Episodes
Surviving Death
Release year: 2021
What happens after we die? This docuseries explores personal stories and research on near-death experiences, reincarnation and paranormal phenomena.
Watch Near-Death Experiences. Episode 1 of Season 1.
1. Near-Death Experiences
51m
A doctor is found lifeless after going over a waterfall. Now she and others share their near-death experiences. Does consciousness expand after death?
Watch Mediums: Part 1. Episode 2 of Season 1.
2. Mediums: Part 1
58m
Poised between life and death, mediums promise a chance to commune with the departed. Can seekers cultivate that ability and find solace and healing?
Watch Mediums: Part 2. Episode 3 of Season 1.
3. Mediums: Part 2
50m
A medium leads a séance, deeply moving a student. Plaster casts of "spirit" hands — physical manifestations of the dead — are explored.
Watch Signs from the Dead. Episode 4 of Season 1.
4. Signs from the Dead
49m
A bird, a dancing light or a caress: Signs and messages from the dead happen all the time, mediums say. So the grieving look for ways to communicate.
Watch Seeing Dead People. Episode 5 of Season 1.
5. Seeing Dead People
53m
Can consciousness survive a body's demise? An investigator records eerie sounds at a historic spot, and a doctor discusses encounters with the dying.
Watch Reincarnation. Episode 6 of Season 1.
6. Reincarnation
52m
Vivid details and unshakable confidence — from a 5-year-old. A child psychiatrist studies cases of past-life memories, which occur around the world.
Surviving Death
| Surviving Death | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster | |
| Genre | Documentary |
| Directed by | Ricki Stern |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Producers | Jonele Conceicao Ricki Stern Jesse Sweet Jessica Vale |
| Release | |
| Original network | Netflix |
| Original release | January 6, 2021 |
Surviving Death is a docu-series directed by Ricki Stern about near-death experiences and beliefs in life after death, and psychic mediumship. Its first season of six episodes was released on Netflix on 6 January 2021.[1][2] The series is based on the 2017 book Surviving Death by journalist and paranormal enthusiast Leslie Kean.[3][4][1]
While some reviewers described the show as providing a balanced treatment of a difficult topic, others have been highly critical, noting that the show takes a non-critical view of the scientific value of anecdotal subjective personal reports. The show has also been criticized for presenting pseudoscientific parapsychology as science and has been accused of exploiting the plight of fearful and grieving vulnerable people.[5][6]
Episodes[edit]
| No. | Title | Directed by | Original release date [7] |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Near-Death Experiences" | Ricki Stern | January 6, 2021 |
| 2 | "Mediums Part 1" | Ricki Stern | January 6, 2021 |
| 3 | "Mediums Part 2" | Ricki Stern | January 6, 2021 |
| 4 | "Signs from the Dead" | Ricki Stern | January 6, 2021 |
| 5 | "Seeing Dead People" | Ricki Stern | January 6, 2021 |
| 6 | "Reincarnation" | Ricki Stern | January 6, 2021 |
Reception[edit]
In The Independent 'State of the Arts', column writer Micha Frazer-Carroll described the series as appealing to those who are coping with anxieties about death. She adds that its coverage of near death experiences includes pop culture clichés and superstitions but offers persuasive personal accounts and that it incorporated dominant psychological theories like oxygen deprivation to explain some of the experience. The coverage of mediumship includes accounts of fraudulent exploitation. Frazer-Caroll wrote that skeptics may not become convinced and that the people involved often embraced hope in the afterlife with interest in these experiences to cope with the loss of a loved one. She mentioned Stern's presentation that focused on being open to people's experiences.[2]
Culture writer and film critic Radheyan Simonpillai wrote for The Guardian that the series "has no shortage of paranormal activity. Mediums call on the dead. Seances try to manifest them. People claim to be reincarnated actors, pilots or murder victims while others describe feeling a heavenly embrace during near-death experiences." He adds that the show also welcomes skepticism. Simonpillai mentions that the show "tries to find the tricky balance between that Sherlock skepticism and Doyle's openness to spiritualism" and that "you have to be willing to accept that a visit from a persistent cardinal or flickering lights can be signs from the dead." He quotes Kean: "Everybody has to decide for themselves whether something has that meaning for them or not ... with signs, it's not really objective." He adds that unlike Kean's book, the series focuses more on testimonials of people who believed to have witnessed the afterlife.[1]
Live Science contributor Stephanie Pappas argued that while religious faith is untestable, outside of what science does, the series attempts to portray it as something that could be proven or discredited scientifically and that "it confuses its own narrative by offering the same credulity to outright scams as it does to outstanding questions about the process of death". She adds that while patients may still sometimes have experiences when doctors don't expect them to because their heart stopped, it is not an indication that they are supernatural or don't originate from the brain; that brain-endogenous DMT could possibly also be responsible for such vidid experiences. Some experiences also result from the gradual awakening from sedation at the end of ICU medical procedures. Pappas mentions Parnia who was invited to participate in the show but who declined, reportedly "because the show made no distinction between scientific research on topics such as the recalled experience of death and the pseudoscience of ghosts and mediums." She adds that despite these problems, strong personal experiences can be meaningful to those who live them and potentially transformative. In relation to mediumship, Pappas wrote that people who hire mediums already want to believe and that the show's treatment of the topic was less plausible than that about near death experiences. She concludes that Surviving Death "tells a compelling tale of people's desire for meaning in the universe — and of their deep, unrelenting love for deceased family and friends."[3]
Film critic and pop-culture writer Nick Schager wrote for The Daily Beast that Surviving Death's evidence "is of a pseudo-scientific, anecdotal, and/or outright fanciful sort." He criticized the show for ignoring natural explanations, cultural narratives and human tendencies for these experiences and interpretations, but suggesting instead that the afterlife is real. He added: "To the series, anyone who doesn't accept these spiritual concepts and experiences is a 'skeptic' driven by 'hubris and arrogance.' It assumes a perspective in which the veracity of its claims is the norm, and those who view them with suspicion are close-minded cynics." Shager notes that while the series projects a type of skeptical dialogue, it is staged and loaded by believers to suggest conclusions. He adds that while the show does highlight how people cling to such experiences and beliefs for comfort, the repeated suggestions are that of a universal conclusion that lost loved ones are well ("affirmation-by-numbers"). He describes the show's view of afterlife as simplistic, "one in which all ghosts communicate in the same indirect-clue fashion, and have the same unrevealing things to say ... that our paths are irreversibly set in stone, and thus that we have no free will, and that a higher power with a divine plan governs everything and everyone." He noted the use of flawed justifications to avoid evaluating the reliability of claims, like that of ectoplasm generation: that it's averse to light, so cannot be filmed. He concluded by criticizing the recipe used to conclude the series, disguising faith into psychologist statements presenting a false equivalence without resolving anything.[5]
A review in the Explica magazine described Surviving Death as "one of the biggest nonsense of this incipient movie season", "a regrettable attempt to legitimize magical thinking", presenting a collection of pseudoscientific parapsychology as science. It points out that no proper laboratory experiment ever demonstrated evidence of the paranormal, but that advances in neurology conversely demonstrated human experiences and brains to be notoriously unreliable, adding "we can resort to reasonable explanations, without being delirious with the fantasies of Surviving Death, because of our neuropsychological knowledge." It criticized the show for presenting flawed narratives about "materialistic science" like pretending that other methods of knowledge acquisition exist that rival the scientific method, with clichés like "there are things that science cannot prove, but that does not mean they do not happen." It adds that the show promotes delusions as justifications, ignoring that the absence of evidence should imply caution and scientific skepticism instead of jumping to fantastic conclusions. It notes that the various testimonies have been selected and presented by the producers to push their own conclusions and that discredited hoaxes like Franek Kluski's "materialisations" using paraffin are claimed to be genuine. It accuses Surviving Death of "taking advantage of desperate people", as Stern's supporting narratives reiterates the conclusions and "uses the terrible grief of his interviewees to support his fallacies ... He uses vulnerable people who have lost a loved one, are broken in pain and admit to being desperate to support his irrational thesis."[6]
References[edit]
- ^ a b c Simonpillai, Radheyan (7 January 2021). "'Maybe death isn't the end': can a TV series prove the existence of an afterlife?". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
- ^ a b Frazer-Carroll, Micha (8 January 2021). "Surviving Death: How Netflix's new series speaks to my lockdown anxieties about dying". The Independent. Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
- ^ a b Pappas, Stephanie (17 January 2021). "Can science 'prove' there's an afterlife? Netflix documentary says yes". Live Science. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
The documentary emphasizes "proof" of life after death, but it mixes the debunked, the unknown and the unprovable.
