As you may know, my husband 
Colm Keane died on 21 January 2022 after yet another battle with cancer. It was a peaceful, tranquil passing, just as he had hoped. I am now carrying out his final wish – to publish his last book on the theme of death and dying. It’s called Journey’s End and it will be coming out on 4 April, 2022. Written after 13 years of research, it is a conclusive portrayal of what we face when we die. It is an amazing, thought-provoking work. You can read the introduction to the book here. I hope you enjoy it. Una O’Hagan
INTRODUCTION
“You will struggle to find a more conclusive portrayal of what we face after death than in the pages of this book. What you will read draws together many years of inquiry into a vast array of resources, including near-death experiences, vision reports, ancient religious texts and the latest studies from the world of science. They establish, with remarkable clarity, the otherworld we move to after we die.
You will see in the chapters ahead how death is not an end but the start of something totally new. You will discover how our consciousness survives in a heaven or hell of our own making. An afterlife of peace and tranquillity will be revealed. Why we meet with deceased relatives and friends, including children and pets, will be explained. Above all, you will learn the need for preparation if you wish to ensure a happy death.
Since 2009, I have written several books about the journey we make once our heart stops beating and our brain flat-lines. These books – Going Home, The Distant Shore, We’ll Meet Again and Heading for the Light – have deliberately stopped short of describing what happens in the hereafter, concentrating instead on our journey to the edge of death. A new sphere of investigation, however, has expanded our knowledge of the subject.
New evidence has emerged from an area of physics known as quantum mechanics (QM). Not only has it blown apart our understanding of the universe, but it has also provided a sound basis for believing that our consciousness lives on in the hereafter. Quantum investigations have also made sense of the existing evidence supporting the concept of post-death survival.
With quantum mechanics as a backdrop, descriptions of the afterlife from those who have near-death experiences suddenly make sense. Claims about post-death survival stretching from the early Egyptians through numerous other cultures, including Greece and Rome, can be assessed afresh. The great spiritual texts underpinning Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam can be understood in a new light. Even the images described by mystics and visionaries seem to fall into place. You will see why this is so by the end of this book.
I cannot adequately describe my reactions when I first delved into the quantum sphere. It was like scales falling away from my eyes. The minor – yet niggling – differences in the experiences of people who undergo temporary death were no longer a cause for concern. The central messages of the Bible, the Koran, the great texts of Hinduism and Buddhism, gelled together in a thrilling explanation of after-death survival. The inner sense most of us share that life doesn’t end with death was validated and shown to be justified.
Inconsistencies between world religions suddenly no longer mattered. They all reflected the same fundamental journey – survival after death, travel to the light, the existence of some sort of ‘supreme being’, and other features including meetings with deceased relatives and friends. Most of all, they were all exponents of the primacy of light. This book brings you as close as you will get to an understanding of that light.
There will be many twists and turns along the way. You will read how various world faiths, with their harrowing imagery and inflamed rhetoric, their rules and regulations, have distorted the truth about what happens after death. You will see how depictions of hell and the devil, along with domains such as purgatory and Limbo, have little or no bearing on what you face after you die.
Along the way I will familiarise you with the development not only of religious thinking but of all thinking, scientific and otherwise, in our search for the truth about the afterlife. The works of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope St. Gregory I, the Venerable Bede, Bernard of Cluny, Mechthild of Magdeburg, among many others, will be examined and drawn from.
So, too, will the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and Puranas of Hinduism and, of course, the Koran, the Torah and the books of the Old and New Testaments. I will help you thread your way through these texts, separating fact from fiction, and extracting from them their ultimate truths.
I hope you will find this book an easy and interesting read. That is what I have attempted to achieve. At each stage, the writing is kept as simple as possible, and even the science is explained in an everyday way. Bear with me and, by the end, I guarantee that you will have a greater understanding than you have ever had about what happens when we reach the other side.
Colm Keane