Sacred Life Holy Death : Seven Stages of Crossing the Divide

By Robert Boldman

This book arrives at a unique moment in our development. As we debate right to die legislation and the morality of assisted suicide, Boldman has written a guide to the passage between life and death... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1889797227
• ISBN13: 9781889797229
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Heartsfire Books
• Length: 149 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

I my years of hospice work I have wished for such a book

Mr. Boldman has skillfully created a readable, well-researched text that will benefit both clinical professional and lay readers who are interested in learning more about the near-death experience and its impact on the individual. He offers hope and assurance via authentic case studies and research sources. He utilizes story telling techniques that address basic human doubts and fears and in this way reveals the possibility of a pathway to becoming based on love. In my many years of hospice work, I have wished for such a work to share with frightened patients and their families, particularly when they could no longer remain in denial of a terminal diagnosis. There is no doubt that this book will stimulate thought and for many bring comfort as it sharpens their awareness on the journey to knowing. By looking at death, the author brings us full circle to the study of life. Diane Longeway, LMSW, Hospice Team Leader, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

A completely new vision of the near-death experience.

from Yoga Journal: July/August 1999This great mystery at the heart of the human condition fuels our curiosity and unease; it also makes bestsellars out of some books which pander to popular interest by recylcing generic tales of being surrounded by light and flooded with a pervasive feeling of love. Now a slim volume by a small publisher has contributed something noteworthy to the literature. Robert Boldman had a NDE himself at five, and in the decades since has devoted himself to understanding the transition between life and death, through his work with the dying and his study of various wisdom traditions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, and Christianity. He now sees the NDE "more as a revelation on the way to live rather than solely a vision of death," for, as he notes, "the voices of countless near-death survivors (tell us) to infuse every act in our life with love. What the NDE teaches us, Boldman writes, is that "in the transition from life to death, all spiritual wisdom is briefly exposed, inviting us to reunite our inner self with the divine. This idea is examined most starlingly in a chapter on "shabd yoga," a form of meditation which he says, "teaches us the art of self-willed death for the purpose of bringing one closer to God." Throughout the book, which is refreshingly free of facile answers and pop-psychology platitudes, Boldman offers an erudite yet engaging meditation on knowing the "something" of which the mystical poet Kabir said, "He who knows it,/will never die;/He who knows it not,/dies again and again."

Offers clarity and insight

Stephen and Odrea Levine, authors of WHO DIES?From the long, slow laboratory of the true heart, Sacred Life, Holy Death offers clarity and insight for healing into death that extends our life all the way to God.

A profound discourse

Kenneth Ring, author of HEADING TOWARD OMEGAMr. Boldman has written one of the most profound discourses on the spiritual meaning of the near-death experience I've yet seen. His book brims with important new insights into this phenomenon, and I recommend it to all who would seek to extract the deepest wisdom that the near-death experience has to teach us.

Ground-breaking volume

Rabbi Earl Grollman, author of COPING AND CARING WHEN YOUR LOVED ONE IS SERIOUSLY ILL Anyone who reads this compelling ground-breaking volume will greatly expand her or his understanding of the profound reverberations of living, dying, and loving. A truly compassionate and stimulating accomplishment.