- ^ "Leslie Kean". Penguin Random House. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
- ^ a b Schager, Nick (5 January 2021). "'Surviving Death': Netflix's New Series on the Afterlife Is Crackpot Nonsense". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
- ^ a b "Criticism of 'Surviving Death', the ridiculous and outrageous Netflix documentary series". Explica. 11 January 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
- ^ "Surviving Death – Listings". The Futon Critic. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
External links[edit]
Leslie Kean
Leslie Kean is an investigative journalist and author who is most notable for books about UFOs and the afterlife.[1][2]
Background[edit]
In the late nineteen-nineties, after a visit to Burma to interview political prisoners, she stumbled into a career in investigative journalism. She took a job at KPFA, a radio station in Berkeley, as a producer and on-air host for “Flashpoints,” a left-wing drive-time news program, where she covered wrongful convictions, the death penalty, and other criminal-justice issues.
Kean is the daughter of environmentalist and philanthropist Hamilton Fish Kean and the granddaughter of Congressman Robert Kean.[3] Her uncle is former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean Sr., and her cousin is New Jersey State Senator Tom Kean Jr. She attended Spence School and Bard College, and helped "to found a Zen center in upstate New York".[4]
Career[edit]
Kean Worked as a photographer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. After visiting Burma to interview political prisoners, in the 1990s she began working at a Berkeley radio station (KPFA, the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network) as an investigative journalist, producer and on-air host for 'Flashpoints,' a left-wing drive-time news program, covering wrongful convictions, the death penalty, and other criminal-justice issues.[4]
Kean has published works relating to UFOs since 2000, and has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM.[5][6] Her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, published by Penguin Random House, was a New York Times best seller.[7] Kean belongs to the UFO organization UFODATA.[8]
On 16 December 2017, the New York Times featured an article written by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Kean, which revealed the fact that the US Department of Defense had spent $22.5M on a secret program titled the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program that investigated UFOs.[9]
Written works[edit]
- 1994. Burma's Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity – with Alan Clements. ISBN 978-0893815806.
- 2010. UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record - with a foreword by John Podesta, Harmony Books, New York. ISBN 978-0307716842.
- 2017. Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. ISBN 978-0553419610.
References[edit]
- ^ "Leslie Kean Penguin Random House". Penguin Random House. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
- ^ "Leslie Kean HuffPost". Huffington Post. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
- ^ HAMILTON KEAN (obituary) Retrieved May 15, 2020
- ^ a b Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (30 April 2021). "How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously". The New Yorker magazine.
- ^ "Leslie Kean - Biography & Interviews Coast to Coast AM". Coast to Coast AM. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
- ^ Cooper, Helene; Blumenthal, Ralph; Kean, Leslie (December 16, 2017). "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program". The New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2017.
- ^ Blumenthal, Ralph (December 18, 2017). "On the Trail of a Secret Pentagon U.F.O. Program - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
...The journey began two and a half months ago with a tip to Leslie, who has long reported on U.F.O.s and published a 2010 New York Times best seller, “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record....
- ^ "UFO DATA Team". Retrieved March 20, 2021.
- ^ Cooper, Helene; Kean, Leslie; Blumenthal, Ralph (December 16, 2017). "2 Navy Airmen and an Object That 'Accelerated Like Nothing I've Ever Seen'". The New York Times. Retrieved December 21, 2017.
External links[edit]
Leslie Kean
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Julie Beischel PhD
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Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife
by Leslie Kean (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 out of 5 stars 500 ratings
Kindle
$17.99Read with Our Free App
Hardcover
$62.95
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES • An impeccably researched, page-turning investigation, revealing stunning and wide-ranging evidence suggesting that consciousness survives death, from New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kean
“An engaging, personal, and transformative journey that challenges the skeptic and informs us all.”—Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin
In this groundbreaking book, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kean investigates the unexplained continuity of the human psyche after death. Here, Kean explores the most compelling case studies of young children reporting verifiable details from past lives, contemporary mediums who seem to defy the boundaries of the brain and of the physical world, apparitions providing information about their lives on earth, and people who die and then come back to report journeys into another dimension.
Based on facts and scientific studies, Surviving Death includes fascinating chapters by medical doctors, psychiatrists, and PhDs from four countries. As a seasoned reporter whose work transcends belief systems and ideology, Kean enriches the narrative by including her own unexpected, confounding experiences encountered while she probed the question concerning all of us: Do we survive death?
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Print length
395 pages
7 March 2017
Product description
Book Description
"" --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
About the Author
Leslie Kean is an investigative journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. Her work has been published nationally and internationally, including in the Nation, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Newark Star-Ledger, International Herald Tribune, Globe and Mail, Sydney Morning Herald, Bangkok Post, Irish Independent, and the Journal of Scientific Exploration, among many others. Her stories have been syndicated through Knight Ridder / Tribune, Scripps Howard, New York Times wire service, Pacific News Service, and the National Publishers Association. She is cofounder and director of the Coalition for Freedom of Information.
