The Journey Home: What Near-Death Experiences and Mysticism Teach Us about the Meaning of Life and Living

Readers who stop short of this book's final section may dismiss it as a savvy marketer's creation: multicultural spirituality focusing on near-death experiences replete with angels and dazzling light. Furthermore, Berman's list of virtues includes self-actualization, ecological sensitivity and tolerance, while the roster of vices lists materialism, dogma and ecclesiastical authority. Berman, the award-winning author of The Search for Meaning and The Courage of Conviction, is without doubt a gifted communicator in the spiritual idiom of the 1990s; he has not, however, succumbed entirely to spirituality lite. From the book's premise that death teaches us how to live to its ethics-based conclusion that ""when you love something,... responsibility quickly follows,"" Berman proclaims the goodness of creation without losing sight of the starker side of classical mysticism: sin, judgment, hell. The book's always fascinating and sometimes sensational stories are anchored by the last two chapters, in which Berman works out an ""eternal theology"" that ranks with the best of contemporary wisdom literature. (Dec.) Author tour.