In the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "near-death" experiences. Dozens of books, articles, television shows, and films have appeared in which people who have survived a close brush with death reveal their extraordinary visions and ecstatic feelings at the moment they "died". They tell of journeying through a tunnel to a realm of light, seeing a visual record of their past deeds, encountering a benevolent spirit, and returning to life permanently transformed. What do these experiences mean? Does visionary testimony prove that life continues after death? What does the popularity of these reports tell us about our culture? Otherworld Journeys is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the evidence surrounding near-death experiences. Zaleski looks at researchers' findings, first-person accounts of survivors, and possible medical or psychological explanations. She is the first to place this material in historical perspective, pointing out the ways in which it reflects the influence of contemporary culture. The book shows that modern near-death reports belong to a vast family of otherworld journey tales, with representatives in nearly ever religious heritage. In order to identify universal as well as culturally specific features, Zaleski compares near-death narratives in two distinct periods of Western society: medieval Christendom and twentieth-century secular America. She calls attention to the profound similarities, such as the life-review and the transforming after-effects of the vision, and to striking contrasts, such as the absence of hell or punishment scenes from modern accounts. Finally, Zaleski considers current efforts to explain near-death experience scientifically, mediating between the "debunkers" and the near-death researchers. She concludes by suggesting that the otherworld vision is a key for understanding imaginative and religious experience in general.

Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times

Religion & Spirituality

Zaleski, Carol

Christian Books & Bibles

Oxford University Press

Dozens of books, articles, television shows, and films relating "near-death" experiences have appeared in the past decade. People who have survived a close brush with death reveal their extraordinary visions and ecstatic feelings at the moment they died, describing journeys through a tunnel to a realm of light, visual reviews of their past deeds, encounters with a benevolent spirit, and permanent transformation after returning to life. Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys offers the most comprehensive treatment to date of the evidence surrounding near-death experiences. The first to place researchers' findings, first-person accounts, and possible medical or psychological explanations in historical perspective, she discusses how these materials reflect the influence of contemporary culture. She demonstrates that modern near-death reports belong to a vast family of otherworld journey tales, with examples in nearly every religious heritage. She identifies universal as well as culturally specific features by comparing near-death narratives in two distinct periods of Western society: medieval Christendom and twentieth-century secular America. This comparison reveals profound similarities, such as the life-review and the transforming after-effects of the vision, as well as striking contrasts, such as the absence of hell or punishment scenes from modern accounts. Mediating between the "debunkers" and the near-death researchers, Zaleski considers current efforts to explain near-death experience scientifically. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of the otherworld vision for understanding imaginative and religious experience in general.

Parenting & Relationships

Critics of religion have argued that Christianity's success stems from its promise of eternal life, that people become Christian at bottom merely to cope with their fear of death. Contemporary theologians and philosophers, highly sensitive to this charge, tend to skirt the issue of life after death. To speak of the afterlife is at best to engage in wishful thinking, at worst to descend to the level of pop religion, encounters with angels, and UFO abductions. In The Life of the World to Come, however, Carol Zaleski asks the question, "Are we rationally and morally entitled to believe in life after death?" and answers with a spirited and emphatic "yes." Drawing on a rich and varied array of sources ranging from Plato to St. Augustine to Heidegger, from the samurai warrior code to New Yorker cartoons to conversations with her young son, Zaleski not only brilliantly defends the right of Christians to believe in a life after death, but she illuminates the real value of imagining what that life might be like. It is important to spiritual maturity, she says, for the believer to be able to imagine a state of complete fulfillment, of oneness with God. And a vision of the ideal society, the heavenly communion of saints, is essential to the ordering of both our own lives and the society in which we live. Zaleski organizes her defense into three parts corresponding to the three great hours of the Divine Office, the cycle of prayers that is the heart of monastic life: Lauds at dawn's first light, Vespers at twilight, and, with the coming of night, Compline. In this liturgy of darkness and light, sleeping and waking, Zaleski discovers a poignant awareness of the ever-presentness of death in life and life in death, an awareness that we sadly miss amidst the medical and technological wonders of modern life. The timeless prayers and rituals of classical Christianity, she finds, are not a distraction from life, but a way of orienting oneself to life. Zaleski stresses the importance of the testimony of near-death experiences for Christian thinking about the afterlife. While these experiences do not by themselves provide objective evidence of life after death, she says, neither should they be dismissed as wishful thinking merely because research shows them to be influenced by cultural expectations. Zaleski asks "If God, the unknowable, wishes to be known, what other recourse does God have but to avail himself of our images and symbols, just as he has availed himself of our flesh?" This book will inspire, challenge and console readers seeking to confront their own hopes and fears of death and the afterlife with dignity, rather than despair or denial. Candid, surprising, and profoundly wise, it will fascinate anyone intrigued by the strange and wonderful phenomena of near-death experience and the beauty and mystery of the unknown.