--This text refers to the mp3_cd edition.
Review
''Astounding! With her usual scientific precision and insatiable curiosity, Leslie Kean is our Orpheus, descending into the Netherworld to grapple with the most ancient of mysteries and return with inspiring evidence.'' --Ralph Blumenthal, investigative reporter, author of Miracle at Sing Sing
''With a keen eye and a no-nonsense approach, investigative journalist Leslie Kean explores what the actual data tells us about the question of survival past death. Examining many phenomena and case studies with penetrating depth and insight, Kean lets the evidence speak for itself. She takes us on an engaging, personal, and transformative journey that challenges the skeptic and informs us all.'' --Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin
''Surviving Death is a thoughtful and at times startling exploration of the afterlife. As a skeptical journalist, Leslie Kean is uniquely equipped to examine and evaluate the evidence for survival of consciousness. After encountering a rash of impossible facts and startling personal experiences, her conclusion is unequivocal: We are woefully ignorant of what happens after death, but it is very likely that something interesting happens rather than nothing. A refreshingly careful and candid review.'' --Dean Radin, PhD, author of Supernormal and The Conscious Universe
''In addressing the most important question facing all of us, Kean has synthesized data from both a wide variety of credible sources and from her own exploration of seemingly unexplainable personal observations. After decades of research into this topic, I believe the preponderance of the evidence indicates that we survive death. But far more important is that I urge everyone to read Surviving Death, engage in their own quest, and decide for themselves.'' --John B. Alexander, PhD, Colonel USA Ret., author of Future War and UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities
''What a wonderful-and clarifying-opportunity to have someone with the reportorial skills and integrity of Leslie Kean explore the trouble-fraught subject of life after death. A quiet revolution is brewing today in the intellectual treatment of paranormal topics; Kean and this book are at the center of it.'' --Mitch Horowitz, PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and One Simple Idea --This text refers to the mp3_cd edition.
Publisher : Crown; Reprint edition (7 March 2017)
4.5 out of 5 stars 500 ratings
Julie Beischel PhD
Dr. Julie Beischel (www.juliebphd.com), a recognized world-leader in empirical consciousness research, received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona. She uses this interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. Following the suicide of her mother and an evidential mediumship reading, Dr. Beischel forfeited a potentially lucrative career in the pharmaceutical industry to pursue rigorous scientific consciousness research full-time. For over 17 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. Her studies began with testing the accuracy and specificity of the information reported by mediums during phone readings performed under controlled, more than double-blind, laboratory conditions that address alternative explanations for the source of their statements such as fraud, cueing, and overly general information. She has also examined mediums’ psychology, physiology, business practices, demographics, and experiences and published peer-reviewed journal articles and anthology chapters discussing these factors and the potential therapeutic application of mediumship readings during bereavement. Her research interests also include spontaneous, facilitated, assisted, and requested after-death communication experiences. Dr. Beischel is the author of the e-books Among Mediums, Meaningful Messages, and From the Mouths of Mediums and the paperback book Investigating Mediums in addition to numerous anthology chapters. Dr. Beischel is currently the co-founder and Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center (www.windbridge.org), a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to easing suffering around dying, death, and what comes next by performing rigorous scientific research and sharing the results and other customized content for free with practitioners, clinicians, scientists, and the general public. Her non-research-based interests include her husband, comic strips, stand-up comedy, and crafts of almost any type but mostly beads. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her research partner and husband Mark Boccuzzi and their two dogs.
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Anglian Traveller
5.0 out of 5 stars Another absorbing read from Leslie Kean which may become the definitive investigative work on this most important subjectReviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2017
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Following-up on her 2011 book ‘UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials go on the Record’, the independent NYC-based investigative journalist Leslie Kean here examines the evidence for our survival of physical death. As with her previous work, the primary target audience is less those already committed to any religious doctrine/faith or the new-ager steeped in the lore of this subject, but rather those who inhabit the everyday, ‘level-headed’ scientific mainstream and may be unacquainted with the evidence of the survival-after-death of human consciousness – which, as we discover in this book, is substantial.
In the Introduction, the author writes: “An investigation of such evidence has rarely been systematically consolidated and subjected to in-depth, rigorous scrutiny by a journalist…my intention is to present some of the most interesting evidence from diverse sources and show how it interconnects, making it accessible for the intelligent and curious reader encountering the material for the first time. Strict journalistic protocols can be applied to any topic for which there is data, no matter how unusual or even indeterminate”.
The book is very well planned and organized, and divides into four sections which each examine this subject from a different side of the prism:
1. Is there ‘Life’ before Birth? – examining some compelling cases of apparent reincarnation, where small children persistently report complex and precise details of a previous life later verified; two American cases form the bedrock of this section, chosen because the cultural and religious landscape in the US does not offer a natural framework for the parents of the children concerned to accept their children’s reports of their previous lives
2. To Death and Back Again – examining the best-documented stories of NDEs/OBEs
3. Communications from Nonlocal Minds – examining evidence for nonlocal consciousness and ‘mental mediumship’; this section contains some of the author’s most personal experiences of communications from departed family members and loved ones
4. The Impossible Made Real – examining instances of physical mediumship where the author takes part in experiments where full-form materialisations manifest in séance sessions; especially important here is the work of the British medium Stewart Alexander to whom the author made several research visits
As with Ms Kean’s ‘UFOs…’ book, several chapters are penned by other contributors like Jim Tucker MD, Pim van Lommel MD, Peter Fenwick MD, Julie Beischel PhD and others which endows the work with a more collegiate scientific dynamic and elevates the book beyond the purely personal – though for my money, the author’s reported personal experiences with different mediums are the most compelling and moving sections (those who know the work of the author’s close friend the late Budd Hopkins, and especially those who knew him personally, may be amused and delighted by the communications reported on pp156-167).
‘Surviving Death’ is a very high-quality piece of work with a logical structure founded on intelligent, evidence-based arguments. The writing from not only Ms Kean but from all subsidiary contributors is literate and straightforward with exemplary proofreading completely free of typos; there are two 8-page sections of (mainly colour) photographs of the people written about in the text and an accurate and comprehensive index. The white-themed hardcover and dust-jacket are also very striking and appropriate to the subject.
In summary, Ms Kean’s new book is an absorbing read containing nothing extraneous and concerned only with factual evidence which will likely become the definitive ‘serious’ work on this most important subject. Five stars.
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Daddy c
5.0 out of 5 stars You’ll be grippedReviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 August 2020
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I haven’t finished yet, but wow! I’ve always believed there’s far more to each and every one of us so maybe I have too biased a view. The imbalances of this bodily/earthly existence must level somehow. We all get dealt a particular hand at birth and by God or whoever you do or don’t believe in some of us get a hand of junk.
