Title: Beyond Death: Continuing Stories in the Afterlife
Author: Sally Muir
Publisher: ‎ Outskirts Press
ISBN: ‎ 1977242669
Genre: Paranormal
Pages: ‎ 270
Reviewed by: David Allen

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Belief in, and investigation of, survival after bodily death, has accompanied humanity since the Egyptian pharaohs, and possibly even before. Egyptian royalty was interred below ground in massive pyramids, their sarcophagi guarded by elaborate curses. Since that time, innumerable scholars, philosophers and mystics, have attempted to wrest the secrets of the afterlife from visions, meditative practice, and occult ritual. In the 20th century, seers like Edgar Cayce and New Age shamans have reported experiences of clairvoyance, telepathy, miracle healing and past life viewing.

This comes as no surprise. From childhood on, we grapple with our knowledge of mortality and our seemingly ever-present awareness of death. For some, comfort arrives in the form of spiritual experiences seeming to grant proof of the survival of self and loved ones – and that’s where this book shines. Others turn to ethics and morality for a sense of mission and loving kindness that might carry beyond the grave.

Author Sally Muir, in Beyond Death: Continuing Stories in the Afterlife, brings readers the best of both worlds. As a minister and officiator at crossings over, near-death experiences, and ‘life reviews’ of departed souls, she graces her clients and her readers with humane, always intelligent renderings of evidence that we survive. Muir brings specific doctrine and schema to bear on these explorations, explaining for example that souls after death are sorted according to the amount of wisdom they have accumulated throughout life. The afterlife is a meritocracy. This perspective lends new valence to the notion of ‘old soul vs. new soul.’ Her system manages to explain and include many other systems of mythological and spiritual belief and practice.

The book is divided into two main parts. The first details, in lucid well-written prose, the life, passing and communications from the Other Side of Ninette Peterson. Ninette, who died after age 90, channels through loud and clear, eventually becoming the author’s astral mentor and role model for a successful career as a ‘survivalist’ guide for her friends, loved ones, and clients. The second part of the book is a collection of moving anecdotes and episodes related to the passing of loved ones, and the astral encounters of those near death and beyond.

Sally Muir is in good company. She travels with ancient traditions such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, an ancient text devoted to instructing those who are about to die in navigating the Bardo, a region populated by those between death and incarnation in their next life. Muir has done her due diligence, citing Rudolf Steiner, a widely respected Viennese scholar and writer on arcane matters, among others.

Muir’s writing is neither precious nor self-conscious, qualities which many books in this genre possess to a fault. She takes the reader along beside her on her journey towards herself and towards finding meaning in a world all too given to cynicism and the worship of the material.

‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ The same can be said for Sally Muir’s eminently readable Beyond Death; chose this book for both an introduction to the topic as well as for an expanded guided tour of this terrain.