The Next Life

Investigation and Experiences of Reincarnation

This book had its origin on this wise. In my Irish Witchcraft and Demonology, published in October 1913, I inserted a couple of famous 17th century ghost stories which described how lawsuits were set on foot at the instigation of most importunate spirits. It then occurred to me that as far as I knew there was no such thing in existence as a book of Irish ghost stories. Books on Irish fairy and folk-lore there were in abundance-some of which could easily be spared-but there was no book of ghosts. And so I determined to supply this sad omission.

"What are you, where did you come from, and whither are you bound?"--the question which from Homer's days has been put to the wayfarer in strange lands--is likewise the all-absorbing question which man is ever asking of the universe of which he is himself so tiny yet so wondrous a part.

Books on the conscious survival of the human soul after death are as old as Pythagoras. Pythagoras, just in case you have never heard of the gentleman, was a celebrated Greek philosopher. He was born on the island of Samos some six hundred years before Christ.

LIFE, as we know it, despite its allurements and its pains, is but the shadow of our real and ultimate existence. Before us lies a vast territory of knowledge, the outskirts of which we have barely fringed.

The world mystery... the soul... is one aspect man's long lost knowledge, that we probably had at creation. Mr. Mead studied the soul during his entire career. Here he relates his thoughts on the soul.