Rabbi Spitz bases his conviction that life continues after death upon nine phenomena; (1) his belief that there is a soul; (2) mental telepathy; people sensing what they can’t hear or see, such as a person sensing that a relative thousands of miles away suddenly became ill; (3) communications from dead relatives, as when a father appears in a son’s dream and tells him that he just died; (4) biblical statements that other people see as metaphors, but which the rabbi takes literally, such as “he was gathered to his people,” which he understands as a departure to “the world to come”; (5) reincarnation, as when a person said that he would like to return to earth as a butterfly, and a butterfly is seen flying around the rabbi’s head at the man’s funeral; (6) mediums delivering communications from the dead; (7) the ability of people under hypnosis to recall past lives that they say they lived; (8) the existence of many mystics who insisted that there is life after death and who say that they went through some of the above-mentioned experiences; and most of all (9) “near death experiences.” The book is written well, is interesting, and worth reading, but not everyone will find it persuasive. The following are some thoughts on each of his proofs.
The belief in the existence of a soul is very widespread, but science has been unable to prove ...
