This is Nanci Danison’s fourth book, broader in scope and more information packed than any of her books to date.The overriding aim of this book was to directly respond to questions and issues raised by readers and YouTube viewers over the years since the publication of her first book back in 2007 (I was pleased to see a few of my own questions in there as well).Nanci’s NDE is fundamentally different to just about any other NDE you are likely to stumble across. In fact the term NDE is slightly misleading as applied to this author, since Nanci, unlike most other NDEers, was actually meant to die, and so progressed to stages far beyond what most NDEs are even aware of from their relatively brief excursions into the afterlife.I personally consider Nanci Danison as the most authoritative source of information on the afterlife and metaphysics. Her writings are unique in convincingly accounting for pretty much the full range of NDE accounts, together with their often diverse and apparently conflicting details and viewpoints. The bigger picture necessary to account for all these various viewpoints only emerges once one attains the higher levels of perspective associated with later stages of the afterlife transition process, as experienced by Nanci.I was originally drawn to Nanci’s NDE account due to the metaphysics described in her account, which tallied pretty well with my understanding of physics learnt at university. I am not naturally drawn to new age or spiritual literature, and previously believed the reductive materialism description of reality. In retrospect I now know this viewpoint is squarely rooted in out-dated 17th century Newtonian physics – something which is useful for calculating such things as the trajectory of a rocket, but rubbish for describing how reality really works.This book is brilliantly written, and really draws you in, revealing one universal truth after another and describing a metaphysics which is both fascinating and astounding. That is not to say it is always an easy read. In some respects it can be quite challenging. A number of past reviewers have stated that Nanci does not sugar-coat what she says, which I would say is quite a reasonable assessment. Indeed some aspects of Nanci’s message are particularly difficult to internalize. One chapter for instance is devoted to deconstructing the concept of evil. The conclusions drawn can be a little difficult for some people to accept. Nonetheless the subject material is covered particularly well, and neatly encapsulates the standard philosophical analysis of evil in terms that are exceptionally easy to understand (in fact her description makes the extraneous details inherent in typical philosophical writings on this subject appear a bit like pretentious pontification). In this chapter Nanci effectively exposes the human concept of evil for the artificial (and often arbitrary and inconsistent) social construct it actually is, providing ample examples which clearly demonstrate how fluid the notion of evil is, continuously varying over time and geographical regions. Despite its counter-intuitive and slightly unappealing conclusion, it is nonetheless quite hard to argue with the brute force of the logicArguably one of the most contentious chapters of the book deals with the thorny issue of suicide. The upshot of this chapter is that suicide is perfectly acceptable from the spiritual level of perspective. This will no doubt greatly perturb a number of her readers, and I suspect Nanci will get quite a spanking for having the nerve to put this in her book. Personally I emphatically agree with every word she writes in this chapter, but I know many won’t. I know all too well how judgemental many people are on this issue, and after reading this chapter I have a better idea of the reason why this is the case as well.Another chapter deals with sexuality, and explains that homosexuality is fine with God; again potentially putting the author in the firing line of hard-line conservatives and bigots. Interestingly she explains that our polar view of gender is a gross simplification, and in fact many biological factors conspire to create a gender normally falling on some part of a spectrum. Personally speaking it just so happens that my chromosomes have all conspired to align in such a way so as to create the purest possible form of heterosexuality possible. Nonetheless I do accept that in reality there probably is a spectrum, with many individuals falling somewhere between the two extremes we identify as pure male and female gender. (This is quite relevant to the recent controversies surrounding the Indian sprinter Dutee Chand and South African middle distance runner Caster Semenya. Both have a condition known as hyperandrogenism, characterized by high levels of male hormones. Since a spectrum exists, the vast majority of female athletes lean towards the excessive male hormone end anyway, directly contributing to their superior athletic performance compared to their peer group (basically female athletes require a bit of the male stuff coursing through their veins to be much cop at their sport). This fact seriously undermines the argument supporting the IAAF claim that these women should be banned from competing. One would have to be very arbitrary in deciding the threshold that determines which athletes have too much male hormone present in their bodies to compete at athletics).Nanci successfully clears up a few points of confusion in this fourth book of hers. For instance, she has consistently claimed in the past that ‘learning how to love’ has no real role to play in our human incarnations. What is far more important allegedly is how to cope with the physical challenges inherent in living in a violent and primitive culture. She is fond of referring to the violent video game ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ as a means to illustrate this point, drawing a parallel between human players who want to face challenges in a game like environment