I’ve read the UFO book by this author and the amount of research plus quotes and examples from many doctors, scientists, military and academic people she gets to go on the record is truly exceptional. A great lady in my humble opinion. Really it has to be worth a read. I promise it won’t waste your time. Unless truly there is nothing else. But I’m sure after reading this at least some will change their viewpoint.
Thanks for reading my review.
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Mr. A. M. White
2.0 out of 5 stars Uncritical and deluded author
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2021
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This is a weak attempt at investigating the paranormal and the possibility of an afterlife. I hasten to add that I’m not a skeptic and am definitely convinced that these things exist. But I pride myself on being a ‘believer’ skeptic the extent to which this author accepts everything served up to her is laughable. A much, much better investigator is Ian Wilson who has begun to be a forgotten voice but is soberly critical yet interested at all times. Kean throws in the mandatory claim to being the type who won’t have the wool pulled over her eyes, but her accepting manner suggests otherwise. It’s obvious to any educated person for instance that Ian Stevenson’s work on children who claim to be reincarnated is largely hogwash because these claims are 95% in poor countries and from children who come from poor families. Invariably they claim that they belonged to some rich family living locally in the hope that this family will provide for their long lost relative. Kean also has an unhealthy belief in Edwardian charlatans who she claims were the real thing but further research from me found that they were all caught pursuing underhand and fake practices. Don’t waste your money on this, look out for a second hand copy of any of Ian Wilson’s several books on the same topic as well as a brilliant book on ghosts.
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Lew
5.0 out of 5 stars I can thoroughly recommend this book
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This is a weak attempt at investigating the paranormal and the possibility of an afterlife. I hasten to add that I’m not a skeptic and am definitely convinced that these things exist. But I pride myself on being a ‘believer’ skeptic the extent to which this author accepts everything served up to her is laughable. A much, much better investigator is Ian Wilson who has begun to be a forgotten voice but is soberly critical yet interested at all times. Kean throws in the mandatory claim to being the type who won’t have the wool pulled over her eyes, but her accepting manner suggests otherwise. It’s obvious to any educated person for instance that Ian Stevenson’s work on children who claim to be reincarnated is largely hogwash because these claims are 95% in poor countries and from children who come from poor families. Invariably they claim that they belonged to some rich family living locally in the hope that this family will provide for their long lost relative. Kean also has an unhealthy belief in Edwardian charlatans who she claims were the real thing but further research from me found that they were all caught pursuing underhand and fake practices. Don’t waste your money on this, look out for a second hand copy of any of Ian Wilson’s several books on the same topic as well as a brilliant book on ghosts.
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Lew
5.0 out of 5 stars I can thoroughly recommend this book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 July 2017
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With a lifetime of involvement and author of many articles on the subject of survival evidence, I can thoroughly recommend this book. Leslie has spoken to the right experts in each field of inquiry, which is not always the case by any means in journalism. Amongst those she has interviewed are: specialist academics; the conveyors of evidence (usually mediums); those who have witnessed evidence; those who have directly received personal evidence. Plus, she has reported on her own remarkable personal evidence. Given the vastness of data available, Leslie has condensed into one book a very fair overall assessment of evidence for and against consciousness survival beyond the grave.
Often journalists present, through ignorance or desire, very biased accounts of survival evidence rendering such accounts as worthless to the rational mind. Either far too sceptical giving little emphasis to, or worst still, ignoring the best evidence. Or, on the other hand, enthusiastically presenting woolly evidence that fails to impress on close examination. In the case of blatant bias in presenting survival evidence, it is not just the prerogative of the written word. So called ‘impartial’ or ‘scientifically based’ TV programmes excel in this sphere. Oh, how transparent are their clandestine agendas to those knowledgeable of the subject matter.
Although for the last three decades I have written on scientific research into all aspects of survival evidence, I have considerable personally experience of the phenomena described in Chapter 25 of Stewart Alexander’s mediumship, which Leslie Keen described as “life changing”. My detailed examination of his seances appeared in Issue 51 of Paranormal Review published July 2009 by the SPR (see below). My report also appears in Stewart Alexander’s autobiography: An Extraordinary Journey: The Memoirs of a Physical Medium, published 2010.
Given the vastness of the data that has been collected over the last two centuries, Leslie Keen’s book can only give a taster to wet the appetite of readers who wish to investigate further. For the serious researcher, there is the USA based American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), or the original Society for Psychical Research (SPR) based in the UK – but only two years older than the ASPR!
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al baby
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book by a first class writerReviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2017
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I have a fairly extensive library on this all important subject. Not all my books are that good but this one is without doubt absolutely brilliant. Ms Kean is a first class investigative journalist and she takes nothing for granted but probes the data for more 'down to earth' possibilities but after all the alternatives are explored and rejected she comes down heavily on the side of we all survive death irrespective of any religious beliefs.
Written in an easy to read yet intelligent style I recommend this book 100%.
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Heidi The Reader
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February 19, 2017
Investigative journalist Leslie Kean takes a close look at a wide variety of unexplained phenomena in order to answer the age old question- does human consciousness survive death intact with the memories, personality, and uniqueness that was exhibited in life? I found her evidence astonishing.
Much of her research into near-death experiences (NDEs), I had been exposed to in other books. But, the chapters about children remembering past lives, psychic mediums and physical mediums was entirely new to me. As I read, I kept getting goose bumps up and down my arms. The stories are that powerful.
(Reminder, the following quotes were taken from an advance reader's copy and may change or be edited in the final printed version.) Why did Kean write this book? "My intention is to present some of the most interesting evidence from diverse sources and show how it interconnects, making it accessible for the intelligent and curious reader encountering the material for the first time. Strict journalistic protocols can be applied to any topic for which there is data, no matter how unusual or even indeterminate." loc 51, ebook. I think she succeeded admirably. Most of Surviving Death is easy to understand, no matter how far-out the material may be.
I'll admit to losing interest in the passages where she tries to distinguish between intelligence coming from the living human psyche or dead ones, the psi theory vs the survival theory. But, since that was the point of the book, that may be some people's favorite part so don't let me put you off.
Take these death bed descriptions of the other side by those about to leave this world: "The great inventor Edison, just hours before his death, emerged from a coma, opened his eyes, looked up, and said: "It's very beautiful over there." And more recently, the sister of Steve Jobs reported that just before he died, Jobs looked over the shoulders of his family members, right past them, and said, "Oh wow. Oh Wow. OH WOW!!" loc 2176, ebook. I was not present when my grandpa passed, but Grandma told me later that at the moment he took his last breath, that a light came into his eyes and his face became so completely peaceful that he looked thirty years younger. I can't say that I know for sure what waits for us beyond this life, but I can say that I'm not afraid. If you happen to have any fears in that regard, Surviving Death could be of great help to you.
