Life on the Other Side

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUL 31, 2000

Browne has been spreading her popular and uplifting psychic messages in private practice and on daytime talk shows for decades; her 1999 book, The Other Side and Back, hit number one on the PW bestseller list. Now she's back with a plainspoken, good-humored guide to the invisible world--which some people call the "afterlife" and others call "heaven"--that, she argues, is just "the other side" of our world. Browne takes readers on a detailed tour (with illustrations!) of this paradise, where there are buildings (concert halls, athletic stadiums, libraries and schools--but no shopping malls); where psychological help is available for those who need help making the transition; and where "we don't need to eat," but we can do so for sheer pleasure (and we don't need bathrooms afterward). Drawing on her years of experience as a psychic hypnotist and healer, Browne suggests that the other side is a kind of rest stop for our souls, where we go in between our multiple sojourns in this dimension. The folks over there, she argues, can talk to us, help us cure AIDS and guide us as we try to heal the pain in our lives. Browne anticipates reader skepticism with a kind of tough-edged patience--she's been there and seems to genuinely want to help readers get past their crippling disbelief so they can understand the cycles of life. And she's armed with examples to show she's not making any of this up--she tells of skeptics who, when hypnotized, began speaking ancient, dead languages they couldn't possible have learned in this lifetime and of audiotape recordings of voices from the other side. Although the book isn't likely to make believers out of scoffers, it is a well-written and entertaining cultural bellwether. BOMC, QPB, One Spirit, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club selections.