The Boy Who Died and Came Back

Starred review from February 10, 2014
Moss (Dreaming the Soul Back Home) is an extraordinary guide to dreams and dreaming who also knows the power of storytelling. While not an autobiography, his book includes many personal stories and memories that offer rich fodder for the imagination—since, among other notable events of his life, he died three times, he says. His ability to normalize the idea of communication and movement between this world and the next through story, and to show how reality is layered and time is fluid, is sublime. “In dreams, we are time travelers,” Moss writes. “We can develop the conscious practice of stepping in and out of time.” Following clues of “unusual states of mind”—his own and others’—such as synchronicity, the mental twilight state between waking and sleeping, and death-like states, Moss detects the “big stories” of our lives that reside in this “multiverse” of expanded mental states. Reading this book is like embarking on a guided mystery tour through the past, present, and other worlds—and discovering the potential to transform one’s own life, as well as a path to transform the world.