80 Books Like Journeys Out of the Body

When I first discovered this book’s existence, I knew I had to read it.

C.S. Lewis ventured into the same territory I stumbled into, and I found few Christians that I could confide in back in the 1990s, about the ideas and concepts that swarmed in my brain.

Everyone has heard about The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screw Tape Letters, and The Great Divorce, all of which are theological classics. CS Lewis is a literary giant and a must-read for Christians.

But to learn that he wrote about outer space as the heavens, and his understanding that the word for “heaven” in Scripture is a plural word, bearing its origin from Genesis 1:14, was astonishing to me. He gets it!

I love how Richard Cypher, an ordinary woods guide who discovers his profound destiny as a Seeker of Truth, has an extraordinary knack for getting out of one impossible dilemma after another.

I also enjoy how Richard’s chemistry with a beautiful woman known as the Mother Confessor intertwines with his destiny. This writer helped me improve my own writing skills, unlocking my use of more natural language and a deep appreciation for the pursuit of true love. Terry also has a way of building upon one cliffhanger and revelation after another, achieving an epic climax at the end.

While Terry makes no claim to the Christian faith, one can’t help but see many Biblical parallels, symbols, and themes in his work.

I love this book because Tolkien took the fantasy genre to a new, unprecedented level, resurrecting ancient legends of old, with countless mythical creatures.

His magnificent characters defined their races, occupations, and even their languages, later inspiring the game, Dungeons and Dragons, of which I was once a Dungeon Master. Many of The Fellowship serve messianic roles. Gandalf, for example, conquers death following his battle with a demon, and Stryder, an obscure ranger, turns out to be Aragorn, heir of the fallen kingdom.

Tolkien captures keen insight into the human condition regarding the struggle against sin. He also whispers a mystery; while an evil wizard created the One Ring to rule them all, a hidden, even more powerful force is clearly behind the ring’s eventual destruction.

I love how God’s Plan for Man uses abundant Scripture to explain how Lucifer once ruled over a kingdom of angels on earth that predated Adam and Eve.

This kingdom was destroyed in what Dake calls The Flood of Lucifer. This instantly made sense to me when I first read it, because I always understood that the Sons of God in Genesis 6 were angels mating with humans, and that the Nephilim were angel/human hybrids.

Dake’s explanation of Earth’s ancient history will certainly help Christians in the future to understand the ET=Angel ancient astronaut hypothesis, but from a Christian worldview.

The highly advanced technology we now see in Egyptian pyramids, and probably in Antarctica as well (as my military connections suggest), can now be understood with a Christian worldview.

This book is nonfiction. At times, it took me so far out of my comfort zone that I had to put it down.

But when I set aside my own belief system and read the interviews with the mindset of believing what the people were saying, a pattern emerged that made me question everything I thought to be true… in a good way. 

Far Journeys is a profound and unusual book. The story in which Robert Monroe, who was a radio executive, finds himself having spontaneous out-of-body experiences sometimes reads like science fiction. Yet it is his honest account. Dedicated to an exploration of human consciousness, he later founded a nonprofit called The Monroe Institute, which pioneered research into changing brainwaves using only binaural sounds. Monroe kept pushing the envelope with his explorations, learning to explore places beyond our world that most have only dreamed of; and it’s given me such great inspiration for my stories. It also blew my mind and helped me make sense when I had my own glimpses of the energetic realm that he describes here. This is technically his second book, but I feel it’s even better to start here.

Richard shows how people are emotionally attracted to thinking about the supernatural world and how they are hoping that it’s true. There are activities in the book that promote learning and understanding regarding how we fool ourselves and allow ourselves to be fooled. He even shows the reader how to convince others how he/she has paranormal abilities. 

My second love in literature is unreliable narrators, and from word one, it’s clear the protagonist in John Dies at the End is the worst offender.

There are few likable characters to be found in this book, and none of them are the protagonist. I fell in love with the main character’s sarcastic and often salacious take on monsters, zombies, and everything in between. Every scene feels like a joke to the narrator despite the death and carnage that seems to follow in his wake.

More than any of that, this book felt completely unique. I’ve never read anything quite like it. The words crack like a whip, there’s no slowing down, and even as I re-read lines, I felt like I was starting to lose my mind along with the protagonist. That’s a powerful tale.

This book was like a comeback for James Herbert as a horror author.

I’d always been an avid reader of his, but at some point, his writing seemed to lose its way; the endings didn’t quite deliver anymore, and his style chopped and changed. But this book had everything that worked for me as a reader: dark, gruesome horror with a paranormal twist.

The concept of astral projection and the ‘what if’’ should your body be murdered while you were away; I loved the exploration of this through the character's eyes – and what he found when he hunted down his murderer. It’s chilling and horrific, yet also in some ways heartbreaking, not only for the main character but for the murderer too. I was gripped all the way through.

The Indigenous male protagonist is portrayed in a way that elevates him beyond what is commonly seen in a historical romance of this era and locale. Set in the southern USA, it is full of historical details and descriptions while celebrating a mixed-race relationship in a time period when such a thing was shunned. It comes from a Christian worldview but is still very respectful of his Indigenous culture and beliefs. We see him for the man he is and without judgment - not just wrapped in a cultural shroud.