title: Soul Search:: A Scientist Explores the Afterlife
author:  David Darling 
description: Darling (Equations of Eternity), a science writer with a Ph.D. in astronomy, believes modern science is ultimately of limited usefulness because it fails to recognize that consciousness is an irreducible part of reality?"the ever-present 'mind' of the universe." In this intriguing speculative essay, he develops a sort of scientific pantheism positing that, with death, we move from the narrow consciousness of our highly selective, reality-filtering brain to the wider, timeless consciousness of the unbound universe. As for near-death experiences, Darling suggests that the phenomena frequently reported?a sense of bliss, travel through a tunnel, encountering a being of light?may merely be comforting projections of a dying brain. He touches on a host of topics?the Egyptian cult of the dead, neurological disorders, evolution, drug highs, mysticism, Einstein's space-time?as he explores how we develop a sense of self and time, and concepts of an afterlife. <br />Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: A Darkness in my Soul
      
      by
      
  Dean R. Koontz
   
  
      
  ONE
      
  Divinity Destroyed​
      
      
  I
      
      For a long while, I wondered if Dragonfly was still in the heavens and whether the Spheres of
  Plague still floated in airlessness, blind eyes watchful. I wondered whether men still looked to the
  stars with trepidation and whether the skies yet bore the cancerous seed of mankind. There was no
  way for me to find out, for I lived in Hell during those days, where news of the living gained precious
  little circulation.
      I was a digger into minds, a head-tripper. I esped. I found secrets, knew lies, and reported all these
  things for a price. I esped. Some questions were never meant to be answered; some parts of a man's
  mind were never intended for scrutiny. Yet our curiosity is, at the same time, our greatest virtue and
  our most serious weakness. I had within my mind the power to satisfy any curiosity which tickled me.
  I esped; I found; I knew. And then there was a darkness in my