Kean doesn't answer the question she poses definitively because, of course, she hasn't died and come back to tell us about it, but the stories and evidence that she presents is compelling. Throughout the chapters, Kean writes about personal, first-hand experiences that she has had. I believe that they are genuine. The hardcore skeptics may disagree.
The most extraordinary part of this book were the physical manifestations that Kean observed in the medium seances. Apparently, these seances have been going on for hundreds of years in certain areas of the world. Did you know that in the 1920s in Warsaw, Poland, bowls of wax were placed in the seance chapter and apparitions were able to make molds of their hands? "In the Warsaw experiments, gloves were produced with interlocking fingers, with two hands clasping one another, and with the five fingers spread wide apart. Needless to say, the removal of a human hand from such formations would be impossible. Dematerialization was the only method that would leave the molds intact." loc 4504, ebook. How had I never heard of this!
Recommended for readers who are prepared to have their minds blown. Surviving Death is incredible and almost indescribable. If you are interested in such studies, it is an absolute must-read. You may also want to look into Wisdom of Near Death Experiences: How Understanding NDEs Can Help Us Live More Fully and The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife.
Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for a free digital copy of this book.
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Ciarrah, MHA
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April 14, 2018
While I initially got chills listening to this book, it became a circus in the last chapter once seances, ectoplasm, and materializations became the topic. The fact that the last person interviewed refused to have his "work" filmed or photographed tells a lot. He's full of it and so is the author for even including him in her book. That immediately dropped my rating down to 3 stars.
Otherwise, it was an interesting read.
And these ghosts are probably all demons anyway.
Yea, I said it!
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Erik Graff
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May 6, 2017
The issue of personal survival after physical death is a sensitive one involving everyone. Such religious traditions as address the issue disagree as do individuals. The evidence is elusive, interpretations of it widely varying.
I approach the matter with prejudice, agreeing with the old Buddhist tradition that dwelling on such matters is not conducive to what ought most matter. Yet it's noteworthy that some Buddhist traditions do precisely just that.
Kean's book is also prejudiced in the presumption that there is evidence for personal survival. Here I agree with her. There is, in fact, evidence suggestive of such a hypothesis. To her credit she also allows for the counter hypothesis of super-psi, that being some combination of purported psi abilities (telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, precognition) which might account for all the cases she addresses. Sadly, there seems as yet to have been found no scientific means to falsify either proposition. The question remains open--and elusive.
The cases Kean present range from some suggestive of reincarnation to others lending themselves more to the idea of something like an afterlife, a dimension beyond the one we inhabit as material beings. However, as has been pointed out by others, the evidence, such as it is, merely suggests that elements of some persons persist for some time after their deaths--elements, not perhaps actual, self-aware personalities; elements such as information pertinent to such previous living persons.
The kinds of evidence Kean takes up include Out of Body and Near Death Experiences as well as psychic and physical mediumship. Most impressive, anecdotally, is the first case, that James Leininger, a little boy with veridical memories of an American airman killed in WWII. It's a good story, well told and very, very disconcerting. Most impressive, scientifically speaking, is the work of some cardiologists and other medical specialists on the cases of flat-lining patients who return to consciousness with verifiable accounts of events which occurred while they were clinically dead, events which, in some cases, suggest an ability to leave the body and return.
I've read at least five books about evidences for survival hypotheses now, not to mention dozens of books about religious beliefs pertaining to the subject. Like UFO books (and Kean has written a good one), I find the evidences fascinating but ultimately elusive.
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July 10, 2019
This book is pretty much best described as a downward spiral. It starts off in an interesting way with a few cases of reincarnation and near death experiences. I have to say that reincarnation cases are neither new nor is Leslie Kean's coverage particularly detailed, all the information has been already widely reported and one of the cases she writes about has a whole book devoted to him. Once she gets to talk about her experiences with psychics the book becomes shaky and less and less evidence is presented, and by the time she gets to talk about physical mediums the book devolves into complete nonsense with people manifesting levitating trumpets and what not. My problem with the book is not the claims that she makes but the fact that she thinks it's evidence of anything. There is no real scrutiny of the stories she tells even the stories that she witnessed. Writing "I don't believe it can be explained in any other way" is really no hard evidence. In general, the book lacks a skeptical perspective. When I say that, I don't mean that someone's intention should be to show that any of this is fake, but to be more caution in weighing the evidence. I think it would greatly benefit the book as well as the "paranormal cause". She starts off well by covering scientific research, but half way through the book, she just presents things without any scientific scrutiny. In some cases, she explicitly said that mediums were "unchallenged" or that no one ever claimed they were frauds... all you have to do is google them and you'll see that the depth of her research didn't go past the first page in google search, and she didn't even bother to read their wikipedia articles to find clues about who, when and how challenged their claims. Especially for someone who is a New York Times reporter you'd expect her to do her job.
I gave it 2 stars because it is fun to read, but much of the "evidence" she presents past near death experiences and Jim Tucker's work on reincarnation is "believe me I was there, I swear it was real".
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April 8, 2017
"Hypeness" Rating: 3.0
Book received through Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
* Review Posted on http://thebookuniverse.weebly.com/ *
Summary:
So begins Leslie Keans impeccably researched, page-turning investigation revealing stunning and wide-ranging evidence suggesting that consciousness survives death. Here she continues her examination of unexplained phenomena that began with her provocative and controversial New York Times bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. Kean explores the most compelling case studies involving young children reporting verifiable details from past lives, contemporary mediums who seem to defy the boundaries of the brain and the material world, apparitions providing information about their lives on earth, and ordinary people who recount some of the most extraordinary near-death experiences ever recorded. Kean's first book, and her credibility as a seasoned and well-respected journalist, made people take notice of a topic that many considered implausible. This book will do the same this time enriched by Kean's reactions to her own perplexing experiences encountered while she probed the universal question concerning all of us: Is there life after death?"
My Review:
This book was definitely not my cup of tea. When I initially received this book, I was very excited because I had read several good reviews about it. If you've never read a book about afterlife experiences this may not be the book for you. I would start with a book that has much lighter content on this topic. I hadn't read a book of this topic and I found it to be a little overwhelming. I usually avoid topics like this but I decided to try this topic out. This book started out with an interesting topic of children remembering past lives. After reading this chapter, there wasn't a way to prove if James' parents were playing a entirely truthful role. How do we know that every word they said is true? Following this, the author talked about a story about a shoe on a hospital ledge. The story was very interesting and kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time. My disinterest started to kick in when the author talked about after-death communications and so on. Additionally, the way of the content was organized confused me. In the book, the author would leap back to certain stories. This would lead to some confusion because there were quite a few stories in the book. Other than that, the author's vocabulary and writing was spot-on. Overall, it was a easy read and it was descent. Would I recommend it? Though it wasn't the book for me, I encourage you to try it out and see how you like it. Will I read this book again? Possibly. I don't usually give up on books. Hopefully in the near future I will pick this book up again. Thank you to Blogging for Books for providing me a copy of this!