and spiritual beings who likewise like to face challenges in a simulated (from their point of view) environment. At first glance there may seem to be something not quite right about this, but Nanci offers a plausible explanation; spiritual beings are unconditionally loving by nature anyway in their natural spiritual state, so therefore have no need to experience unconditional love in a human life. I have always found the logic of this argument doesn’t quite work however. Spiritual beings might find it easy to express unconditional love in the bliss of the afterlife, but surely it is not so easy to express unconditional love in an often stressful and hostile Earth environment. Would this not also be a worthy challenge for a spiritual being? This point is cleared up in this book however. It turns out that we do in a sense come here to ‘learn how to love’ after all, as Nanci states: “It [human life] is like a virtual reality game in which the only thing that matter is whether we are able to allow our true nature, and unconditional love, to show through the Avatar we select.” So in a weaker sense we do in fact ‘learn how to love’, just not in the strictest literal sense, which of course would not make sense.There are a couple of innocuous looking little statements in this book which are in fact quite loaded, and have far reaching implications. Nanci states in response to a readers question that she can’t tell anyone how to feel about ‘stepping on ant’ but suggests our attitude towards doing such a thing might reasonably be influenced by the knowledge that the soul inside of the ant probably factored in the possibility of being stamped on prior to incarnation. What immediately follows from this is a series of closely related questions: Should our attitude towards eating meat be influenced by the possibility that the soul inside a cow and pig might have anticipated being eaten at some stage? If so should we similarly be influenced when it comes to animal testing for such things as cosmetic products? What about fur coats? Also does this same principle apply to human animals? Should our acceptance of homelessness and poverty be influenced by the possibility of having been pre-empted by the incarnated souls concerned? (Indeed it might have even been their life plan!) Should we even be trying to remedy social injustices in general? Might we be messing with the very reason some souls chose to incarnate into human life to begin with? Like I said, quite a loaded statement.Another loaded statement found in the book is the suggestion that our inclination to “rubberneck road accidents” is due to our spiritually based inquisitive nature. If this is the case what about people who enjoy watch snuff movies? Is this too coming from our spiritual nature? If so what about people who enjoy the spectacle of sadistic blood sports, involving killing or maiming animals (or watching humans hurt each other for that matter?) Is this also coming from our spiritual nature?These possibilities immediately follow from Nanci’s original statements. Deliberately or not, Nanci has in effect implied these things (or at the very least the possibility of these things). The big question is – do we have a bit of a voyeuristic bent in the afterlife? We seem to in this one.Finally I would like to discuss something that has been a real sticking point for me ever since I started reading Nanci’s books. To fully explain the issue I am about to, a bit of background is needed. The basic metaphysics described in Nanci’s Backwards books is as follows: There is only one entity in existence – Source (basically what we refer to as God). In the beginning God/Source knew everything there was to know in a purely intellectual fashion, but craved the experiential knowledge of what it knew intellectually (a bit like the difference between reading a book on flying an airplane and actually flying one). To cut a long story short Source/God somehow carved up part of its energy or consciousness into ‘characters’, referred to as Light Beings in the Backwards books. These are not really ‘Beings’ at all but literally individuated points of self-awareness within the vast consciousness of Source. The separation between the core Source and the individuated bits of consciousness referred to as Light Beings is conceptual rather than literal. Source also manifested a ‘physical’ universe within its mind. The universe only appears physical from a limited perspective point, but in reality is simply made of energy (actually perfectly congruent with modern theoretical physics). The whole universe is literally a thought in the mind of God, who expended a portion of its mental energy to create the universe we currently perceive. The primary aim of creating Light Beings was to effectively create portals via which Source could experience physicality, something which is impossible for it to do in any direct literal sense.Put slightly differently; Source conjured up the next best thing to actually being a physical creature having real physical experiences. It has in effect enabled itself to experience physicality via pure imaginings in its mind. By creating amnesia in these pseudo-beings who are projected into the universe, who as a consequence of this amnesia become temporarily unaware of what they really are, the possibility of experiencing physicality by proxy has been fully realized.However the plot thickens. Part of this manifested universe consists of creatures (including humans) which have self-awareness of their own. This native consciousness is NOT the soul of the animal however. The soul comes into the picture when Light Beings choose to invest part of their own self-awareness into creatures such as humans. This forms some kind of composite entity consisting of a human animal/LB soul – basically two consciousnesses wrapped up into one.The important point this is leading to is as follows: Once one is presented with this picture a pertinent question is immediately raised – what happens to