Life of the World to Come: Near-Death Experience and Christian Hope: The Albert Cardinal Meyer Lectures

Best Book of June 2015 (The Christian Science Monitor)
Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature
C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times.
 In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant.
 Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years-and did so in dazzling style.

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams

Zaleski, Philip

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

"This is the most stunning book on prayer that I have ever read. It will become the benchmark for every other work on the subject, present or future. The Zaleskis' massive scholarship, catholicity of interests, and clarity of presentation make this a volume to hold close to both the heart and the head." -- Phyllis Tickle, author of The Divine Hours This landmark book presents prayer in all its richness and variety throughout history, across traditions, and around the globe. Focusing on extraordinary stories of lives changed by prayer and on great works of literature and art inspired by it, Philip and Carol Zaleski map the vast world of prayer from the sacred pipe to the rosary, from Paleolithic cave art to Pentecostal revivals. They reveal the fascinating experiences of such great and sometimes surprising figures as Emily Dickinson, Bill W., Teresa of Ávila, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Samuel Johnson, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Examining prayer as petition, thanksgiving, adoration, contemplation, ecstasy, magic, and sacrifice, the Zaleskis probe the language of prayer, the fruits of prayer, its controversies, and its prospects for the future. Prayer is an informative, accessible, and entertaining narrative that will appeal to an audience of all faiths. The Zaleskis have created a work that will be the standard for years to come. Philip Zaleski is the editor of the Best American Spiritual Writing series, author of The Recollected Heart, and coeditor, with Carol Zaleski, of The Book of Heaven. He is a senior editor at Parabola and a research associate in religion at Smith College. Carol Zaleski is the author of Otherworld Journeys and The Life of the World to Come, and coeditor of The Book of Heaven. She contributes a monthly column to Christian Century and is a professor of religion at Smith College. "Prayer: A History is not only a fabulous, very readable, immensely informative and (I would even say) 'inspirational' volume. It is, to my mind, simply unmatched in the vast literature on what lies, after all, at the heart of the religious life. The Zaleskis range over history (even prehistory), art, literature, theology, and comparative religion -- a real tour de force. But throughout, they engage any reader -- specialist or not -- and never flaunt their impressive learning. They help us understand the unending human quest for meaning at its deepest level." -- Harvey Cox "Prayer is simply a wonderful book -- intelligent, beautifully written, important, inclusive, and completely useful. I wish every world leader would read it word for word today. We'd all be better for it. Carol and Philip Zaleski have been making extraordinary contributions to religion and spirituality for many years, and now they have outdone themselves." -- Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul "Everybody prays. Whether with faith-filled discipline or in the unanticipated aspiration, prompted by despair or ecstasy, calling out to the Unknown, everybody prays. Everybody who is serious about prayer will be grateful to the Zaleskis for this inspired and inspiring book." -- Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, editor in chief of First Things

Prayer: A History

Worship & Devotion

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

269pp. DJ: Very Good++ w/ minute rubbing. The Book: Near Fine. German Library Volume 5.

German Mystical Writings (German Library)

Biographies & Memoirs

Campbell, Karen

Leaders & Notable People

Continuum Intl Pub Group

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zaleski, Carol. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Zaleski, Carol

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zaleski, Carol. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times

Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times

Life of the World to Come: Near-Death Experience and Christian Hope: The Albert Cardinal Meyer Lectures

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams

Prayer: A History

German Mystical Writings (German Library)