Ian Stevenson was an internationally-known psychiatrist who sought to examine, with scientific rigor, questions usually reserved for philosophy and religion. Featuring a selection of his papers and excerpts from his books, Science, the Self, and Survival after Death presents the larger context of Stevenson's work and illustrates the issues and questions that guided him throughout his career.

Ian Stevenson was a prominent and internationally-known psychiatrist, researcher, and well-regarded figure in the field of psychical research. Science, the Self, and Survival after Death is the first book devoted to surveying the entirety of his work and the extraordinary scope and variety of his research. He studied universal questions that cut to the core of a person’s identity: What is consciousness? How did we become the unique individuals that we are? Do we survive in some form after death? Stevenson’s writings on the nature of science and the mind-body relationship, as well as his empirical research, demonstrate his strongly held belief that the methods of science can be applied successfully to such humanly vital questions. Featuring a selection of his papers and excerpts from his books, this collection presents the larger context of Stevenson’s work and illustrates the issues and questions that guided him throughout his career.

Deepak Chopra turns to the most profound mystery confronting humankind: What happens after we die? By marrying science and wisdom, Chopra builds his case for afterlife, in which one's most essential self uses the end of life to "pass over" into the next lifetime.

As a cardiologist, Pim van Lommel was struck by the number of his patients who claimed to have near-death experiences as a result of their heart attacks. As a scientist, this was difficult for him to accept: Wouldn't it be scientifically irresponsible of him to ignore the evidence of these stories? Faced with this dilemma, van Lommel decided to design a research study to investigate the phenomenon under the controlled environment of a cluster of hospitals with a medically trained staff. For more than twenty years van Lommel systematically studied such near-death experiences in a wide variety of hospital patients who survived a cardiac arrest. In 2001, he and his fellow researchers published his study on near-death experiences in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. The article caused an international sensation as it was the first scientifically rigorous study of this phenomenon. Now available for the first time in English, van Lommel offers an in-depth presentation of his results and theories in this book that has already sold over 125,000 copies in Europe. Van Lommel provides scientific evidence that the near-death phenomenon is an authentic experience that cannot be attributed to imagination, psychosis, or oxygen deprivation. He further reveals that after such a profound experience, most patients' personalities undergo a permanent change. In van Lommel's opinion, the current views on the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers, and psychologists are too narrow for a proper understanding of the phenomenon. In Consciousness Beyond Life, van Lommel shows that our consciousness does not always coincide with brain functions and that, remarkably and significantly, consciousness can even be experienced separate from the body.

The title says it all. Eric Weiss is going for the gold. I'm watching and believing. -Michael Murphy, Cofounder of Esalen Institute Author of The Future of the Body As I read Eric Weiss' The Long Trajectory, I am often lifted beyond understanding into ecstasy. Integrating the physical, transphysical, and spiritual dimensions, Weiss offers a metaphysical model that heals the past and opens the door to a new future for humanity. -Dr. Christopher M. Bache, Youngstown State University Author of Dark Night, Early Dawn What happens to us after we die? Do we cease to exist? Do we survive bodily death? Do we live again in a new body? Without answers to these questions, we cannot know who and what we really are. In The Long Trajectory, author and philosopher Eric Weiss explores these fundamental questions. Inspired by the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo, Weiss develops a new metaphysical system he calls "transphysical process metaphysics." It rethinks space, time, matter/energy, consciousness, and personality in ways consistent with the findings of science, while providing a coherent explanation for the survival of the personality beyond death and how it can reincarnate in a new body.

Because every single one of us will die, most of us would like to know what—if anything—awaits us afterward, not to mention the fate of lost loved ones. Given the nearly universal vested interest in deciding this question in favor of an afterlife, it is no surprise that the vast majority of books on the topic affirm the reality of life after death without a backward glance. But the evidence of our senses and the ever-gaining strength of scientific evidence strongly suggest otherwise. In The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death, Michael Martin and Keith Augustine collect a series of contributions that redress this imbalance in the literature by providing a strong, comprehensive, and up-to-date casebook of the chief arguments against an afterlife. Divided into four separate sections, this collection opens with a broad overview of the issues, as contributors consider the strongest evidence of whether or not we survive death—in particular the biological basis of all mental states and their grounding in brain activity that ceases to function at death. Next, contributors consider a host of conceptual and empirical difficulties that confront the various ways of “surviving” death—from bodiless minds to bodily resurrection to any form of posthumous survival. Then essayists turn to internal inconsistencies between traditional theological conceptions of an afterlife—heaven, hell, karmic rebirth—and widely held ethical principles central to the belief systems supporting those notions. In the final section, authors offer critical evaluations of the main types of evidence for an afterlife. Fully interdisciplinary, The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death brings together a variety of fields of research to make that case, including cognitiveneuroscience, philosophy of mind, personal identity, philosophy of religion, moralphilosophy, psychical research, and anomalistic psychology. As the definitive casebookof arguments against life after death, this collection is required reading for anyinstructor, researcher, and student of philosophy, religious studies, or theology. It issure to raise provocative issues new to readers, regardless of background, from thosewho believe fervently in the reality of an afterlife to those who do not or are undecidedon the matter.

What happens when we die? This new edition of Life After Death adds to powerful evidence consciousness continues the author presented in an earlier release. He spent two years gathering information that demonstrates this and along the way interviewed more than a hundred experts in a number of different fields. Among them were parapsychologists, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, quantum physicists, and researchers into the true nature of reality. Specific examples are presented that indicate what happens when we die, for example that memories can be formed and retained despite a subject's brain having been shutdown and the blood drained from it. Questions such as whether or not you will be able to communicate with living loved ones after death are addressed, if it is possible to be reborn, and what might be missing from reproductive theory to explain the various phenomena indicated in the many case histories and scientific investigations presented.All of us will someday cross the border to what Shakespeare called "The undiscovered country." As long as we must make that trip, wouldn't it be smart to find out where we are going and what to expect when we get there?