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February 7, 2017
If you've never read a book about afterlife experiences, Surviving Death is a good place to start. Kean devotes a chapter to each kind of afterlife experience -- reincarnation, near-death experience, death-bed visitors etc -- and in each chapter she explores all aspects of cited instances, looking for other possible explanations. This would be a great book for a skeptic to read.
Thank you, Netgalley, for the e-review edition of this book.
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March 22, 2017
If you’ve read a lot of metaphysical books, how much you like this one will probably depend on how much new information you discover, as well as how interested you are in mediumship–-mental, trance and physical. Author Linda Kean starts the book off with the topic of reincarnation, specifically cases involving children who remember past lives. The two main American cases looked at are the James Leininger and Ryan Hammons ones. Also discussed is the work of the late Ian Stevenson and his successor Jim Tucker. If you know a lot about the topic already, there’s really nothing new in this book about reincarnation.
Next, the author moves on to NDEs (near-death experiences), and the story she starts off with is . . . yes, you may have guessed it . . . the shoe on the hospital ledge story. But, never fear, instead of then discussing the works of Raymond Moody and con man Eben Alexander; who Dr. Moody said was a “humble man”, and the teller of one of the most fascinating NDE stories ever told in the history of the world; Ms. Kean smartly concentrates on the work of non-American NDE researchers like Pim van Lommel. (Oops...since writing this review, I have discovered Dr. Lommel highly recommended Eben Alexander's book when it came out. Hence, he has lost all credibility, too, in my opinion.) For me, there were some new stories, including one where a woman left her body during surgery when the instrument the surgeon was using started making the most irritating sound. She was a trained musician, sensitive to and knowledgeable about sounds and pitches.
Then there are chapters on life between life memories told by children, end of life experiences, poltergeists, etc. Some new stories and ideas, but many typical type stories, too. One of the interesting things told about poltergeists in this book was when the recorded knocks supposedly made by poltergeist were compared to recorded knocks made by humans on wood, the wavelengths of the poltergeist knocks were different than the wavelengths of the human knocks.
Finally, the author looks at ADC (after-death communication) and mediumship. These are the topics given the most attention. Some of the chapters in the book are written by other people, such as Loyd Auerbach. (You have to be careful when reading that you do notice someone else besides Ms. Kean wrote the chapter.) Many of the stories about ADCs and mediumship are personal ones told by the author, though. So, that’s all new stuff.
The mediumships covered are mental, including the author’s experience with Laura Lynne Jackson, trance and physical. Mental and physical mediumship get the most attention, and that was a surprise about the latter one. Physical mediumship involves seances in dark rooms, ecotoplasm, materialized human hands, Native American guides, etc. That is a type of mediumship that seems to be rarely talked about these days except in an historical type of way. Apparently, though, such mediumship still exists, and Ms. Kean has participated in such seances.
Hence, while this book ended up being only somewhat interesting to me, I would recommend it to those highly interested in mediumship; those who have not read that much about reincarnation stories involving children; those who wonder if telepathy explains certain paranormal phenomenons; and those who like stories of one person’s search for the survival of a soul after death.
(Note: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher.)
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December 7, 2017
What happens when your two-year old son remembers actual, verifiable names of fellow pilots, technical aircraft details, and the moment the Japanese shot down his plane in the battle for Iwo Jima from his past-life in WWII? What happens when, as a professional, skeptical journalist, you visit a medium and she tells you the most obscure details of your deceased brother's life? What happens when you later ask that deceased brother for a sign that he is really "there" and the next day he sends you a sign foretold by the medium weeks previously? What happens when you sit with a physical medium who goes into trance and can then slowly materialize a warm, flesh-and-blood hand out of nothing, directly in front of you?
Although die-hard skeptics are almost impossible to convince of the verity of the above events, those who seriously research the ever-increasing scientific and lay knowledge around the possible continuing existence of the human mind after death are beginning to realize that the concept cannot be dismissed out-of-hand.
Leslie Kean is a seasoned journalist who conducted thorough investigations into the "survival hypothesis", always cognizant of possible fraud and taking every reasonable precaution against it, and has produced this a well-written, well-researched book outlining the latest evidence that human consciousness somehow continues after death. Although some may believe that she was in a potentially compromised condition, as her brother and a good friend had recently died when she set out to work on the subject, her own experiences and those of more and more of the scientific community, such as cardiac surgeons, psychologists, neural researchers and others, lead the reader to fascinating, if not compelling, evidence that can no longer be ignored.
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Verified Purchase
With a lifetime of involvement and author of many articles on the subject of survival evidence, I can thoroughly recommend this book. Leslie has spoken to the right experts in each field of inquiry, which is not always the case by any means in journalism. Amongst those she has interviewed are: specialist academics; the conveyors of evidence (usually mediums); those who have witnessed evidence; those who have directly received personal evidence. Plus, she has reported on her own remarkable personal evidence. Given the vastness of data available, Leslie has condensed into one book a very fair overall assessment of evidence for and against consciousness survival beyond the grave.
Often journalists present, through ignorance or desire, very biased accounts of survival evidence rendering such accounts as worthless to the rational mind. Either far too sceptical giving little emphasis to, or worst still, ignoring the best evidence. Or, on the other hand, enthusiastically presenting woolly evidence that fails to impress on close examination. In the case of blatant bias in presenting survival evidence, it is not just the prerogative of the written word. So called ‘impartial’ or ‘scientifically based’ TV programmes excel in this sphere. Oh, how transparent are their clandestine agendas to those knowledgeable of the subject matter.
Although for the last three decades I have written on scientific research into all aspects of survival evidence, I have considerable personally experience of the phenomena described in Chapter 25 of Stewart Alexander’s mediumship, which Leslie Keen described as “life changing”. My detailed examination of his seances appeared in Issue 51 of Paranormal Review published July 2009 by the SPR (see below). My report also appears in Stewart Alexander’s autobiography: An Extraordinary Journey: The Memoirs of a Physical Medium, published 2010.
Given the vastness of the data that has been collected over the last two centuries, Leslie Keen’s book can only give a taster to wet the appetite of readers who wish to investigate further. For the serious researcher, there is the USA based American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), or the original Society for Psychical Research (SPR) based in the UK – but only two years older than the ASPR!
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5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book by a first class writerReviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2017
Verified Purchase
I have a fairly extensive library on this all important subject. Not all my books are that good but this one is without doubt absolutely brilliant. Ms Kean is a first class investigative journalist and she takes nothing for granted but probes the data for more 'down to earth' possibilities but after all the alternatives are explored and rejected she comes down heavily on the side of we all survive death irrespective of any religious beliefs.
