Heaven Revised: A Narrative of Personal Experiences After the Change Called Death

by Eliza B. Duffey

Heaven Revised is a narrative of the change we call death. It appears that Eliza Duffey had the ability to connect with the Afterlife Realms via automatic writing. Eliza Bisbee Duffey (1838 - 1898) was an American feminist and writer who was noted for her many books on womens rights, women's health and sex education. Prior to the writing of this book she and her husband had been newspaper editors as well, so she was educated and was already a good writer. At the time of the writing of this book, she was new to Spiritualism and claimed that she had little knowledge of Spiritualism and no mediumistic ability. However, in the introduction she writes, “during the entire period in which I was engaged in this writing - some three or four months - I lived and moved in a sort of dream. Nothing seemed real to me. Personal troubles did not seem to pain me. I felt as though I had taken a mental anaesthetic.” I would call her condition a state of Trance.

The book is written as a letter, I assume, from a friend who had recently passed. Unfortunately no where is it indicated from whom the dictation is coming. Perhaps Mrs. Duffey knew the person but for personal reasons of privacy, kept the identity to herself. She states, “ I believe that I wrote with unseen assistance, but I hesitate to ask others to endorse this belief. I hesitate even to express it, realizing as I do how often well-intentioned Spiritualists mistakenly attribute to the Spirit-world that which emanates only in their own too often ignorant and ill-informed minds. I know how difficult it is to draw the line between one's own thoughts and impressions, and those that result from inspiration from higher sources.”

Here I feel she is being overly modest. This is understandable as there is a section in the book where the narrator is able to observe a seance from her higher vantage point perspective and is able to observe the various spirits, both of a low and higher nature attempting to communicate with four different earthly mediums with varying degrees of ability. She then gives a sort of ‘play by play’ narrative throughout the session, proving her own assessment as to the final quality of the received communications, which in most attempts were less than desirable. Besides the low quality of many of spirits she points out that the quality of the medium is as important if not more so. And I think in the case of Mrs. Duffey, it goes to the point that she is a well-educated and emotionally balanced woman who could not be better suited to the job of automatically writing this book!

The narrator of the book observes her lifeless body and realizes for the first time she is dead in the physical sense. Her description is reminiscent of modern day out-of-body-experience. As she lies on her death bed she tries to be super-analytical thinking she would attempt to be a dispassionate observer of her own death. But then as she starts to transition, she writes, "for an instant I seemed frozen with terror, or something akin to it, by a strange object which met my view. What was that in my chamber, - my chamber where I lay so still - that object lying rigid and white, in the familiar yet ever repulsive attitude of death? There were the outlines of the head, the projection of the arms crossed upon the breast, the extended limbs, and the upturned feet. Over all was thrown a white sheet; but with a new experience in vision, as I looked at it my sight seemed to penetrate beneath the snowy pall, and I recognized my own features. My God was I then really dead?"

The narrator continues to document her experiences in the afterlife, and the spheres she finds herself in are in stark contrast to the orthodox heaven and hell that was generally accepted by Christians at the end of the 19th century. Heaven Revised is as informative and relevant now as it was when it was written more than 133 years ago and is a refreshing contrast to the materialist world we live in today.

I really enjoyed gaining the perspective put forth in this book. The experiences described do correlate very well with numerous other books in this genre, so if you are seeking a first-hand account of what may be in store for you when it’s your time to transition to the Afterlife, I can heartily recommend Heaven Revised. Get it on Amazon Here!