How long does it take to read Otherworld Journeys?
Carol Zaleski
Otherworld Journeys by Carol Zaleski takes about 5 hours 8 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 8 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1983. 280 pages, about 77,000 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 33 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 8 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 13 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Dozens of books, articles, television shows, and films relating "near-death" experiences have appeared in the past decade. People who have survived a close brush with death reveal their extraordinary visions and ecstatic feelings at the moment they died, describing journeys through a tunnel to a realm of light, visual reviews of their past deeds, encounters with a benevolent spirit, and permanent transformation after returning to life. Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys offers the most comprehensive treatment to date of the evidence surrounding near-death experiences. The first to place researchers' findings, first-person accounts, and possible medical or psychological explanations in historical perspective, she discusses how these materials reflect the influence of contemporary culture. She demonstrates that modern near-death reports belong to a vast family of otherworld journey tales, with examples in nearly every religious heritage. She identifies universal as well as culturally specific features by comparing near-death narratives in two distinct periods of Western society: medieval Christendom and twentieth-century secular America. This comparison reveals profound similarities, such as the life-review and the transforming after-effects of the vision, as well as striking contrasts, such as the absence of hell or punishment scenes from modern accounts. Mediating between the "debunkers" and the near-death researchers, Zaleski considers current efforts to explain near-death experience scientifically. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of the otherworld vision for understanding imaginative and religious experience in general.
Subjects: Voyages to the otherworld, Near-death experiences, History of doctrines, Christianity, Quelle, Todeserfahrung
