The Afterlife in Popular Culture: Heaven, Hell, and the Underworld in the American Imagination gives students a fresh look at how Americans view the afterlife, helping readers understand how it's depicted in popular culture. What happens to us when we die? The book seeks to explore how that question has been answered in American popular culture. It begins with five framing essays that provide historical and intellectual background on ideas about the afterlife in Western culture. These essays are followed by more than 100 entries, each focusing on specific cultural products or authors that feature the afterlife front and center. Entry topics include novels, film, television shows, plays, works of nonfiction, graphic novels, and more, all of which address some aspect of what may await us after our passing. This book is unique in marrying a historical overview of the afterlife with detailed analyses of particular cultural products, such as films and novels. In addition, it covers these topics in nonspecialist language, written with a student audience in mind. The book provides historical context for contemporary depictions of the afterlife addressed in the entries, which deal specifically with work produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. Provides readers with an encyclopedic treatment of the afterlife in American popular culture, without any religious or moral biases Connects depictions of the afterlife with general social trends Contests the idea that Americans fear death by showing the plethora of examples of the afterlife shown in film, television, and more Presents a serious analysis of vampires, zombies, and other fictional archetypes without becoming hyper-academic or humorous

For the past thirty-fi ve years, Dr. Barbara Pomar has guided her clients on journeys into their past lives. "Confessions of a Regressionist" presents both her personal account of her work with clients working to reverse past decisions to change the present and future and the theories behind the practice.

For some, the very existence of past lives, let alone the ability to reconnect with them, is a point of spirited debate. Even so, Dr. Pomar has helped many to come to their own conclusions about the validity of this technique. Now, she guides readers on using her techniques to live more fully or mold their destinies. She also discusses theories on why and how past-life regression is possible.

If you've ever struggled with how the possibility of past-life regression fits within your faith, Dr. Pomar off ers advice on how to evaluate your conflict. If you are a regressionist, Dr. Pomar's work can help you realize that by helping your client, you also help past and future generations as well. If you've ever considered meeting with a regressionist, Dr. Pomar explains how this sort of experience can help you live more fully in the present, with joy, confi dence, and prosperity-by releasing or neutralizing memories of harmful events.

Based on the idea that past and future life memories may be creations of the imagination and yet still be useful in healing, "A Practical Guide to Healing by Remembering Your Past and Future Lives" discuses a number of popular theories of memory creation and gives you practical tools to help you remember your other lives-past and future-to make the most of your life today.

Author Matt Gomes has researched the information to help you understand the theories of memory creation, storage, and retrieval; discover how the past affects the present and the present influences the future; and identify how your current physical and emotional issues are rooted in your past lives.

Even if you have doubt in the actual existence of reincarnation or of other lifetimes, "A Practical Guide to Healing by Remembering Your Past and Future Lives" can help you let go of fears and phobias, deal with death, understand, and forgive others. You "can" heal your present!

First revealed by a Tibetan monk in the 14th century, Bardo Thodol ("Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State") - known more commonly as The Tibetan Book of the Dead - describes the experience of human consciousness in the bardo, the interval between death and the next rebirth in the cycle of death and rebirth. The teachings are designed to help the dying regain clarity of awareness at the moment of death, and by doing so achieve enlightened liberation. Popular throughout the world since the 1960s and overwhelmingly the best-known Buddhist text in the West, this classic translation by Kazi Dawa Samdup is divided into 21 chapters, with sections on the chikhai bardo, or the clear light seen at the moment of death; choenyid bardo, or karmic apparitions; the wisdom of peaceful deities, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas; the 58 flame-enhaloed, wrathful, blood-drinking deities; the judgement of those who the dying has known in life through the "mirror of karma"; and the process of rebirth. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death and rituals to undertake for the dying. Presented in a high-quality Chinese-bound format with accompanying illustrations, The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an ideal resource of ancient wisdom for anyone interested in Tibetan Buddhist notions of death and the path to enlightenment.

