Reviews from those far more well-versed in spirituality, physics, etc accompany the publisher info for this book and I encourage anyone to read those for a clearer take on this terrific book: I'm just a random, yet devout, believer in the reality of the afterlife - and tho some of my certainty arises from my own NDEs, those only take a person so far in 'what dreams may come', if you will. In terms of reincarnation, glimpses of a past life via an old recurring dream, made me a believer long ago, but I'm still far less curious about 'yester-lives' than about what happens after this one. Indeed, in a library packed with books on the continuation of consciousness, I've often hoped for an anthology of afterlife wisdom found in 'The Afterlife Therapist'.The often too-florid styles of old Spiritualist tomes made for tedious reading, at times, even though I remained to devour the afterlife descriptions as told to a select bunch of the day's truly great mediums. Dr. Betty's not only done the legwork in gathering info on the astral realms, but brought us up to date on eternity itself.Perhaps precisely because I've read, for example, the works of WT Stead - before and after his passing on the Titanic :-) - am I able to appreciate this modern telling of a soul's journey. In many ways, this 'novel' might be the best way to convey the accumulated knowledge about what happens when we die: The post-corporeal adventures of Aiden Lovejoy encompass afterlife research at its best.It's difficult not to imagine a degree of autobiography here, but the grand scale of each soul's possibilities makes the leap from second to 'all person' POV. I'm reminded of Yoel Hoffman's 'Japanese Death Poems', but in reverse: Instead of poems by those at the end of life, these anecdotes are about the beginning of life.I definitely understand that, for many, to contemplate death is to embrace anxiety and worse. Maybe, with a humane and interesting reference guide like 'The Afterlife Therapist', the conversation can begin in a new way. Unlike 'Nosso Lar', the psychographed offering from Chico Xavier and his guides, Dr. Betty's book is gathered from the descriptions of many different lives and, with the freedom fiction brings, gives a more complete picture than any single book allows.