Book cover of After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond

Book description

The world's leading expert on near-death experiences reveals his journey toward rethinking the nature of death, life, and the continuity of consciousness.

Cases of remarkable experiences on the threshold of death have been reported since ancient times, and are described today by 10% of people whose hearts stop. The medical…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked After as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Near-death experiences on the surface sound like they have no relationship to politics and economics. However, they allow us to make inferences about a “moral imperative” embedded within the structure of reality itself.

Near-death experiences are instances in which a person’s consciousness has remarkable perceptions—even though the person is sometimes clinically dead. In fact, the experiences are often reported to be “realer” than real. This perplexing phenomenon has been studied extensively by the University of Virginia’s Bruce Greyson, MD, and he explains in his book why many of these profound cases are likely not hallucinations. (And he further explained these…

The author, because of some eye-popping experiences early in his medical career, found himself compelled to question his orthodox assumptions and attempt to document, as scientifically as possible, the near-death events he witnessed. I really related to his descriptions of himself as a young physician who downplayed his research and professed more skepticism than he actually felt because he was terrified of ruining his career. “Studying things that fit our preconceived ideas helps us understand their fine points better,” he writes. “But studying things that don’t fit our preconceived ideas is what often drives breakthroughs in science.” This book offers…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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