CONTENTS

1. Title Page
2. Copyright
3. Dedication
4. Introduction: Lightning in a Book
   1. How This Book Came to Be
   2. Flash Cards
   3. Four Possible Responses
   4. Be Careful
5. Part One: Elizabeth’s Story
   1. 1: Changed in a Flash
      1. Mourning and Shopping
      2. The Strike
      3. Black and White
   2. 2: The Glow and the Garden
      1. The Two-Week Conversation
      2. Back
   3. 3: The Portfolio of Strange Things
      1. The Colors of Oz
      2. “Just Knowing”
      3. Phone Call from the Dead
      4. In the Gene Pool
      5. The Woman (Not) Upstairs
   4. 4: The Haunted Necklace and the Rainbow World
      1. The Haunted Necklace
      2. Seeing Energy Fields
      3. Monday Is Red
      4. Born That Way?
      5. Fluid or Static?
   5. 5: Trying on the New Age
      1. Heaven Is “Next Door”
      2. A Healer in Houston
      3. A Psychic in Seattle
      4. Flipping the Coin
   6. 6: The Layer Cake of Time
   7. 7: The Lessons of the Garden
      1. Voltage, Visitation, and Vision
      2. All Knowledge Already Exists
      3. Reincarnation and the Evolving Soul
      4. Paranormal Powers and the Evolving Soul
      5. The Spirit Guide
   8. 8: On God, Religion, and Spirituality
      1. God and the Religions
      2. Matters of Spirit and the Failure of Political Religion
      3. Hasidic Judaism vs. Reform Judaism
   9. Looking Back: Everyday Applications for What I Know to Be True
6. Part Two: How We Are Changing the Afterlife
   1. Reading as Empowerment
   2. 9: “That’s Not Fiction”
      1. Studying the Stars at Midday
      2. Empowerment: Reading and Writing as Paranormal Practices
      3. To a School for Mutants
      4. Psi-Fi: Religion as Practiced Science Fiction
      5. “I Am the Screen”
      6. Why the Near-Death Experience Feels So Real (and Probably Is)
   3. 10: “Nothing Is Black and White”
      1. It’s About the Framework, Not Just the Facts
      2. The Near-Death Experience Before We Called It That
      3. From Judgment to Love: The Parable of Raymond Moody
      4. “Neither Black Nor White”: How to Think About the Paranormal
      5. The Paranormal and Procreation
      6. We Die into Our Imaginations
   4. 11: “I Just Knew”
      1. How to Talk to an Octopus
      2. From Contact to Communication
      3. Arrival
      4. Gnostic Film
      5. But How Did She Know What She “Just Knew”?
      6. Three Ways to Think about the Imagination
      7. On Dreams, Visions, Prophecy, and the Secret Powers of Interpretation
   5. 12: “I Can See All of Your Auras Right Now”
      1. The History of Religions as a History of Living Light
      2. Struck by Comparison: Lightning Lore from the Bible to the American Plains Indians
      3. Synesthesia and the Sensing of Different Realities
      4. From the Theology of Electricity to the Physics of Consciousness
   6. 13: “I See Time in Layers”
      1. A Proviso and a Proposal
      2. The Glass-Block Universe and Self-Precognition: The Work of Eric Wargo
      3. Back to the Proposal
   7. 14: “They Were All Paired Up”
      1. Be an Angel
      2. How Many Souls Are You?
      3. Trauma and Revelation
      4. The Evolution of the Soul
      5. Comparing Reincarnations
      6. Taking It All In: From Near-Death to Reincarnation
      7. Beyond the Mountains
      8. A Final Tale: The Four Rabbis in Paradise
   8. Postscript
7. Appendix: The Emails
   1. On the Nature of Scientific Evidence
   2. Fraud or Trickster?
   3. In the Future…
8. Origins and Gratitude
9. Endnotes
10. Index
11. About the Authors
12. About North Atlantic Books

Guide

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Front Matter
4. Dedication
5. Introduction
6. Part One: Elizabeth’s Story
7. Start Reading