David Fontana (1934–2010)

This ambitious volume takes readers on a sweeping exploration of what may await us after death, covering everything from near-death experiences to reincarnation and the various planes of existence that souls are said to inhabit. It is a thought-provoking read that will resonate deeply with those drawn to spiritual inquiry, while also offering enough structured reasoning to engage the curious skeptic. That said, it is a book that rewards critical reading as much as open-minded show more reception.

Fontana opens with a disarmingly personal touch, recalling a childhood fascination with the afterlife and lamenting how rarely adults engage seriously with the subject. This sets a reflective tone that carries throughout the work. Early chapters wrestle with the relationship between mind, soul, and consciousness, questioning whether these phenomena can ever be fully explained through a physical lens. The author convincingly argues that science has inherent limitations when confronting non-physical realities. Critics would rightly note, however, that this cuts both ways. If a claim cannot be tested or disproven, it belongs to the realm of philosophy and faith rather than empirical fact, and Fontana occasionally writes as though he is building a scientific case when the framework he operates within is ultimately unfalsifiable.

The section on near-death experiences is among the strongest in the book. Drawing on a significant body of reported cases, Fontana describes common features such as tunnel experiences and encounters with light, noting that a remarkable percentage of individuals report conscious awareness outside their bodies during clinical death. One of the more compelling aspects of his argument here is the cross-cultural consistency of these accounts. People from vastly different religious traditions, geographic regions, and historical periods report strikingly similar experiences. If these were purely random hallucinations generated by a stressed brain, one might reasonably expect far greater variation shaped by cultural background. The uniformity, at the very least, demands serious explanation.

Fontana also draws on documented cases of veridical perception, instances where individuals accurately reported events occurring in separate rooms while clinically dead and showing no measurable brain activity. Researchers at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia have compiled a substantial body of such cases, and Fontana is right to treat them as significant. They represent a genuine challenge to the materialist model of consciousness and cannot simply be dismissed.

Yet the neurobiological counterargument remains formidable. Most scientists hold that NDEs are the product of a brain under extreme physiological stress, whether from oxygen deprivation, a surge of neurochemicals such as DMT or endorphins, or the chaotic firing of neurons during shutdown. Fontana addresses these explanations, but, in the view of many critics, dispenses with them too quickly without fully accounting for how much the dying brain may be capable of generating in its final moments. Readers will need to weigh these competing interpretations for themselves.

A more pointed weakness concerns how Fontana selects his evidence. The cases highlighted throughout the book tend to feature peaceful, luminous, and transcendent experiences, the kind that map neatly onto his cosmology of spiritual progression. Yet a significant number of NDEs are deeply distressing, featuring darkness, confusion, or terror rather than light and peace. More significantly, the many people who undergo clinical death and report no experience whatsoever receive comparatively little attention. A fully balanced treatment would need to grapple more seriously with these absent and negative cases rather than allowing the positive accounts to stand as representative of the whole.

From there, the book turns to earthbound spirits, those souls said to linger in the physical world due to emotional attachments, sudden death, or unfinished business. The concept of rescue circles, groups formed to guide these spirits toward higher planes, is introduced with compassion rather than sensationalism, which is a welcome approach in a genre prone to dramatization.

The middle portion of the book maps out a detailed cosmology of the afterlife. Hades is presented not as a place of punishment but as a transitional state shaped by the soul's emotional history, where a life review allows for honest reflection on one's earthly actions. Beyond Hades lies the Plane of Illusion, a realm where souls construct realities from their own thoughts and desires, surrounded by familiar environments that mirror the physical world. This is followed by the luminous Plane of Colour, often called Summerland, described as a harmonious realm of joy and peace shaped by the collective consciousness of its inhabitants. Finally, the formless realms represent the highest states of existence, where individual identity dissolves into unity with the divine. These chapters are richly imagined and will captivate readers drawn to mystical traditions, though those seeking empirical grounding will find the cosmology increasingly difficult to evaluate on any terms other than personal belief.

