Life on the Other Side

I have bought a number of these books since my wife passed away several years ago, and the general response to the question of "Where do we go when we die?" is "No one knows." But in this book, Sylvia Browne says "I do know, and here's the answer." So I bought the book, with an open mind, but I wasn't too far along before I started seeing some red flags. Browne claims to have a Christian perspective, but she deeply misrepresents and distorts Christian teaching. Neither Christian nor Jewish faiths have ever had reincarnation as a tenet, and not because "Constantine rewrote the Bible" (thank you so much for that thread of ignorance, Dan Brown :-) Both faiths are absolutely monotheistic, with no "wiggle room" for God the Father and his co-Goddess, the Mother. Browne doesn't even seem to understand her own claimed Gnostic Christian roots properly -- the original Second Century Gnostics would have been appalled by her belief in reincarnation as being a way to grow closer to God. At any rate, bearing in mind that Browne seemed to view Christianity the way she thought it should be, as I continued to read her story, it occurred to me that the book was, in fact, the afterlife as Sylvia Browne would like it to be. The details seemed to simply go along with what she wanted, while the generalities were an amalgam of Christian, Eastern and New Age beliefs. Heaven, it seems, is a mirror image of the Earth, floating three feet above the planet. Why three feet, not two or two hundred? Who knows? The mirror image includes all seven continents, plus Atlantis and Lemuria. Huh? Browne doesn't like insects, so guess what? There are no insects in heaven. (Unless you like them, she says, then there are insects in heaven, not sure how that would work out.) She has been divorced five times, so, thank the stars, there is no marriage in the afterlife. One would think that, given the focus of the three Abrahamic faiths on Jerusalem, and God's fondness for the place, that the entrance to heaven would be there. Nope, it's on the west coast of the United States. And where does Sylvia Browne live? Bingo! And on it goes, amidst a host of contradictions, like saying that someone she did a reading for was a famous physician in the afterlife, followed two pages later with the statement that there are no diseases in heaven, or saying that everyone is 30 years old, but claiming that there are children playing all over the place. And, while there is no time in the afterlife, and no such thing as days, they still manage to have holidays somehow. Finally, her writing style is irritating, at best, as she constantly inserts herself and those she knows into the story in an aggrandized manner -- you think you have a problem with your kid acting up in school? Well, Sylvia gets complaints from God because her kid disturbed people in heaven during his Astral Travels there! Sort of how everyone seems to have been Charlemagne or Joan or Arc or someone like that in their past life regressions, while there are so few slaves or serfs, which were the vast majority of the planet's population in history. Given her background, which I didn't know about until after I'd bought the book, it's a toss up between whether she has confused her imagination with "messages from the afterlife" or she's just intentionally conjuring a description for her own gain, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say it's the former. I give the book a two star rating, because it is an interesting read and some food for thought, once you weed out the obvious nonsense. I wouldn't recommend it as a good representation of what the afterlife is, however, unless you are, in fact, Sylvia Browne.

This book answered so many questions of mine and put my mind at peace and ease about The Other Side...this book brought true tears of happiness in my eyes..I had my own experience with the scanning machine when I almost lost my life in a car accident 10 years ago...it helped me accept a lot of experiences in my life that I now know are spiritual from this book and it's exciting to read about someone so truly powerful and the fact that totems look after us...I believe my dog Nevaeh is my totem from this life and past lifes and my chart I chose her to help me through this life too...thank you Sylvia Browne you have changed my life from your wonderful knowledge and beautiful experiences