely of subtle matter that is undetectable yet is capable of being instantly collapsed into a reality once an observer notices it. I had heard of the Possibility Wave Collapse Theory (PWCT) already, but Deepak seems to understand it from several levels and explain the ideas in a flexible way that allows for many perspectives on it. Again, levels of conscious awareness seem to impact material reality, both in the body and out of the body. Amazing stuff to think about, I believe.

As I try to send my dead wife my deepest love, Deepak's book comforts me and gives me hope that she feels my love. His book makes it easier for me to accept that the cardinals that dance outside my kitchen window are her way of saying she loves me. The squirrels that frolic on the tree outside the bedroom window are my wife's way of saying hi to me. And, that on our daughter's birthday just before Easter, the infant bunny rabbits I found nesting in our lawn were my wife's way of saying Happy Birthday. Knowing my beloved wife as intimately as I have during her life, this type of gift seems perfectly consistent with how I imagine her to be in spirit.

This book has meant a lot to me. It has helped me find a peace between science and faith in this difficult question of the death of those we love. To me, that is Deepak's greatest contribution in this book.

162 of 179 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Fusion of Science and Spirituality, October 28, 2006

By	D. Buxman "A Seeker of Truth" (Pueblo, CO United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In this book, Deepak Chopra gives us an intriguing look at both the scientific and spiritual aspects of life after death. For several years I've been looking for a book that helps to reconcile the afterlife with what we are learing in the field of quantum physics and this book comes as close to offering a cogent analysis as anything I have seen. Using a Hindu folk tale about death as a springboard, Chopra examines issues related to Near Death Experiences, Reincarnation, Remote Viewing, ESP and many more by examining the areas in which Science and the Vedic Tradition merge. This book is enjoyable to read, but requires a little time to digest. Although written from a Hindu perspective, Chopra takes the time to discuss other spiritual traditions, including Christianity and Buddhism. This will be a wonderful addition to your collection of philosophical works.

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The science behind consciousness, December 26, 2006

By	B. McEwan "yellokat" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This book presents a very good discussion of the principles of quantum theory that support ancient Vedic beliefs about the consciousness of the universe. Earlier titles that covered similar ground include The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, but Chopra's new work is worth reading because it includes scientific information that was not yet discovered when these other books were written.

Chopra neatly articulates a few of the basic Vedic beliefs about the continuance of human consciousness after the death of the physical body, and then marshalls evidence from quantum physics to support these ancient ideas. This includes the classic idea that human souls "devolve" and incarnate in physical form in order to experience life lessons that are charted while in between lives, a state that the Tibetans called the Bardo. (You can read a lot more about this in a first-rate book by Michael Newton called Journey of Souls.)

The sub-title of the book, "the burden of proof," is somewhat misleading, as Chopra doesn't actually attempt to "prove" anything. Instead he focuses on the quantum concept of randomness at the most minute, sub-atomic levels of the universe and the role that consciousness plays in influencing how that randomness eventually plays out in either/or choices. He eventually leads the reader to the BIG IDEA of the book -- that the whole universe and everything in it is conscious, and that together all conscious beings create reality. That includes rocks, trees, cosmic dust, the works. By the time Chopra gets to this rather awesome statement, the reader (or at least this particular reader) is ready to believe that it could not only be possible, but even likely.

It's a tough topic to summarize effectively in a review, so I will say only that I have read many, many books on the topic of life after death, as well as issues related to it, and this book is above average. I have only one reservation: It is a bit slow going in the beginning of the book, not helped by the fact that Chopra introduces the book by telling an old, rather rambling parable about a woman who tries to cheat death. Stick with it, though, and you will be rewarded because the text picks up speed at the book's mid point, and ends up offering a wealth of ideas to consider regarding post-death survival.