In Heaven As On Earth: A Vision of the Afterlife - Hardcover

An allegorical glimpse of the soul's post-death experiences from popular guru and erstwhile therapist Peck (In Search of Stones, 1995, etc.). Finding himself near the ceiling of his bedroom, Daniel Turpin, an author and psychiatrist, briefly looks down on the waxy, gray body of a 73-year-old man before he gets whirled into a vortex and embraced by the light. Peck describes in a first-person narrative how Daniel next finds himself lying down (without a body) in a simple but strangely comforting small green room where he is visited by Sam and Norma, who, he feels, resemble Mormon missionaries but turn out to be his official ``Greeters,'' charged with introducing him to his new life. In subsequent chapters, Daniel meets his wife and his son Tim, now an advanced spirit who, however, never quite answers Daniel's excited questions. There's even a sex scene on a hillside overlooking Assisi, where Daniel is all but seduced by the erotic charms of a spirit named Susan, who turns out to be Satan. The shifting of shapes and scenes is rather like the virtual-reality programs of Star Trek, and indeed Daniel learns that the body, like all things visible, is really a collection of psychic projections from which souls can learn to free themselves. Thus an obese woman, Trish, is literally caught in her own self-image (learning to let go of it is her Purgatory), whereas Hell is a giant financial agency whose employees can never bear to leave. Peck makes clever use of popular near-death motifs and Tibetan Bardostyle confrontations. He admits his debt to C.S. Lewis but avoids the latter's brand of Christianity. Unsettlingly, Daniel (who, after all, seems remarkably like Peck's alter ego) frequently reminds the reader what a great visionary and therapist he was on earth. Useful psychological insights in a loose New Age framework. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

True to its title, Peck's second novel for adults (after A Bed by the Window) imagines an afterlife which, through a number of set pieces, dramatizes some of the earthly concerns of his other books, including the perpetual bestseller, The Road Less Traveled. Daniel, a psychiatrist and successful author much like Peck himself, awakens in a small green room to discover that he has survived his physical death. Hovering about, disembodied but alert, he meets a pair of "greeters" who inform him that heaven, hell and purgatory?Judeo-Christian ideas pervade the narrative?are governed by a "Principle of Freedom." Each soul projects what it wishes to experience?though sometimes, as with Daniel's green refuge, projections are created by committees in order to ease the "Adjustment" from life to the formlessness of heaven. Peck's hell is a garbage can in which about 140,000 souls hide under rocks, too terrified to accept their freedom to choose a greater reality. In time, Daniel learns that purgatory has to do with clinging to mental and emotional attachments; to help the souls there, the most attentive and loving psychotherapy imaginable is provided. Several further encounters?with his deceased wife, a son, a seductive woman?help Daniel let go of his own attachments until he is ready to join a committee. Though talky and lacking dramatic momentum, this story, more a consoling philosophical vision than a full-bodied novel, should appeal to Peck's readership. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.