philosophical underpinnings of Peake's theory

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	• Is There Life After Death? Anthony Peake Chartwell Books, 2006 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Spoiler Alert: The answer is Sort of...

In order to argue his theory that such phenomena as deja vu, near death experiences and precognition can all be explained by understanding that anyone who has had such experiences is reliving their entire life in the last few seconds of their previous one, Peake brings together a mishmash of quantum theory, neuroscience, personal accounts of paranormal experiences and bad logic. He has the usual crank theorist characteristics of jumping to unwarranted conclusions and being highly selective about evidence. Examples: Many people who experience NDE's report journeying to a paradisical place - Peake ignores this because it doesn't fit in with his theory. He quotes from a Gnostic gospel to suggest that the Gnostics believed in "eternal return" - the quotation doesn't in fact support this, and even if it did, it wouldn't count as evidence. He misconstrues scientific theories and facts... For instance, he says that a radioactive half life implies that there will always be a quantity of a given radioactive substance - not so, a billion atoms of cobalt 60 will eventually be reduced to one, and then none. I could go on and on.

Nevertheless, his theory (which might be better argued), is intriguing and disturbing. If nothing else it will have me thinking hard for ways to refute it.

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Interesting

The author ties together interesting ideas from quantum mechanics, neurology, and historic anecdotes of psychics and seers to draw some startling and provocative conclusions. Whether or not you buy the endpoint, I liked the journey, and found it a well-explained and fun brain-twisty.

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Extraordinary piece of work

The only bad thing about this book is its title, which gives the impression you'll read about mediumship or psychical research. You won't. This work is soundly based on the latest findings of Quantum Physics and, in a stroke that amounts almost to genius, elects to take their implications seriously. The result is a book that should be required reading in every school in the country. This is reality not as we experience it, but as it must be. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone concerned with the big questions in life. (Including whether there is life after death, but, oddly, that's the least important question.)

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Must Read

It's a rare thing for me to rave about a book. I love to read and consequently, I read a lot of books and am often disappointed. Not so with "Is There Life after Death" by Anthony Peake. In fact, this was a book that I couldn't and didn't want to put down and yet had to just to think about its content. It's well researched, well written and frankly well published in the sense that it's a quality book too for the price. Peake has a slightly humorous writing style yet delivers on content and punch.
So what is the book about? Well, it's really not about life after death and to some extent the title seems an odd choice. Peake lucidly explores quantum physics, medicine, psychology, certain aspects of occult thinking, gnosis, history and more besides, too progressively and comprehensively builds a picture that supports his thesis. It's a book that needed writing because, as I have noted many times, many disciplines are coming together to point to some startling conclusions about reality and Peake manages to communicate the complex with simplicity.

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philosophical underpinnings of Peake's theory

Besides being an innovative and fascinating work on human consciousness after death, Peake's text is delightful to read for its many parallels to existential thought and phenomenology. I for one was less interested in the quantum physics and cognitive science (although I certainly did take these sections of the book very seriously and learned much from them) than those parts which examined the contents of our consciousness. In his eidolon/daemon dyad and its concept of a second, higher Self, Peake mirrors so many thinkers (James, Emerson, Fechner, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Jung to name only a few) and manages to elegantly tie together key concepts which are essential to deeper comprehension of human existence. The theory of eternal recurrence obtains from Peake's theorizing an aspect of realness and validity for perhaps the first time. I highly recommend his book for anyone interested in the depth of our human existence, in life and at the point of death.

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