100 Books Like The Ultimate Journey

This book was perhaps the strangest book I have ever read. It’s long and beautifully written with descriptive scenes that turn the cinema of the mind on full blast in sound and color, sometimes even evoking touch and smell. It’s bizarre and, honestly, made no sense to me at times with its churning of characters and unfathomable plot jumps, but it taught me that fiction doesn’t always have to make sense to make a lasting impact. Sometimes, it’s about how it feels, not how it reads.

This book is a fast read, but to tell the truth, I’ve never read it once without rereading it at least three times back to back. It’s moody and rhythmic, eerie enough to make the hairs on my neck stand up, and it rings of a desperate hope I know to be doomed.

Yet, it’s so beautiful and atmospheric that I want to be in the grand house anyway, with all the charming but creepy characters stitching away so the story can go on forever.

This is another favorite short read I’ve read at least a hundred times. If Hughes had made The Deadfall any longer, it would have spoiled the vivid, hypnotic, poetic way he sucks me into the life of a boy camping with his brother.

He has me feeling the warmth of the fire on my face before casting me into the dreary countryside where my feet are cold and the wind nips my nose. The intense atmosphere of nature keeps me going back to this one. The absolute beauty of what happens when the ghost of a fox calls out to a sleeping boy suspends me in disbelief. I never want to let go. 

I read this book for the first time when I was about ten years old. It was my introduction to Speculative Fiction and opened my heart to what is possible.

It’s a story of darkness and light, of a man wandering through life unaware of his own soul until he is confronted with a past he can’t remember. It’s an old book written in an old-fashioned way, but it changed my mind when I was young and made me want to write. 

A few years ago when my wife suddenly died, on the second day I spoke to a dear friend who also happens to be a longtime monk on my spiritual path. He mentioned a book by a psychologist who took people to see the greater arc of their soul’s journey—their ‘lives between lives’. That doctor was Dr. Michael Newton, and this is my favorite of his series.

At the time, reading it had a profound effect on my growing understanding of the greater arc of the human soul and provided an immense sense of peace. Above all, it soothed my tattered mind at a moment when life felt incomprehensible and helped me make sense of our larger purpose for being here even while still grieving. Through 70 case histories of real people who were regressed into their ‘lives between lives,’ Dr. Newton reveals life continuing on the other side, ways… show more.

I have been an admirer of Dr. Robert Crookall ever since I first read this amazing work. While dealing with primarily out-of-body experiences, this book details apparitional encounters, examples of spontaneous telepathy and clairvoyance, and even near-death experiences long before the term even came into general use!

So many detailed accounts fill these pages, and there is a certain sincerity here that I enjoy. The letters to the author detailing the strange and fascinating experiences of ordinary people and the author's careful consideration were a dynamic I really enjoyed and kept me turning page after page!

In my opinion, this influential book needs to be on the shelf of anyone interested in spontaneous and mysterious human experiences.

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.

Laurie is your typical sixteen-year-old who is enjoying life until she is tempted by the fantastical experience she never imagined. A fun, otherworldly experience that she is inexplicably drawn into by someone she feels she can trust but this person isn’t as good and helpful as she seems and it is that person who wants to ruin Laurie. And I was there for it all with my shock and sympathy for that person…oh yeah, and Laurie.

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.

This book is so amazing because it describes the real-life spiritual adventures of the legendary transpersonal psychologist, Dr. Stan Grof, who has taken many journeys into non-ordinary states of consciousness.

The book describes what becomes possible when we shift our awareness away from a mere materialist outlook on the world and give consciousness a fundamental role. I like to refer back to it, again and again, to remind myself that the limitations of my perception are the limitations of my mind: If I open up my mind, even the so-called impossible will begin to happen.