The chapter on reincarnation neatly rounds out the cosmology. Fontana presents rebirth as a possibility particularly relevant to souls with strong attachments to physical life, drawing on cross-cultural beliefs and reported past-life memories in both children and adults. The evidence here is handled with care and intellectual honesty, and the author is straightforward in acknowledging that skepticism about the origins of such memories is reasonable and ongoing.

The conclusion ties the threads together gracefully, emphasizing that one's experiences in the afterlife are directly shaped by the thoughts, actions, and emotional patterns cultivated during life. This is ultimately a book about personal responsibility as much as it is about the mysteries of death.

Fontana's argument is neither as scientifically grounded as he sometimes implies nor as easily dismissed as committed skeptics might prefer. The veridical perception cases are genuinely puzzling. The cross-cultural consistency of NDEs is a real phenomenon deserving more than a dismissive shrug. At the same time, selection bias weakens the evidential base, and the unfalsifiable nature of his central thesis means the argument can never be more than strongly suggestive rather than conclusive.

Where one ultimately lands depends on a prior commitment that no amount of evidence is likely to fully resolve. Those who hold that subjective human experience is itself a form of data, worthy of philosophical weight alongside biological fact, will find Fontana's argument thoughtful and persuasive. Those who require that meaningful claims about reality be testable and reproducible will remain unconvinced. Both positions carry intellectual integrity. This book is most valuable not as proof of anything, but as a serious and carefully constructed invitation to sit with questions that science alone has not yet answered. show less

This ambitious volume takes readers on a sweeping exploration of what may await us after death, covering everything from near-death experiences to reincarnation and the various planes of existence that souls are said to inhabit. It is a thought-provoking read that will resonate deeply with those drawn to spiritual inquiry, while also offering enough structured reasoning to engage the curious skeptic. That said, it is a book that rewards critical reading as much as open-minded show more reception.

Fontana opens with a disarmingly personal touch, recalling a childhood fascination with the afterlife and lamenting how rarely adults engage seriously with the subject. This sets a reflective tone that carries throughout the work. Early chapters wrestle with the relationship between mind, soul, and consciousness, questioning whether these phenomena can ever be fully explained through a physical lens. The author convincingly argues that science has inherent limitations when confronting non-physical realities. Critics would rightly note, however, that this cuts both ways. If a claim cannot be tested or disproven, it belongs to the realm of philosophy and faith rather than empirical fact, and Fontana occasionally writes as though he is building a scientific case when the framework he operates within is ultimately unfalsifiable.

The section on near-death experiences is among the strongest in the book. Drawing on a significant body of reported cases, Fontana describes common features such as tunnel experiences and encounters with light, noting that a remarkable percentage of individuals report conscious awareness outside their bodies during clinical death. One of the more compelling aspects of his argument here is the cross-cultural consistency of these accounts. People from vastly different religious traditions, geographic regions, and historical periods report strikingly similar experiences. If these were purely random hallucinations generated by a stressed brain, one might reasonably expect far greater variation shaped by cultural background. The uniformity, at the very least, demands serious explanation.

Fontana also draws on documented cases of veridical perception, instances where individuals accurately reported events occurring in separate rooms while clinically dead and showing no measurable brain activity. Researchers at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia have compiled a substantial body of such cases, and Fontana is right to treat them as significant. They represent a genuine challenge to the materialist model of consciousness and cannot simply be dismissed.

Yet the neurobiological counterargument remains formidable. Most scientists hold that NDEs are the product of a brain under extreme physiological stress, whether from oxygen deprivation, a surge of neurochemicals such as DMT or endorphins, or the chaotic firing of neurons during shutdown. Fontana addresses these explanations, but, in the view of many critics, dispenses with them too quickly without fully accounting for how much the dying brain may be capable of generating in its final moments. Readers will need to weigh these competing interpretations for themselves.

