In this short handbook, Pitstick, a mental health counselor and clinical psychologist, edits the responses of 11 “renowned experts on consciousness topics,” including notables such as Raymond Moody, Bernie Siegel, and P.M.H. Atwater, whom he has interviewed about the soul, the afterlife, and near-death experiences. Pitstick and the experts he interviews give a potpourri of confident, optimistic answers to basic life questions like “Who am I?” “Why is there so much suffering?” and “How can I best hear my inner self’s voice and know my highest purposes?” The book’s format allows the reader to taste many ideas in quick succession to see which ones resonate, making comparison of the contributors’ viewpoints easy. For philosophical questions such as “Why am I here?” the interviewees’ answers center on similar ideas, proposing a soul that persists beyond death, incarnated into a world in which it’s hard to see the big picture but opportunities for adventure, growth, and love abound. For more prosaic questions that ponder the structure of the connection between the mundane and spiritual world—such as “Are there ghosts and evil spirits?”—answers are significantly more diverse, and there’s a clear difference between the contributors who are sure of the structure of the afterlife and those who are still pondering it. The interviews in this short book will be great for anyone searching for a new spiritual path. (BookLife)