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I can well imagine that the title Beyond death may put some people off, while others, of course, will be attracted by it. The former will stall at the implication that death may not be the last experience of mortal man. Western rational and materialist science denies such possibility, banishing it to such areas as spiritualism, occultism and the like, which are easy to dismiss as unscientific. Yet analytical psychologists and many working in the field of so-called paranormal experiences know that these phenomena are approachable psychologically and objectively. Readers of this Journal need hardly be reminded of Jung's study On the psychology and pathology of so-called occult phenomena. It is therefore perhaps not the best title for a book which hopes to communicate certain scientific discoveries concerning ‘The gates of consciousness’, and particularly what lies beyond them, to a wide and perhaps unprejudiced audience. Admittedly it is difficult to find a more appropriate one. Something like ‘the constants and variants of transcendental experience’, (partly fashioned, as you will notice, after William James's Varieties of religious experience) is somewhat long and clumsy, but it gives a glimpse of what the book is about.
I should like to recommend the sceptic to start in the middle of this book, where he finds beautiful reproductions of pictures of heaven and hell, the judgment of the soul, the journey