A more pointed weakness concerns how Fontana selects his evidence. The cases highlighted throughout the book tend to feature peaceful, luminous, and transcendent experiences, the kind that map neatly onto his cosmology of spiritual progression. Yet a significant number of NDEs are deeply distressing, featuring darkness, confusion, or terror rather than light and peace. More significantly, the many people who undergo clinical death and report no experience whatsoever receive comparatively little attention. A fully balanced treatment would need to grapple more seriously with these absent and negative cases rather than allowing the positive accounts to stand as representative of the whole.

From there, the book turns to earthbound spirits, those souls said to linger in the physical world due to emotional attachments, sudden death, or unfinished business. The concept of rescue circles, groups formed to guide these spirits toward higher planes, is introduced with compassion rather than sensationalism, which is a welcome approach in a genre prone to dramatization.

The middle portion of the book maps out a detailed cosmology of the afterlife. Hades is presented not as a place of punishment but as a transitional state shaped by the soul's emotional history, where a life review allows for honest reflection on one's earthly actions. Beyond Hades lies the Plane of Illusion, a realm where souls construct realities from their own thoughts and desires, surrounded by familiar environments that mirror the physical world. This is followed by the luminous Plane of Colour, often called Summerland, described as a harmonious realm of joy and peace shaped by the collective consciousness of its inhabitants. Finally, the formless realms represent the highest states of existence, where individual identity dissolves into unity with the divine. These chapters are richly imagined and will captivate readers drawn to mystical traditions, though those seeking empirical grounding will find the cosmology increasingly difficult to evaluate on any terms other than personal belief.

The chapter on reincarnation neatly rounds out the cosmology. Fontana presents rebirth as a possibility particularly relevant to souls with strong attachments to physical life, drawing on cross-cultural beliefs and reported past-life memories in both children and adults. The evidence here is handled with care and intellectual honesty, and the author is straightforward in acknowledging that skepticism about the origins of such memories is reasonable and ongoing.

The conclusion ties the threads together gracefully, emphasizing that one's experiences in the afterlife are directly shaped by the thoughts, actions, and emotional patterns cultivated during life. This is ultimately a book about personal responsibility as much as it is about the mysteries of death.

Fontana's argument is neither as scientifically grounded as he sometimes implies nor as easily dismissed as committed skeptics might prefer. The veridical perception cases are genuinely puzzling. The cross-cultural consistency of NDEs is a real phenomenon deserving more than a dismissive shrug. At the same time, selection bias weakens the evidential base, and the unfalsifiable nature of his central thesis means the argument can never be more than strongly suggestive rather than conclusive.

Where one ultimately lands depends on a prior commitment that no amount of evidence is likely to fully resolve. Those who hold that subjective human experience is itself a form of data, worthy of philosophical weight alongside biological fact, will find Fontana's argument thoughtful and persuasive. Those who require that meaningful claims about reality be testable and reproducible will remain unconvinced. Both positions carry intellectual integrity. This book is most valuable not as proof of anything, but as a serious and carefully constructed invitation to sit with questions that science alone has not yet answered. show less

This is a beautiful album with coloured illustrations and their explanations in cultures from around the world. The author doesn't pretend to cover all symbols or all their interpretations, but this book serves as a great introduction to the most common types of symbols from simple ones (colours, animals) to complex systems (Tarot, Chakras). As well, while there is a definite effort to have a global perspective, the author mostly concentrates on Europe, India and China.
I usually give away show more all my books, I will be keeping this one as it makes a lovely reference. show less

Has an interesting array of information, though it doesn't go into much depth, being a simple survey. It is organized a bit haphazardly, though it does have both an index and a table of contents, so this is not a huge issue. The book itself is large and beautiful to look at, and serves itself best as a coffee table book, though if you're looking for something for serious research, you may want to look elsewhere.