In March 2021, I finished my latest book, Step into the Light - Transform your fear of death by learning about Life after Life. The book has been available on Amazon since early April, and I am glad to say that it has already drawn very positive reviews.
If you have any doubt about the continuation of Life after the death of the physical body, read this book. The author masterfully applies the scientific method to the many forms of evidence that support the continuation of Life, including Near-Death Experience, Deathbed Visions, Reincarnation, and After-Death Communication. These experiences are drawn from people of all religions, cultural groups, atheists, and historical times. Dr Parisetti evaluates each mode of experience for the quality of its evidence, asks and answers the skeptic’s questions, and demonstrates how the “collective weight” of all these sources of evidence reveals an astounding “yes” to Life after Life.
Betty J. Kovacs, PhD
The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life
Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing The World
Here follows the opening chapter of the book:
This is the fifth book I have written on the subject of what I like to call the unbelievable truth and, in many ways, it’s a different kind of book. First, I have to admit that, given my education and professional background, so far I have been writing mostly for “left brain” people – people with an interest in (if not knowledge of) science and with a natural disposition for rational thinking. To some extent, I also wrote to try to convince the sceptics (tough luck there!), or at least those who have doubts and are amenable to being convinced by facts. Secondly, I have been writing mostly with the bereaved in mind. Early on in my studies and research, I realised that what I was learning about life after life could be of great help to those in pain because of the loss of a loved one.
However, there is another, pretty large group of people for whom learning about the unbelievable truth can have powerful, transformative beneficial effects. These are the people who are afraid of death, their own or that of a loved one. There are also those who may not be outright afraid, but simply nervous, uncertain, wanting to know what happens when we die, if anything at all. If you recognise yourself in these broad categories, this fifth book of mine is especially directed at you.
As you read on, please remember that I am a Western-educated medical doctor and long-time university lecturer. I am, or at least was, the intellectual product of a system that maintains that everything and anything that exists is physical matter – if you cannot touch it, measure it, it simply does not exist. What we call the mind is nothing other than the activity of our physical brain. When the brain stops functioning, at the moment of what we call death, the mind goes with it. Lights off, pure and simple.
For many years I had taken this worldview for granted, but now I understand that I was not thinking critically. Like many others in the scientific and medical fields, I was just accepting a worldview, a set of ideas, a theory that has almost become dogma in our society. This will help you understand why the truth I write about indeed looked unbelievable to me for a long time.
However, the same scientific background that proved a hindrance in one way was of great help in another. Science, in fact, is not a fixed set of ideas or theories. Science is a method. It is a very effective way to learn about, understand and explain the world. And the method is very simple – it has only one fundamental instruction: follow the evidence. Look at the facts. Look at what happens, and on that basis alone build theories and provide explanations.
So, it was by following the evidence, in a scholarly research work that has lasted now for nearly 20 years, that I had to finally conclude that, as unbelievable as it may seem, the truth is indeed the truth.
Put in its simplest form, the truth is that we do not die. Our bodies stop functioning, the activity of our brains ceases, but “we” go on living. Anybody who has looked at the colossal mass of evidence with the care and attention it deserves, and is intellectually honest, can only draw one conclusion: in a way which we do not understand, what we consider to be “us” – our mind, our personality, our memories, our perceptions, our affections – does not cease to exist when the physical body stops functioning. What we call death is not the end of life. Rather, it is a passage, a transition into a new dimension of existence. Dying means stepping into a bright, luminous, fascinating dimension which is not physical, not material, but appears to us “more real than physical reality”, as many have told us. In fact, many have simply called it the light.
So, coming to the purpose of this book, I will talk to your reason with the aim of trying to reach your heart. The reason to do that is simple, and is best explained by referring to a very interesting study carried out by Dr Kenneth Ring, one of the foremost researchers on the phenomenon we call Near-Death Experiences (in short, NDEs). Later in the book you will find an entire chapter dedicated to this baffling and wondrous phenomenon, so I won’t go into any explanation here.
What you need to know now is that plenty of studies show a number of beneficial psychological and behavioural changes in those who’ve had such an experience. In short, one may say that people who have an NDE come back as better persons: they become less interested in material things and more interested in knowledge for its own sake; they move towards an all-embracing, compassionate form of spirituality, leaving behind any rigid religious dogma; they become more generous, caring, giving. And, most importantly, their fear of death is erased, completely and forever. These people are sure that there is life after life because they are convinced that they’ve been there. They had a direct, first-person experience of the afterlife, an experience which they invariably describe, as I said before, as “more real than reality”.
