Afterlife by David Darling
This is a meditation on death and life after death which employs current scientific thinking as a metaphor for immortality. The author examines the possibility that consciousness may survive death, and explores the many interpretations of death that exist - the scientific, the philosophical, the pyschological and the religious/spiritual. He addresses the ultimate question: do human beings have a spirit or soul which can exist independently from their physical brain? The book encompasses many areas of research - the anthropic principle, left brain and right brain theories, and also focuses on near death experiences. He explains all the mystical aspects of these experiences in purely scientific terms. Connecting all its ideas to real experiences we have, memories, hopes, fears, hallucinations, the book attempts to unify all these strands into a grand theory of life and death.