Amazon.com (ISBN 0525944818, Hardcover)

Professional medium James Van Praagh (Talking to Heaven) offers a guidebook for the living, which charts the course of the soul as it journeys through life, death, and rebirth. Beyond his psychic gifts, Van Praagh has a gift for simplifying complex spiritual ideas and writing about them in a conversational tone. Most appealing for Van Praagh fans are his detailed theories on death and the afterlife. For example, when people die sudden deaths, Van Praagh reports, spirits of the dead often linger over their bodies, unable to comprehend what has happened (but still able to see and hear everything that is being done and said around the corpse). This is why spirits of the already-deceased are so useful in helping the dead transition to the other side.

Speaking of the afterlife, or heaven, Van Praagh writes:

In the higher realms everyone is on the same level of spiritual understanding, like a symphony of beings in tune with one another. For some this may mean a reunion with members of their earth family. For others it could be a meeting with former friends and lovers from previous incarnations.

Finally, Van Praagh returns to his fascinating stories of channeling the deceased to illustrate how the living can stay on task with their raison d'être. If we want to help our souls along on their eternal journeys toward enlightenment, then we must remove the emotional obstacles that are blocking their paths, says Van Praagh, who devotes entire chapters to guilt, fear, forgiveness, and love. --Gail Hudson