I read this book with very conflicting feelings. I started with “I think I read this book before”, went through “Wow, it’s beautiful to have this all confirmed” and through “What the hell, the afterlife is too depressing”, finally settling (for how long?) on “This is a completely new perspective for my thinking: not from the body&soul, incorporated being perspective, but from the one of the free soul.”

I would think that this is the book that has the potential of changing people’s lives. The least it can do is shatter your fear of death. Trough hypnotic regression, this doctor brings people to talk about their life between incarnations, about the eternal life of the soul. All his patients paint a congruent picture of what’s happening when the souls are separate from their human bodies. So clearly, this is scientific evidence, right? What more would anyone need?

I can’t really say that I know what fear of death is. Not really. I mean, yeah, I am afraid of accidents, of pain and such, but death itself, you know, I believe there is a better world beyond this one. So as a believer, this book had other effects on me. It made me depressed. The world described by all these souls out there sounds like something from a Sci-Fi book: blobs of light traveling trough tunnels, showering in steam, hanging around in their own clutters and going to school. According to Dr. Newton’s case studies, all souls do on the other world is go to school to learn and teach others. An eternity of school... I know, death is suddenly not that exciting anymore. I’m starting to feel afraid.

Another side effect of the book: thinking of the soul of something truly independent from the body makes it feel like a foreign entity which is controlling humans. Something like the Goa’uld in Stargate. It is not a far fetched comparison, because these souls can incarnate in other galaxies, as other being, not solely humans. I started to think how would we be without them, because suddenly, there is us and them, separate. And that is a strange, cold feeling which cause me to be depressed for days.

Michael Newton’s studies look like irrefutable evidence at first, but they are not quite that. Unless you prefer it to be, and then you should stop reading here.

More scientific minds than me have showed (you can read the Amazon book reviews in this respect) that his experiment is not a correct scientific one, that he seems to lead his patients with his questions, that he doesn’t consider his arguments debatable at all and doesn’t put them under serious scrutiny.

I don’t know what the pure scientific course of action is in such experiments. But these souls seem to be quite smart and calculated, and all the time under supervision. Even Dr. Newton shows how the guides of the incarnated souls he is regressing can block certain information and without their approval none of the revelations made by his patients would be even possible. In that case, we can safely assume, that these guides can very well mislead the patient and give him false information. Or that the souls come to Earth already programmed with a certain picture of the world beyond which is not accurate. If we’re not supposed to know, then why would Dr. Newton’s patients be allowed to find out?

In any case, this is a fascinating read and a welcome study which can be of help to many people in search of answers about existence and the reason of it all.