Life After Life, originally published in 1975, is a compilation of 150 case studies collected over a five year period. The subjects, all of whom had experienced "clinical death," narrated details of their "near death experiences" to the author. The incidents, very similar in many respects, included a sensation of floating outside of the physical body, associated with feelings of peace and oneness. Most subjects told of another "person" who helped them in their transition to another plane of existence.

A typical, composite experience was described: A dying man reaches the point of his greatest physical distress and hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and simultaneously feels himself moving very rapidly through a long, dark tunnel. Then he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body.

Spirits of relatives and friends who have already died come to meet him, and a loving, warm being of light appears before him. This being nonverbally asks him a question to make him evaluate his life and shows him a panoramic replay of the major events of his life. Later, he sees himself approaching some impassable barrier, and he discovers that he must return to earth, that the time for his death has not yet come.

Enraptured with feelings of joy, love and peace, he resists, but is forced to return. Later, when he tries to tell family members or friends of the incident, he realizes that he has no human words to describe what had happened to him. Others scoff at him, so he stops talking about it, but finds that the experience has profoundly affected his life, especially his views about death and its relationship to life.

By Sister Initiate Carolyn Adamson, Texas, U.S.A.(Originally In English)