Life on the Other Side: A Psychic's Tour of the Afterlife

Bestselling psychic Sylvia Browne offers a detailed account of life in heaven in Life on the Other Side . Readers should be warned that it takes a huge leap of faith to follow this celebrity psychic across the chasm of doubt to the other side. In her opening chapters she explains that she is like the young boy in the movie The Sixth Sense --she sees dead people. When she was a child, these spirits came into her room at night and disappeared when a light went on. "To this day I can't sleep in a completely dark room, because the minute I try it the room starts filling up," she writes. "As a child, it was scary. As an adult, it's just annoying..." Once she establishes her lengthy connections to life after death (including conversations with a spirit guide named Francine and her own near-death experience), Browne launches into life in the fourth dimension. In a chapter titled "After the Tunnel, Arriving on the Other Side," Browne explains that newcomers pass through a "hall of wisdom" and then review their most recent life through a "scanning machine." In the chapter "Beyond the Entrance," Brown claims that spirits live in whatever kind of home they've longed for, or they recreate a favorite home from earth. Plus, "the more spiritually advanced we become, the more physical beauty we're given, as a badge of our progress and hard work." Sex is known as "merging" and does not require birth control or any commitments of exclusivity. These kinds of glowing accounts of the other side cause skeptics to snicker, believers to feel comforted, and thousands of fans to keep on buying her books. --Gail Hudson From Publishers Weekly Browne has been spreading her popular and uplifting psychic messages in private practice and on daytime talk shows for decades; her 1999 book, The Other Side and Back, hit number one on the PW bestseller list. Now she's back with a plainspoken, good-humored guide to the invisible worldAwhich some people call the "afterlife" and others call "heaven"Athat, she argues, is just "the other side" of our world. Browne takes readers on a detailed tour (with illustrations!) of this paradise, where there are buildings (concert halls, athletic stadiums, libraries and schoolsAbut no shopping malls); where psychological help is available for those who need help making the transition; and where "we don't need to eat," but we can do so for sheer pleasure (and we don't need bathrooms afterward). Drawing on her years of experience as a psychic hypnotist and healer, Browne suggests that the other side is a kind of rest stop for our souls, where we go in between our multiple sojourns in this dimension. The folks over there, she argues, can talk to us, help us cure AIDS and guide us as we try to heal the pain in our lives. Browne anticipates reader skepticism with a kind of tough-edged patienceAshe's been there and seems to genuinely want to help readers get past their crippling disbelief so they can understand the cycles of life. And she's armed with examples to show she's not making any of this upAshe tells of skeptics who, when hypnotized, began speaking ancient, dead languages they couldn't possible have learned in this lifetime and of audiotape recordings of voices from the other side. Although the book isn't likely to make believers out of scoffers, it is a well-written and entertaining cultural bellwether. BOMC, QPB, One Spirit, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club selections. (July) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Browne, a well-known psychic, takes readers on a tour of Heaven. Those familiar with New Age writers such as Edgar Cayce and Ruth Montgomery will find much that is physically familiar--marble halls, spirits (all age 30) in white robes, and a council of elders. Browne's view is also spiritually compatible with those of her fellow gurus, drawing on concepts such as reincarnation and past lives. Amplifying what she covered in her last book, The Other Side and Back (1999), Browne offers a Fodor's guide to the Beyond: how to get there, what to expect, how to get back to Earth. Readers will be delighted to hear that once they settle in Heaven, they will be able to enjoy their own abodes, have plenty of time to pursue school and hobbies, and will get to listen to lectures by all the big names in religion (Jesus and Buddha, for example). Skeptics will find plenty to chuckle about here: Why use scrolls to research past lives? Hasn't God heard of computers? Then there are the cheesy illustrations where women wear skirts with thigh-high slits, and the mother-goddess looks like Xena, warrior princess. For believers, however, Browne offers a comforting view of the other side. She is a regular on the TV talk-show circuit, so be prepared. Ilene Cooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Sylvia Browne is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Other Side and Back and Adventures of a Psychic . A working psychic for nearly fifty years, Ms. Browne has appeared on The Montel Williams, Sally Jessy Raphael , Larry King Live , Unsolved Mysteries , CNN, and Entertainment Tonight . Read more