Despite the perennial hope of life beyond the grave, Flew shows that there are insuperable difficulties in elucidating post-mortem survival on a rational basis. He analyses the three ways that philosophers of the past have attempted to get around these difficulties: the 'reconstitutionist way' (miraculous reassembly of our deceased bodies at some future time, such as the Last Judgement); the 'way of the astral body' (a sort of duplicate, undetectable 'body', which detaches itself from the material body after death); and, the 'Platonic-Cartesian way' (an incorporeal mind or soul containing a person's identity which lives on after death). The main problem, says Flew, is the impossibility of logically demonstrating how a person surviving death in any imagined altered state could identify him- or herself as the same person who had previously lived a flesh-and-blood life on the Earth. Flew reviews both the classic arguments of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes, as well as the modern findings of parapsychology, elucidating this complex issue with logical rigor and engaging wit.

In this personal account, one man details how he discovered the fact of reincarnation and explores what he did in his prior lives.

More people than you would believe have prior life memories. In his new spiritual memoir "My Journey down the Reincarnation Highway: The True Story of a Man who found nine of His Past Lives" author and businessman Frank Mares tells how he acquired psychic ability in his middle age. With this new gift, he recovered facts about nine of his prior lives, most of which involved violent, bloody deaths. The most recent life was that of a young German Wehrmacht sergeant who was ambushed and killed by Russians during the night of May 1, 1944 in a dark Estonian farmhouse. Not being satisfied with just discovering his past lives, Mares goes on a spiritual mission to find out why he kept dying violently. The answers do not come easily, but by using a team of three world class psychics he eventually tracks down the shocking reason for all his brutal deaths. The psychic team finds that within the soul of this normal small businessman resides a brutal, stone cold killer from the 1600's who surprisingly was the revered founder of a gentile noble family.As part of his soul's continuing quest for redemption, Mares hopes to salvage the dark time in his soul's past into something that could help others today. His experiences show that death is only a transition phase, and that it should not be feared. His book also reveals that reincarnation is actually a well designed, organized system that allows souls to learn personalized life lessons over a surprising number of lives. If you read this book, you will never look at life (and death) in the same way again.

A modern guide to connecting with the other side, Signs is full of stories of hope. It teaches us how to recognise and interpret the life-changing messages from loved ones and spirit guides, by a renowned psychic medium. Laura Lynne Jackson is a psychic medium and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Light Between Us. She possesses an incredible gift: the ability to communicate with loved ones who have passed, convey messages of love and healing, and impart a greater understanding of our interconnectedness. Though her abilities are exceptional, they are not unique, and that is the message at the core of this book. Understanding 'the secret language of the universe' is a gift available to all. As we learn to ask for and recognise signs from the other side, we will start to find meaning where before there was only confusion, and see light in the darkness. We may decide to change paths, push toward love, pursue joy, and engage with life in a whole new way. In Signs, Jackson is able to bring the mystical into the everyday. She relates stories of people who have experienced uncanny revelations and instances of unexplained synchronicity, as well as others drawn from her own experience. There's the lost child who appears to her mother as a deer that approaches her unhesitatingly at a highway rest stop; the name written on a dollar bill that lets a terrified wife know that her husband will be okay; the Elvis Presley song that arrives at the exact moment of Jackson's own father's passing; and many others. This is a book that is inspiring and practical, deeply comforting and wonderfully motivational, in asking us to see beyond ourselves to a more magnificent universal design.

Throughout history human beings have been preoccupied with personal survival after death. Most world religions therefore proclaim that life continues beyond the grave, and they have depicted the Hereafter in a variety of forms. These various conceptions constitute answers to the most perplexing spiritual questions: Will we remember our former lives in the Hereafter? Will we have bodies? Can bodiless souls recognize each other? Will we continue to have personal identity? Will we be punished or rewarded, or absorbed into the Godhead? These issues serve as the basis of this collection of essays which provide a framework for understanding traditional conceptions of the Hereafter as well as new perspectives.