White Crow Books have done it again*. White Crow have taken a fantastic book, and re-published it making it available at an affordable price.
If you visit Amazon and search for this book you will find the 2001 Edition at around NZ$450 New and NZ$80 Used.
OR you can find the NEW 2019 Edition of Otherwhere from White Crow Books at NZ$19 for Paperback or NZ$10.50 for the Kindle version.
This book is a Great Book to follow Robert Monroe’s 3 books, and Otherwhere is also a great book on it’s own merits, you could read it 1st and if inspired and want to know more read Robert Monroe’s books.
* My first experience of White Crow re-publishing a important book is Randi’s Prize.
Kurt Leland started to have Out of Body Experiences (OBE) when he was 14. He had no idea what they were and tried to make them stop. Years later he came across Journeys out of the body, and after reading it decided to explore the strange world accessible only through OBEs (or death) which he has called Otherwhere.
What I really like about the book Otherwhere is that Kurt brings a great new perspective to the 3 books of Robert Monroe, and gives very thorough explanations of how he has interpreted his experiences.
Kurt has a great metaphor of how to understand what people say about their experiences, which applies to people who are having OBE, or Near-Death Experiences (NDE).
He explains that what people experience when they are out of their bodies during an OBE or NDE is so different from what we experience here in physical reality, that their minds create a sort of translation map that is created from their life experiences to try and make sense of what they are experiencing. Because we all have diferent life experiences, our translation maps are different. Some of us have life experiences which are similar, for example, we grow up in the same culture with the same religion, and others have a very different culture and religious upbringing.
A simple example is that often people who have had an NDE or OBE come back and say they saw colors that don’t exist in our reality. Now imagine you are that person, how are you going to describe what these new colours you have experienced look like, (there is also the question do we even see when we are OBE or NDE). To get an idea of what this might be like, imagine how you would explain the colours Red or Blue to a person who has been blind from birth.
Kurt gives a great example of this on page 165 when he describes a dragon.
The dragon opened its mouth, revealing a long, forked tongue darting over row upon row of gleaming teeth. It seemed to be licking its lips in anticipation of its meal. But the dragon didn’t strike. Instead, it breathed a column of flame over the man on the platform—white-hot flame with the incandescence of magnesium, so bright that I covered my eyes with my forearms and turned away.
Then came the aftershocks as the dragon slipped back into the chasm.
I uncovered my eyes, shaking as if from a rush of adrenalin. Standing on the platform where the man had been was an ingot of gold the length and width of my index finger. As before, the Technician came to retrieve it, entered the elevator on the left, and was gone.
Later on page 167, he discovers that others did not see a dragon.
“Where did the dragon come from?” I wondered aloud. Once again, the group turned to look at me, their expressions full of an amused tolerance that infuriated me.
“So you saw a dragon?” Karin said, carefully. “Tell us about it.”
I described the dragon in detail. To my consternation, everyone on the tour applauded when I was finished.
“Well done,” Karin said. “Everyone else experienced an energy, which arose from the depths of another energy in order to consume a third energy and leave behind a residual energy, which a fourth energy then removed. We all thank you for this lively representation, in physical terms, of what we just witnessed. You can be sure that none of us will forget it now!”
I think that this concept or metaphor that Kurt has put forward in his book “Otherwhere” is very useful. It has helped me to understand the very different descriptions I have come across in many books from people who are describing their NDE, OBE or Life between Lives.
This is only one of the great concepts I received from reading this book. I would thoroughly recommend the book Otherwhere to anyone who wants to know more about what happens when we die.
Finished reading 30th June 2019
This is the third book I have reviewed for White Crow Books, I have also reviewed Randi’s Prize and In Times of War.
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