What is the afterlife like? That's what I want to know. I want to read anything that will tell me.

This book leaves me wanting a lot more. It touches on the question, but doesn't give enough substance.

It tells us that there are a dozen heavens, a dozen hells, and many realms that are finer than heaven. That is the closest it comes to telling us what the afterlife is like. But that is clearly not enough.

How do you know there are a dozen hells? Describe each one. Make us feel what it is like to be there. The same for the heavens. Make each one of them real for us. Make them so real that we will be able to recognize which one suits us best. It's too easy to say there are a dozen of them. That means nothing to me. It's just words without a real connection.

And if there are a dozen of them, what makes you think that you will see your loved ones in the one you are going to. They may just as well be in another one.

We're told that there are eleven levels in the afterlife. The ninth is "the end of manifest vibratory creation". The tenth is "the void, nonvibratory or pure consciousness". The eleventh, the highest, is "full at-one-ment and entry into states of consciousness beyond human comprehension".

Tell me something. Is this supposed to mean something to me? What the hell is the end of manifest vibratory creation? Do you understand what I'm saying? This book is throwing words at me, and they don't mean anything to me. I want to feel and understand this.

And don't start telling me it is beyond human comprehension. You are writing a book to be read by humans. We comprehend things. Make us feel it. Get beyond occult-speak and make it a real and meaningful experience for us.

The problem seems to be that the author really doesn't know, and the thousands of people she interviewed really don't know, what the afterlife is like. But with thousands of interviews with people who have been there, I would hope for more, and I would expect more.

Contrast this book with the first two books by Michael Newton, called Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls. Those books are full of detail on the afterlife. There is so much more "meat and potatoes" in those two books. They fill you up a lot better.

My biggest problem with the Michael Newton books is that nobody else wrote a book corroborating his findings. Detail is there in abundance. I'm waiting for one of his proteges to write a book that expands on his, and gives us a lot of new material.

The Newton books also make me feel more empowered. They make the afterlife seem like a place where we actually have some control over what happens. It's a place I can't wait to arrive at and enjoy. As for the afterlife in We Live Forever, it feels too impersonal and unsatisfying to me. I didn't even get one good view of one of the heavens. Why would it be meaningful to me to be told that there are 12 of them, and I don't know what any one of them is like.

The really frustrating part of it is that I don't think the author knows either. If she does, what do I have to do to get her to tell me? If she knows a lot more than she revealed in this book, I feel like shouting at her that she really has to consult with me before writing any more books, because she is missing the boat.

If she really knows something, her next book would be a hundred times better than this one if it is simply an interview with me questioning her. I'd bring her out, and elicit the important information. That's why this book leaves me unsatisfied.

I bought this book after reading the wonderful reviews by some excellent reviewers and felt sure that this book would enlighten me as to the mystery of death. Forgive me, P. Atwater, but I found the beginning of the book so hard to believe, that I couldn't take the rest seriously enough. Perhaps the book 'After Death Then What' - also recommended by a highly respected reviewer would have been a better place for me to start.

For instance, when Atwater explains the circumstances of her three deaths, she relates how she miscarried and severely hemorrhaged in the bathroom, which precipitated her first death upon the bathroom floor. She then comes back to life, struggles five blocks to the doctor's office where she collapses in his office. The doctor apparently doesn't even look at her chart and, while laughing uproariously at the fact that she'd been taken advantage of and raped, injects her in the right thigh with an unknown drug to stop the bleeding and sends her home.

Now, I have very little faith in doctors and constantly question their conclusions, but never have I heard of a doctor who would laugh in the face of a collapsed hemorrhaging woman and then just send her back out to her car to drive home alone. And if this did happen, why did Atwater not haul him over the coals for malpractice?

The second death occurs as a result of a blood clot forming in her right thigh, causing the 'worst case of phlebitis (the doctor) had ever heard of, let alone seen. He kept saying "There's no way you can be alive" ". However, he, too, just sends her home with a prescription of 'dangerous drugs'. Thus follows a second death from a burst blood clot which Atwater manages to return from unaided.

The third death is the result of the rejection of the man who had raped her coming back to ask her forgiveness (which Atwater gives), and then refusing to listen to her relate the experiences of her previous two deaths. Apparently, the "emotional blow of being refused was at the core of death number three" She is brought back to life by her son, who sits opposite her and 'talks' her back to life. No physical intervention such as mouth to mouth resuscitation etc. - just talks. Later, 'several physicians' verify that if her son had called for medics, Atwater would have gone too far to be resuscitated.

There appears to have been no medical verification at any time that any of these deaths actually occurred. I'm not suggesting that Atwater is making things up, just that perhaps she may have left her body and had an astral experience that may or may not have been actual death. Three times returning from 'death' with no help is quite extraordinary, as most medical people will verify after working hard to bring someone back who has 'died' on the operating table.

At this point, I put the book down and forced myself to read the rest later. Yes, there are some very good points raised, but I'm afraid that I wasn't convinced - much as I would like to be.