Two Good Books on Life after Death

That old question of what happens to us after we die is pretty much always on my mind, especially as I get closer to the hour of my death. Most of my acquaintances seem to dismiss the question, however, saying that we have no evidence one way or the other and, further, it's useless even to spend time and effort on the question.

I suppose that one of the most complex and influential statements of their position was the work of Immanuel Kant, who even wrote a book (Dreams of a Spirit Seer)  early in his career against Emmanuel Swedenborg. The whole search is impossible and unnecessary, is the position.

And I suppose the simplest statement of the dismissal is “No one has ever come back from the dead so we will never know.”

The trouble with the dismissal of the question is that it contradicts the direct, first-hand experiences of many people who do come back from the dead, of people who have “Near-Death-Experiences” as well as the experiences of people like Swedenborg who visit with the dead.

The latest book I've read on the subject is Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death-Experience, by Pim van Lommel.  Van Lommel is a cardiologist well within the Enlightenment empirical science tradition who shows from that approach itself that there is evidence that we are conscious beyond death.

The book is comprehensive and I think van Lommel's main conclusion is irrefutable. But I personally enjoyed and placed more weight in a much “simpler” book, written in a completely “non-scientific” way by a father about the death experience of his child. That book is Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back.

 My first reaction to browsing the book in a bookstore was sceptical and I didn't buy it. But what I did read stuck in my mind so I went back a month later and bought it. It just rings true to me and is a lot more fun to read than van Lommel's book. I think both are excellent books but I think that the one which I will read a second or even third time will be the little boy's book.

One of my friends worked for most of his life in his family-owned funeral home business  and says that you have all kinds of experiences in that business that tell you of there being life after death.