Heaven: An Illustrated History of the Higher Realms

by Tim Freke

Book Overview

Featuring color reproductions of mystical images, famous architecture, and art, an illustrated survey explores the various conceptions of life after death among the religious traditions and sacred... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573240605
• ISBN13: 9781573240604
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Conari Press
• Length: 95 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.2" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

Heaven through the Ages

This is a really remarkable book that explores the concept of heaven through the ages in all of humankinds' major cultures. Even if this little book was totally without illustration it would be a compelling read, but combined with the many, many well chosen full color illustrations it is a true illustrated, spiritual, work of art.The topic is covered in six well-organized sections: 1) What is Heaven Like? 2) The Inhabitants of Heaven, 3) Getting into Heaven, 4) Ancient Heavens, 5) Modern Heavens, and 6) Beyond Heaven. The entire range of human thought on these matters down through human history is examined with an open mind. Surprisingly, at their deepest level, there is much fundamental agreement between the major traditional views of heaven and an afterlife between cultures. Even the concept of the near death experience (NDE) is discussed in terms of what it may tell us of an afterlife. An example of the completeness of the study is the fact that the materialist/scientific dismissal of God and heaven is also examined.The section on ancient heavens alone contains individual chapters on the Nordic and Celtic, Egyptian, Classical Greek, Asian, and Aboriginal afterlives. It is significant that all nearly primal peoples held that death was a spiritual initiation leading to rebirth in another world. We pass from this world of darkness into the other real world of light.