Knowledge of Spirit Worlds and Life after Death

This book reports conversations between the author and eight 'spirit guides', along with his late father, who was also steeped in the work of Rudolf Steiner. There is much wisdom in these pages, consistent with other sources and based on spiritual principles. There is a good deal of informative content in response to questions about what kind of worlds these beings inhabit and what they do. As one might expect, there are close intrinsic connections between those who with whom we are very close in this life. For me, the most interesting reflections were on the nature of post-mortem identity, for instance this: 'you expand into cosmic consciousness and feel that the world is within you, instead of being in yourself and looking at the world… your perception is totally changed. You are now the world, you do not stand facing the world as you did on earth. Now the world is in you and you are the world.' (p. 42) This is very much the non-dual perspective of the mystic. As 'beings of energy and light', we can be both self-contained and more diffuse and spread out (p. 79).

Correspondingly, birth is a contraction. For comparative purposes, each chapter finishes with a reflection and commentary based on the writings of Steiner. Given what is written about identity, I could not completely square this with a more linear concept of reincarnation – one analogy might be the seeds coming from the same apple, both continuous and discontinuous. I suspect that a comprehensive understanding is not available to our normal way of thinking.