Written in an easy to read yet intelligent style I recommend this book 100%.
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Heidi The Reader
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February 19, 2017
Investigative journalist Leslie Kean takes a close look at a wide variety of unexplained phenomena in order to answer the age old question- does human consciousness survive death intact with the memories, personality, and uniqueness that was exhibited in life? I found her evidence astonishing.
Much of her research into near-death experiences (NDEs), I had been exposed to in other books. But, the chapters about children remembering past lives, psychic mediums and physical mediums was entirely new to me. As I read, I kept getting goose bumps up and down my arms. The stories are that powerful.
(Reminder, the following quotes were taken from an advance reader's copy and may change or be edited in the final printed version.) Why did Kean write this book? "My intention is to present some of the most interesting evidence from diverse sources and show how it interconnects, making it accessible for the intelligent and curious reader encountering the material for the first time. Strict journalistic protocols can be applied to any topic for which there is data, no matter how unusual or even indeterminate." loc 51, ebook. I think she succeeded admirably. Most of Surviving Death is easy to understand, no matter how far-out the material may be.
I'll admit to losing interest in the passages where she tries to distinguish between intelligence coming from the living human psyche or dead ones, the psi theory vs the survival theory. But, since that was the point of the book, that may be some people's favorite part so don't let me put you off.
Take these death bed descriptions of the other side by those about to leave this world: "The great inventor Edison, just hours before his death, emerged from a coma, opened his eyes, looked up, and said: "It's very beautiful over there." And more recently, the sister of Steve Jobs reported that just before he died, Jobs looked over the shoulders of his family members, right past them, and said, "Oh wow. Oh Wow. OH WOW!!" loc 2176, ebook. I was not present when my grandpa passed, but Grandma told me later that at the moment he took his last breath, that a light came into his eyes and his face became so completely peaceful that he looked thirty years younger. I can't say that I know for sure what waits for us beyond this life, but I can say that I'm not afraid. If you happen to have any fears in that regard, Surviving Death could be of great help to you.
Kean doesn't answer the question she poses definitively because, of course, she hasn't died and come back to tell us about it, but the stories and evidence that she presents is compelling. Throughout the chapters, Kean writes about personal, first-hand experiences that she has had. I believe that they are genuine. The hardcore skeptics may disagree.
The most extraordinary part of this book were the physical manifestations that Kean observed in the medium seances. Apparently, these seances have been going on for hundreds of years in certain areas of the world. Did you know that in the 1920s in Warsaw, Poland, bowls of wax were placed in the seance chapter and apparitions were able to make molds of their hands? "In the Warsaw experiments, gloves were produced with interlocking fingers, with two hands clasping one another, and with the five fingers spread wide apart. Needless to say, the removal of a human hand from such formations would be impossible. Dematerialization was the only method that would leave the molds intact." loc 4504, ebook. How had I never heard of this!
Recommended for readers who are prepared to have their minds blown. Surviving Death is incredible and almost indescribable. If you are interested in such studies, it is an absolute must-read. You may also want to look into Wisdom of Near Death Experiences: How Understanding NDEs Can Help Us Live More Fully and The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife.
Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for a free digital copy of this book.
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Ciarrah, MHA
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April 14, 2018
While I initially got chills listening to this book, it became a circus in the last chapter once seances, ectoplasm, and materializations became the topic. The fact that the last person interviewed refused to have his "work" filmed or photographed tells a lot. He's full of it and so is the author for even including him in her book. That immediately dropped my rating down to 3 stars.
Otherwise, it was an interesting read.
And these ghosts are probably all demons anyway.
Yea, I said it!
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Erik Graff
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May 6, 2017
The issue of personal survival after physical death is a sensitive one involving everyone. Such religious traditions as address the issue disagree as do individuals. The evidence is elusive, interpretations of it widely varying.
I approach the matter with prejudice, agreeing with the old Buddhist tradition that dwelling on such matters is not conducive to what ought most matter. Yet it's noteworthy that some Buddhist traditions do precisely just that.
Kean's book is also prejudiced in the presumption that there is evidence for personal survival. Here I agree with her. There is, in fact, evidence suggestive of such a hypothesis. To her credit she also allows for the counter hypothesis of super-psi, that being some combination of purported psi abilities (telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, precognition) which might account for all the cases she addresses. Sadly, there seems as yet to have been found no scientific means to falsify either proposition. The question remains open--and elusive.
The cases Kean present range from some suggestive of reincarnation to others lending themselves more to the idea of something like an afterlife, a dimension beyond the one we inhabit as material beings. However, as has been pointed out by others, the evidence, such as it is, merely suggests that elements of some persons persist for some time after their deaths--elements, not perhaps actual, self-aware personalities; elements such as information pertinent to such previous living persons.
The kinds of evidence Kean takes up include Out of Body and Near Death Experiences as well as psychic and physical mediumship. Most impressive, anecdotally, is the first case, that James Leininger, a little boy with veridical memories of an American airman killed in WWII. It's a good story, well told and very, very disconcerting. Most impressive, scientifically speaking, is the work of some cardiologists and other medical specialists on the cases of flat-lining patients who return to consciousness with verifiable accounts of events which occurred while they were clinically dead, events which, in some cases, suggest an ability to leave the body and return.
I've read at least five books about evidences for survival hypotheses now, not to mention dozens of books about religious beliefs pertaining to the subject. Like UFO books (and Kean has written a good one), I find the evidences fascinating but ultimately elusive.
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July 10, 2019
This book is pretty much best described as a downward spiral. It starts off in an interesting way with a few cases of reincarnation and near death experiences. I have to say that reincarnation cases are neither new nor is Leslie Kean's coverage particularly detailed, all the information has been already widely reported and one of the cases she writes about has a whole book devoted to him. Once she gets to talk about her experiences with psychics the book becomes shaky and less and less evidence is presented, and by the time she gets to talk about physical mediums the book devolves into complete nonsense with people manifesting levitating trumpets and what not. My problem with the book is not the claims that she makes but the fact that she thinks it's evidence of anything. There is no real scrutiny of the stories she tells even the stories that she witnessed. Writing "I don't believe it can be explained in any other way" is really no hard evidence. In general, the book lacks a skeptical perspective. When I say that, I don't mean that someone's intention should be to show that any of this is fake, but to be more caution in weighing the evidence. I think it would greatly benefit the book as well as the "paranormal cause". She starts off well by covering scientific research, but half way through the book, she just presents things without any scientific scrutiny. In some cases, she explicitly said that mediums were "unchallenged" or that no one ever claimed they were frauds... all you have to do is google them and you'll see that the depth of her research didn't go past the first page in google search, and she didn't even bother to read their wikipedia articles to find clues about who, when and how challenged their claims. Especially for someone who is a New York Times reporter you'd expect her to do her job.
