WHO DIES?

by Stephen Levine ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 26, 1982

You have to like your Kubler-Ross heavily spiced with Eastern spiritualism--paradoxes, instructive tales, key words capitalized (as in Oneness and Mind)--to go for this item. What a great deal of verbiage boils down to is that we should die peacefully, accepting death as one more manifestation of life, ""softening"" the mental fist around our pain, etc. Occasionally some of the Eastern notions presented here seem a little bizarre--such as the theory that children die more easily than adults (unless they are mirroring their parents' dismay) because they ""have just come from"" death; or that we all carry around a vast wellspring of grief, the heritage of previous lives with their own losses (one man, under hypnosis, recalls a previous European existence in which he mourned both his father and his wife). Other concepts are more hackneyed: the implication that we create our own heavens and hells, or that funerals give us the opportunity to ""let go."" This is primarily for a pre-sold audience; nonbelievers seeking comfort and guidance would be better advised to turn to Kubler-Ross' On Death and Dying and others of that ilk.

Pub Date: March 26, 1982

ISBN: 385-17010-6

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1982

Categories: NONFICTION