Following his death Aiden Lovejoy finds himself in a strange but wonderful world—a vital, busy, challenging environment with great joy beckoning. There is much work to be done, however, and the progress that “the dead” are invited to make can stretch over eons. Aiden, a family therapist in earth life, picks up where he left off. Alongside the beauty that surrounds him are hellish zones where disfigured characters choose to live, and their suffering calls out to him. But he has troubles of his own, and souls from higher worlds inspire him to reach higher. For some readers this fast-paced, soul-searching novel will help make sense of the present crisis surrounding us.

Professor Stafford Betty, author of The Afterlife Unveiled and other similar works, writes: “The laws of this world, its differences from the afterlife scenarios of the world’s religions, and its rationality and ‘amazingness’ stand out. All that happens to the novel’s characters is supported in a general way by evidence. The details are of course fanciful, but the world in which surviving souls are embedded owes far more to research than to my unaided imagination. Something like this is the world I think we will all enter, whether Christian or Buddhist or atheist or whatever, when we die. As I see it, we are all pilgrims on an infinite march.”

Praise for The Afterlife Therapist.

“In The Afterlife Therapist, Stafford Betty explores the amazing ways our consciousness behaves.  These ways are nonlocal, in which our mind is not localized or limited to specific places in space, such as brains and bodies, or in time, such as the present. In other words, our mind is unbounded in spacetime, therefore unitary, collective, eternal, and immortal. Science fiction?  Hardly, as abundant scientific research reveals.  Take a dive into The Afterlife Therapist and come away amazed and inspired.”

~ Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and Spiritual Search and The Power of Prayer: Connecting with the Wisdom of the Universe.

“Writers and mythmakers have long created stories portraying what happens to us when we die. Novelist, theologian, philosopher, and psychical researcher Stafford Betty has broken new ground with The Afterlife Therapist. This fast-paced, humanly credible afterlife story is based on what science has to say about our conscious survival after death. The picture Betty provides is one of continued challenges, replete with ‘heavenly’ and ‘hellish’ potentials. For readers in pandemic times, the vision encoded in this book is most welcome. So, stand aside, Dante Alighieri; we have entered a new epoch. Say farewell to your old guide: we have evidence to light the way, and Betty to tell the tale. “

~ Michael Grosso, PhD, author of Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of Disbelief and The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation.

“The Afterlife Therapist is an engaging novel set in the immediate afterlife environment. Aiden, the protagonist, was a therapist while alive on Earth, and continues to practice therapy in the afterlife, helping distressed souls deal with unresolved emotional issues that keep them stuck on the “lower levels”, while also dealing with his own residual issues. A very unique feature of this novel is that its author, Dr. Stafford Betty, is one of just a handful of professional philosophers who are familiar with current scientific research on the nature of posthumous conscious experience. Hence the afterlife environment described by the novel, although fictional, is nevertheless informed by this research. However, afterlife details aside, The Afterlife Therapist, as a novel, held my interest throughout, and the ending was particularly moving to me.”

~ Neal Grossman, PhD, author of The Spirit of Spinoza (2014) and Conversations with Socrates and Plato (2019)

“From the first ten pages I was hooked. What a page-turner! A truly beautiful and fascinating read reminding me of an intricate tapestry.”

~ Sharon McGill, Regency Real Estate Brokers, Orange County, California

For all those whose lives were touched by the cinematographic magic of What Dreams May Come, prepare yourself for stage-two in an epic adventure of afterlife evolution.

Told through the eyes of one called to continue his work as a therapist, Aiden Lovejoy seeks to guide and liberate the shadow-dwellers toward the heavenly planes of Truth, Light and Love― and in-so-doing, ascend above his own inner demons.

Pioneering author Stafford Betty takes us on a compelling journey beyond the illusion of Death, into wondrous realms of enlightenment where souls grapple to escape the accumulated Earthly baggage of their own minds. With the skill of a Renaissance scholar, Professor Betty weaves his engaging tale with strands of evidence gleaned from a century of parapsychological investigation into the question of Survival.

Inspiring and educational ... Betty’s The Afterlife Therapist is indeed therapy for any of us, preparing to confront the vertigo of our own inevitable immortality!

~ Douglas Monroe, PhD, author of The 21 Lessons of Merlyn series

“Dr. Stafford Betty’s original and engrossing book educates about survival after death but with a critical emphasis that individuals can still be ‘therapized’. The Afterlife Therapist involves entertaining fiction but the didactic elements with conversation constitute Vernon Neppe’s genre of ‘sciction’. The author has communicated information that is based on his expert scientific knowledge of the post-physical death experience and then uniquely communicated psychotherapy performed post-mortem with his new terms like ‘enlightened receptacles’, ‘ascending’, ‘spirit-script’, ‘afterworld’, ‘shadowlands’, ‘Source’, ‘Eidos’, ‘Shadows’, ‘astral pain’,  ‘lower heavens’, ‘wisdom training’,  ‘Temple of Earth’, and   ‘Ceremony of Light’. The Afterlife Therapist is captivating reading.” 

~ Professor Vernon M Neppe MD, PhD, Fellow Royal Society (SAf)

Stafford Betty earned his Ph.D. from Fordham University, where he specialized in Asian religious thought and Sanskrit. Today he is a professor emeritus of religious studies at California State University, Bakersfield, and an acclaimed expert on the afterlife. In 2011 he published The Afterlife Unveiled, the first of his nonfiction afterlife books, and The Imprisoned Splendor, the first of his novels set in the afterlife. More recently White Crow Books published Heaven and Hell Unveiled: Updates from the World of Spirit (2014), When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying? Afterlife: The Evidence (2016), and The Severed Breast (2016), a historical first-century novel about St. Thomas’ travels to India. A novel for middle-graders, Ghost Boy (2018), and a futuristic novel The War for Islam (2019) followed. Stafford’s many scholarly articles and essays can be found at academia.edu [academia.edu]. The video interviews he did with Jeffrey Mishlove for his New Thinking Allowed series on YouTube are popular with newcomers to contemporary afterlife research.