I gave it 2 stars because it is fun to read, but much of the "evidence" she presents past near death experiences and Jim Tucker's work on reincarnation is "believe me I was there, I swear it was real".
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April 8, 2017
"Hypeness" Rating: 3.0
Book received through Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
* Review Posted on http://thebookuniverse.weebly.com/ *
Summary:
So begins Leslie Keans impeccably researched, page-turning investigation revealing stunning and wide-ranging evidence suggesting that consciousness survives death. Here she continues her examination of unexplained phenomena that began with her provocative and controversial New York Times bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. Kean explores the most compelling case studies involving young children reporting verifiable details from past lives, contemporary mediums who seem to defy the boundaries of the brain and the material world, apparitions providing information about their lives on earth, and ordinary people who recount some of the most extraordinary near-death experiences ever recorded. Kean's first book, and her credibility as a seasoned and well-respected journalist, made people take notice of a topic that many considered implausible. This book will do the same this time enriched by Kean's reactions to her own perplexing experiences encountered while she probed the universal question concerning all of us: Is there life after death?"
My Review:
This book was definitely not my cup of tea. When I initially received this book, I was very excited because I had read several good reviews about it. If you've never read a book about afterlife experiences this may not be the book for you. I would start with a book that has much lighter content on this topic. I hadn't read a book of this topic and I found it to be a little overwhelming. I usually avoid topics like this but I decided to try this topic out. This book started out with an interesting topic of children remembering past lives. After reading this chapter, there wasn't a way to prove if James' parents were playing a entirely truthful role. How do we know that every word they said is true? Following this, the author talked about a story about a shoe on a hospital ledge. The story was very interesting and kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time. My disinterest started to kick in when the author talked about after-death communications and so on. Additionally, the way of the content was organized confused me. In the book, the author would leap back to certain stories. This would lead to some confusion because there were quite a few stories in the book. Other than that, the author's vocabulary and writing was spot-on. Overall, it was a easy read and it was descent. Would I recommend it? Though it wasn't the book for me, I encourage you to try it out and see how you like it. Will I read this book again? Possibly. I don't usually give up on books. Hopefully in the near future I will pick this book up again. Thank you to Blogging for Books for providing me a copy of this!
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February 7, 2017
If you've never read a book about afterlife experiences, Surviving Death is a good place to start. Kean devotes a chapter to each kind of afterlife experience -- reincarnation, near-death experience, death-bed visitors etc -- and in each chapter she explores all aspects of cited instances, looking for other possible explanations. This would be a great book for a skeptic to read.
Thank you, Netgalley, for the e-review edition of this book.
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SundayAtDusk
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March 22, 2017
If you’ve read a lot of metaphysical books, how much you like this one will probably depend on how much new information you discover, as well as how interested you are in mediumship–-mental, trance and physical. Author Linda Kean starts the book off with the topic of reincarnation, specifically cases involving children who remember past lives. The two main American cases looked at are the James Leininger and Ryan Hammons ones. Also discussed is the work of the late Ian Stevenson and his successor Jim Tucker. If you know a lot about the topic already, there’s really nothing new in this book about reincarnation.
Next, the author moves on to NDEs (near-death experiences), and the story she starts off with is . . . yes, you may have guessed it . . . the shoe on the hospital ledge story. But, never fear, instead of then discussing the works of Raymond Moody and con man Eben Alexander; who Dr. Moody said was a “humble man”, and the teller of one of the most fascinating NDE stories ever told in the history of the world; Ms. Kean smartly concentrates on the work of non-American NDE researchers like Pim van Lommel. (Oops...since writing this review, I have discovered Dr. Lommel highly recommended Eben Alexander's book when it came out. Hence, he has lost all credibility, too, in my opinion.) For me, there were some new stories, including one where a woman left her body during surgery when the instrument the surgeon was using started making the most irritating sound. She was a trained musician, sensitive to and knowledgeable about sounds and pitches.
Then there are chapters on life between life memories told by children, end of life experiences, poltergeists, etc. Some new stories and ideas, but many typical type stories, too. One of the interesting things told about poltergeists in this book was when the recorded knocks supposedly made by poltergeist were compared to recorded knocks made by humans on wood, the wavelengths of the poltergeist knocks were different than the wavelengths of the human knocks.
Finally, the author looks at ADC (after-death communication) and mediumship. These are the topics given the most attention. Some of the chapters in the book are written by other people, such as Loyd Auerbach. (You have to be careful when reading that you do notice someone else besides Ms. Kean wrote the chapter.) Many of the stories about ADCs and mediumship are personal ones told by the author, though. So, that’s all new stuff.
The mediumships covered are mental, including the author’s experience with Laura Lynne Jackson, trance and physical. Mental and physical mediumship get the most attention, and that was a surprise about the latter one. Physical mediumship involves seances in dark rooms, ecotoplasm, materialized human hands, Native American guides, etc. That is a type of mediumship that seems to be rarely talked about these days except in an historical type of way. Apparently, though, such mediumship still exists, and Ms. Kean has participated in such seances.
Hence, while this book ended up being only somewhat interesting to me, I would recommend it to those highly interested in mediumship; those who have not read that much about reincarnation stories involving children; those who wonder if telepathy explains certain paranormal phenomenons; and those who like stories of one person’s search for the survival of a soul after death.
(Note: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher.)
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December 7, 2017
What happens when your two-year old son remembers actual, verifiable names of fellow pilots, technical aircraft details, and the moment the Japanese shot down his plane in the battle for Iwo Jima from his past-life in WWII? What happens when, as a professional, skeptical journalist, you visit a medium and she tells you the most obscure details of your deceased brother's life? What happens when you later ask that deceased brother for a sign that he is really "there" and the next day he sends you a sign foretold by the medium weeks previously? What happens when you sit with a physical medium who goes into trance and can then slowly materialize a warm, flesh-and-blood hand out of nothing, directly in front of you?
Although die-hard skeptics are almost impossible to convince of the verity of the above events, those who seriously research the ever-increasing scientific and lay knowledge around the possible continuing existence of the human mind after death are beginning to realize that the concept cannot be dismissed out-of-hand.
Leslie Kean is a seasoned journalist who conducted thorough investigations into the "survival hypothesis", always cognizant of possible fraud and taking every reasonable precaution against it, and has produced this a well-written, well-researched book outlining the latest evidence that human consciousness somehow continues after death. Although some may believe that she was in a potentially compromised condition, as her brother and a good friend had recently died when she set out to work on the subject, her own experiences and those of more and more of the scientific community, such as cardiac surgeons, psychologists, neural researchers and others, lead the reader to fascinating, if not compelling, evidence that can no longer be ignored.
philosophy-metaphysics-psychology