A very interesting finding from Dr Ring’s research is that these beneficial changes show up not only in those who actually had the experience, but also in people who only read about NDEs – the more they read, research and study, the more pervasive are the changes.
This effectively demonstrates that knowing about the evidence for life after life can transform the fear of death. The fact that such knowledge can considerably ease the pain of the bereaved is well known, to the point of being employed in certain grief counselling methodologies. I am convinced that the same knowledge can be of great help to those who, for whatever reason, are in fear of death.
If you belong to this category, please read with attention the following statements.
Your mind, your personality, your consciousness, your memories, all that you identify with yourself, with your feeling of being alive, are not dependent on your functioning physical brain.
When your brain dies, your mind and personality will continue to exist. It will still be you, and it will feel exactly like you, only without a physical body.
You most probably have gone through this transition from the physical to the spiritual world many times already, as this is not likely to be your first incarnation.
After the demise of your physical body, you will spend a certain amount of time in the various levels of the spirit world, and then you will probably, but not necessarily, incarnate again.
In the long term, all this pans out as a project for your own evolution and development. Life, in the material and spiritual worlds, has meaning and purpose.
Now, imagine that you were fully convinced that these statements reflect reality. Not convinced simply because you want to believe, but convinced because you trust the sources of this knowledge. You have looked into who is providing this information, you have critically examined the evidence, considered possible alternative explanations, and rationally come to the only possible explanation: that the sources of this information are indeed who they claim they are. I am talking about people who have temporarily crossed the threshold between the earthly, material world and the spiritual, nonmaterial world (as in the case of Near-Death Experiences and Deathbed Visions), and discarnate personalities who once walked the earth and now communicate with us through gifted mediums and various other channels. Imagine for a moment that your reason was convinced. How would your heart feel?
So, this is the purpose of my book. After a couple of initial chapters clearing the way from some common misconceptions, and after a broad, general overview of what we consider to be evidence, you will find three major, substantive chapters. In those, we will engage in a sort of scientific detective work, essentially aimed at establishing the credibility of our sources of information on the process of death and what comes afterwards. We will look at empirical evidence – that is facts, what happens – and we will see that evidence points without a doubt to the survival of personality to bodily death. Since this is a preposterous conclusion, we don’t want to take it at face value. We will discuss and dissect a number of possible alternative explanations which have been proposed by critics, and we will see that not one of them is capable of accounting for the facts. I hope I will be able to show that, as I said earlier, the only possible explanation is that these sources are indeed what or who they claim to be, and therefore it is reasonable to trust them.
We will then proceed to describe the process of dying and what happens when we have shed our material body, based on the coherent, consistent testimony we received from these different sources.
Please understand that, although this is neither an academic nor a scholarly book, what you are embarking on is not necessarily a walk in the park. You will have to absorb masses of information which may be entirely new to you. Some of this information is relatively complex - sometimes scientific in nature – and will require your full attention and concentration. Other pieces of information may challenge some of your existing beliefs, or perhaps even your “capacity to believe”, as the empirical evidence we’ll be discussing can at times really be stranger than fiction. I strongly encourage to work through this large amount of information with the care it deserves.
This effort on your part will be rewarded in two very important manners. On the one hand, you will likely see your fear of death, or any concerns you may have about the process of dying and what comes afterward, completely transformed. On the other, you will definitely improve your experience of the afterlife, especially during what we will describe as the initial stages. This is an important subject, one that we will discuss at some length later in the book. The bottom line is that we are consistently told by our sources that the more we know what to expect, the easier the transition is from material to nonmaterial existence. Therefore, you will want to learn and to reflect on what you have learnt, for any effort you make today will improve your life tomorrow, on both ends of the threshold. In this respect, summing up a lifetime of study and research, Swedish-American psychiatrist and psychical researcher Carl Wickland concluded:
“[My research] has proven conclusively that death is only a sleep and an awakening, the process of awakening depending largely upon the individual’s mental attitude, such as religious bias, unreasoning scepticism, or the willful ignorance of and indifference to life’s meaning, so prevalent among the multitude.”
Finally, as a way of ending this introduction, I would like to share with you a simple sentence that encapsulates all that I have come to believe after nearly 20 years of scholarly study in the field of psychical research. Please, take it to heart – meditate on it, profoundly, and often. This is not wishful thinking or an article of faith - it’s the rational conclusion of a man of science. It can also be your first, fundamental step in transforming the fear of death.
We are not a body, with a consciousness we lose at death.
We are consciousness, with a body we lose at death.
