START THE CONVERSATION: The Book about Death You Were Hoping to Find

An eloquent and practical study of death and dying examines the death process, discussing such topics as fear and grief, near-death experiences, preparation, and regret-proofing life, in a study based on the author's experiences working with the terminally ill. Tour.

If wishes could fly, this simplistic homily about what happens when we die would be airborne. The book is based on a "six-week course about death" that Stone has given regularly since 1989, and it sounds it: chatty, meandering, anecdotal, lacking the rigor of a proper study of death-for example, David Darling's Zen Physics (Forecasts, Feb. 26). This is Stone's first book, but she is well known as the founder of God's Love We Deliver, an organization that delivers free meals to homebound AIDS patients. Here, she makes no bones about her belief in the integrity and survival of the self after death, but she's coy about the likely source of her faith in this idea-her discipleship to the Hindu guru Swami Muktananda. Instead, she points to near-death experiences as proof of survival, missing the point that these experiences are called "near" for a reason, and then to flimsy evidence regarding past lives. The author does forcefully remind readers of the inevitability of death, but her scanting of the "grief process" as "not logical, not appropriate" because we're immortal anyway smacks of spiritual superiority. Stone insists that "there is literally no such thing as death," contradicting the teaching of nearly every major spiritual tradition that death is not only real but a mystery. She no doubt means well, but her book doesn't start the conversation-it stops it dead.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

After two years in an ashram in India, Stone felt called to work with the dying. Out of that calling have come a meals-on-wheels program for AIDS patients, workshops for the terminally ill and those involved with the dying, and now this book. Named after the workshops, it strives to convince us of two primary propositions: we are not annihilated by death, and grief--that is, the psychologically and often physically debilitating reaction to a loved one's death--is neither necessary nor beneficial. Physical death is certain, Stone bluntly reminds us, but souls are eternal. Meditation is especially useful for realizing the soul's timelessness, she says, and once one accepts the soul's perdurability, there is no reason for grief--sadness, yes, but not the confusion and misery of extreme mourning. The most striking thing about Stone's very accessible, jargon-free effort is that it presents Christian understandings of eternal life and of consolation very well with virtually no "God-talk." Don't be surprised if this becomes a very popular book. Ray Olson