I think that Mary Neal’s book is important for people to read. Her incredible experience gives us hope regarding the purpose of our lives and the meaning of our deaths. She is a most admirable person and her book will be of interest and help to people who are interested in NDE’s, what happens to us when we die, and how we should try to live our lives in preparation for this. For these reasons, this book is invaluable.

There were a couple of things in Mary Neal’s books that bothered me from a psychological point of view though, and I will list them:

1. Her willingness to leave her children including a 1 ½ year old and go to Costa Rica and engage in a dangerous activity like intense white water kayaking that included 10-20 foot waterfalls in a isolated jungle area.
2. She & her husband choosing not to go to a hospital in Costa Rica to get stabilized before medical evacuation to the USA after her kayaking accident. Their decision instead to check into a hotel for the first night and then to take commercial flights back to the US and then their decision not to go to a hospital in Salt Lake where they initially landed and to drive the six hour trip over the high altitude mountains into Jackson Hole. This was also very risky behavior that again nearly resulted in her death from Acute Respiratory Distress and Pneumonia.
3. The subsequent repetition of risky behavior by “catching air” while off trail skiing with her son and breaking her ankle again placing herself at risk trying to hike back through the snow, over mountains with a broken ankle.
4. The description of herself as a fifteen-year-old performing cesarean sections, and the missionaries she was with performing appendectomies in Mexico with no training, experience, and presumably no anesthesia or sterile fields. This was probably quite illegal and again very risky. It was also inexplicable. Why, what, was going on here?
5. Her not taking her son to a therapist for evaluation when her told her as a young child that he would not live past eighteen because this was “not the plan,” and again years later when he asked her to take out life insurance for him and wanted her to tell him how to write a will prior to his final trip where he died. I am deeply sorry for her and her family’s tragic loss. I just didn’t understand, was very confused about, what was going on in this boy’s mind, and I would have wanted an objective evaluation, a second opinion as it were. How would this have not been helpful?
These psychological concerns do not take away from the value of Mary Neal’s book, the validity of her incredible experience, the strength and courage she has shown in adversity, and the help she continues to provide to her patients and everyone who reads her book. It also sparked curiosity in me to read more on the subject including Sam Parnia's excellent book, "What Happens When We die."