Afterlife - by Colin Wilson (Paperback)

About the Book

Now in paperback, this extraordinary volume addresses the compelling possibility of life after death. Afterlife is the only encyclopedic overview by a dispassionate observer currently available. Fascinating reading for believers and non-believers alike.

Book Synopsis

Is there life after death? This is a question that has intrigued mankind since the beginning of history. Now the author of The Outsider and The Psychic Detectives assesses the evidence for this widely held and much contested belief.

From Adam Crabtree's patients who heard "voices inside their heads" to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross on death and dying, from Rudolf Steiner and Madame Blavatsky to Kenneth Ring and Raymond Moody, Colin Wilson examines theories, trends, and phenomena in an effort to reach a conclusion to this most perplexing issue.

Wilson includes hundreds of case histories and anecdotes on topics as diverse as split brain research, apparitions, telepathy, the magic of primitive man, precognition, out-of-the-body experiences, A-consciousness and B-consciousness, vampires, the subliminal mind, past lives, the mystery of multiple personalities, and contact with the dead. He asks and answers questions on how far we can trust the evidence given by mediums, the presence of spirits in madness, how we lost our psychic powers, why the Victorians were skeptical of the occult, can personality survive death, are spirit controls subpersonalities, and most important: What happens after death?

About the Author

COLIN WILSON was born to a working-class English household in 1931 and went from being the "bad boy" of the British literary scene to becoming a wide-ranging historian, novelist, critic, and philosopher. In addition to his classic study of rebellion, The Outsider, Wilson distinguished himself as one of the most prolific and grounded historians of occult and esoteric movements. A rebel until the end, Wilson later in life wrote stirring intellectual defenses of optimism, challenging the dark vogue of figures such as Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett. He died in Cornwall, England, in late 2013.