the native consciousness of the human at death? Does it proceed into the afterlife like the LB soul or simply cease to exist?Nanci has clearly stated in her previous books that humans do in fact die, but it hasn’t always been clear exactly what she means by this. For instance, could this ‘dying’ simply be referring to the fact that the physical constituents of the human animal decay and eventually decompose away? Or alternatively does ‘dying’ mean literally that: the native consciousness of the human literally ceasing to exist at bodily death?After reading the initial chapters of Nanci’s latest book I thought I finally had the answer to this. Here she explains in very explicit terms exactly what a Light Being is, and by extension, provides an important clue to answering the above question. Specifically she does this by explaining exactly what it means for a Light Being to re-emerge from the core entity of Source after it has fully merged back into it. All it requires is for Source to gather the full set of memories associated with the LB in question, together with the full specification of personality traits associated with these memories, bundle it together with a bit of Source consciousness – and voila! – a Light Being emerges. (It follows from this that the actual definition of an Light Being is a personality specification and associated set of data representing the entirety of memories associated with that personality specification). In other words God effectively stores a massive database consisting of Light Being profiles, which can pop in and out of existence at the whim of God.It is at this point things get interesting. If Source were to erase all its memory banks, and therefore all data associated with LBs, clearly nothing (in the relevant sense) would die. This would be nothing more than Source figuratively reformatting its internal hard drive. More importantly, it also follows from this that any other ‘being’ in existence, a ‘physical’ creature such as a human for instance, would also not die, since the native consciousness associated with these creatures is also ultimately Source consciousness.So it seems from all this that death is strictly impossible in principle (providing Source itself does not die of course). And from this it becomes self-evident that when Nanci talks about humans dying it is not literal.Only it is! A few chapters on from this Nanci states “Their [humans] consciousness and awareness terminate at death.” Well it doesn’t get more clearer than that. No ambiguity there I guess.So why is this such a big deal? Well if you are like me you might feel a bit of sympathy for the poor humans. They have the double whammy of not choosing to be here (unlike Light Beings who do get to choose) and then having their consciousness terminated at the end of it all. But there is something else. Nanci provides no meaningful criteria for judging whether or not one is the human or the LB soul inhabiting the human. Which one of the entities are we? How could we possibly tell?This is an issue that I hope Nanci will meaningfully address at some later stage, maybe in a newsletter article or a future book perhaps. In the mean time I will just keep hoping I am the incarnated soul and not the human.Despite the vast amount of questions answered in this book there are still a few fundamental issues that remain unresolved (this is not a criticism).i) Does God have a sense of ethics? From what I can see all the justification for Source not judging certain acts as evil revolves around the fact that Earth life is not real from its perspective. But supposing it was? Would that make a difference? Nanci states that Source has no discernment, which would suggest it would not in fact make a difference. But she also states it is impossible for Source to perform any act of evil. Surely this would entail the ability to judge right and wrong? It seems to me the jury is still out on this one.ii) Nanci, like many spiritual authors, states that suffering is not real. It is not clear to me how this can be the case. The reasoning used to back this up is always along the lines that from a higher perspective level the human experiences, including all the suffering, are experienced vicariously. But isn’t this like saying ‘your pain isn’t real because I can’t feel it’? (In Nanci’s defence no other spiritual author as offered a meaningful explanation of this either. From my experience the claim that suffering is an illusion is always simply asserted by spiritual authors without any meaninful explanation to back it up. I continue to await such an explanation).One last point. Nanci gives a brief discourse in response to various people who have accused her of making all this up to make a quick buck. In one of her later chapters she provides very compelling reasons why this is not the case. I happen to personally know enough about the publishing industry to recognise the truth of what she says, so don’t have to take anything she says about this matter on faith. I cannot repeat verbatim the entire discussion relating to this, but I will briefly say that typically people are inclined to attribute a rate of enumeration to average authors which more realistically correspond to New York Times best sellers. No account is made of how much money is siphoned off by publishers, editors, marketers, distributers etc, before a single penny even reaches the author. I suggest to anyone who feels Nanci is raking it in and laughing all the way to the bank they might take a few moments now and again to take a quick peek at Nanci’s Amazon sales ranking. Take it from me, there is no way on God’s green earth that this woman is in this to make money.In summary, this is an outstanding book. Even if you find it hard to agree with everything that is written in it, it will give you plenty to think about, and will likely substantially deepen your thinking and understanding of metaphysical/spiritual issues and concepts. This in my opinion is a seminal piece of work.