This week I'm reading from Douglas Charles Hodgson's book 'Spiritual Revelations from Beyond the Veil: What Humanity Can Learn from the Near Death Experience'.Spiritual Revelations from Beyond the Veil: What Humanity Can Learn from the Near Death Experience decouples spirituality from a religious context and perspective. It examines the intriguing accounts of people who have undergone a near-death experience (NDE) and what was revealed to them while outside their physical bodies. What those people vividly described went well beyond what can be found in religious scripture. The NDE accounts contain descriptions of Heaven and the higher spiritual realms, what interconnectedness/oneness means, the eternal nature and liberation of the soul consciousness, the gift of free will and its purpose, the nature of soul agreements, the universal laws of attraction, reincarnation, and cause and effect (karma), the nature of positive and negative energy, the significance of the death of our physical body as well as our spiritual rebirth and life review. The study and collation of more than 500 NDE accounts, and the identification of common observations and insights drawn therefrom, culminated in the writing of this book. Going beyond the current NDE literature, which mainly examines the historical, religious, philosophical, scientific and medical aspects of this phenomenon, Spiritual Revelations from Beyond the Veil concentrates on the important messages brought back from beyond the veil for humanity's knowledge and benefit. Some of the learnings, observations and insights from the Other Side presented in this book are truly remarkable, and in a few cases, they test the limits of human, Earthly comprehension.BioDouglas Hodgson is a dual citizen of Canada and Australia and a retired lawyer and Dean and Professor of Law residing in Perth, Western Australia. He undertook postgraduate legal study at the University of London before embarking on a 35- year career in higher education in Canada, Australia and New Zealand as a teacher, researcher, scholar, author, human rights advocate and university administrator. His areas of expertise include Public International Law, International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, Civil Law and Causation Law. Professor Hodgson has authored and published 30 peer reviewed law journal articles and five books.Professor Hodgson’s professional networks included the Australian Academy of Law, the Council of Australian Law Deans, the Global Law Deans’ Forum and the Australian Research Council. He also served as an advisor to the Australian Red Cross, editor of several law journals and as a member of various university human research ethics committees. He is a regular attender and alumnus of the Oxford Round Table where he has delivered addresses on the concept of an international rule of law, the protection of children’s international human rights and the challenges of religious fundamentalism in the public school system from a human rights perspective. As a complement to his work on religious discrimination issues in the educational field, he developed a keen interest in studying and comparing the scriptures of the world’s faiths and distilling therefrom common and unifying spiritual principles upon which these great and diverse religions are based, ultimately inspiring him to write Transcendental Spirituality, Wisdom and Virtue: The Divine Virtues and Treasures of the Heart. His interest in transcendental spirituality has strengthened and expanded in his retirement years to include the so-called “near-death experience” and what humanity can learn from those who have returned from beyond the veil and recounted their experiences and observations. This has led to the writing of Spiritual Revelations from Beyond the Veil: What Humanity Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience in which these observations and insights have been collated, analyzed and commented upon.