Letters of the Living Dead

"Letters of the Living Dead" is a popular book, first published in London in 1914, that tells about the posthumous state of consciousness. The book is a collection of spiritual letters from the spirit of David P. Hatch, a well-known lawyer and philosopher who lived in Los Angeles. The text of the letters was psychographically recorded by the hand of the medium – the famous writer Mrs. E. Barker. As is well known, the most tormenting of all suffering in the European world is the fear of death. It arises, as has been pointed out many times, from complete ignorance – what awaits a person on the other side of the grave? This agonizing fear does not exist in the East; there, death is seen as a temporary state, followed by a new earthly life, which is why there is no bottomless abyss of the unknown that rushes into the consciousness of a European at the thought of the death awaiting him. It follows that the fear of death is not an inevitability, but merely a consequence of a certain worldview. The ideas presented in the book naturally resonate with the religious-philosophical teachings of the East and Western occultism. The text of the translation is provided in a new edition. In this case, it concerns only the first book of letters, translated by E. Pisareva. This is the first worthy publication in the Russian language. In translating this book, E. Pisareva for unknown reasons did not translate several chapters, while some others were combined into one, replacing magnificent dialogues with partial retellings of their content. In this edition, all these shortcomings have been addressed.