Review: More About the Spirit World

 by Frederick Sculthorp

Today I'm reviewing More About the Spirit World and Experiences in Astral Projection by Frederick C. Sculthorp. The copyright is 1975.

This is an obscure, hard-to-find book that's been out-of-print for many years. As a matter of fact, it was so rare that when I found a copy in a local library way back in the 1980s, I actually made a photocopy with a copy machine for my book collection!

This is actually the sequel to a much older book written by Sculthorp titled Excursions to the Spirit World, which I still have never procured in book form. I'd still like to get a copy, so contact me if you've seen one for sale for a reasonable price. I recently got a digital copy of the book, so I may read that very soon.

My previous two book reviews were by author Robert Crookall, who documented the early history of astral projection and out-of-body experiences. Sculthorp was considered by Crookall to be an astral projection expert on the same level as Sylvan Muldoon, Oliver Fox, Yram, and others. So reading Crookall's books made me want to read Sculthorp's books.

This book is mostly just astral projection narratives: personal out-of-body experiences by the author. If I could sum up the book, I'd say it's a collection of "reheated leftovers." It has the feel of "In my first book I forgot to say these things, and document these OBEs, but they are equally important." Kind of like my second book, Lessons Out of the Body. Ouch.

Sculthorp's OBE narratives seem genuine enough. He describes many of the same things I've encountered. He makes several interesting observations. For example:

"I have found that in the spirit world water can flow, is buoyant, and can be drunk, but it does not wet my spirit clothes if I enter it." (pg. 2)

Here's another example: 

"In my out-of-the-body experiences in the Spirit World I have often been taken to cities where life goes on just the same as on earth." (pg. 20)

Indeed, so have I, and many others. It reminds me of some of the narratives from Jurgen Ziewe's Vistas of Infinity or William Buhlman's Adventures in the Afterlife.

Although he describes himself as "Not a churchgoer" (page xii) Sculthorp also describes a couple of OBEs in which he claims to have seen Jesus Christ delivering lectures, and also personally interacts with him. His descriptions are strangely similar to some of Paul Twitchell's descriptions of "The [Eck] Master" which almost seem to be semi-personalized to the experiencer him/herself. (There are only a handful of authors who claim to have seen Jesus Christ face-to-face, myself included.)

Strangely, Sculthorp often references the works of a channeled entity named "Zodiac" whom I've never heard of (and I've got a lot of books on channeling and mediumship!). It doesn't have much to do with OBE, but I guess he was a fanboy.

One of the most interesting things I found in the book is Sculthorp's description of what seems to be a lecture delivered by an iPad, Smart phone, Tablet, or a device similar to what we have today in 2024. Bear in mind this book was published in 1975, (most of the author's OBEs were many years prior), but the iPad wasn't invented until 2010:

"We went over the building where the corridors were also thickly carpeted and stopped at an open door of a room where a lecture was in progress. I looked for the lecturer, but no one was addressing the people and all were looking at an instrument on the table. It had an upright wheel over which there was a "chain" of oblong tablets linked together. When I looked at the instrument (the spirit body emits a ray or surge of enquiry) I gathered that it was delivering a lecture, with each tablet containing a subject and, of course, ready for use when required--a kind of spirit tape-recorder." (pg. 22)

Doesn't that just sound like an iPad or Galaxy Tab showing a selection of podcasts on youtube or spotify? Yes, tape recorders were around in the 1970s, but they were very big, clunky, and analog.

Unfortunately, all this book did was make me want to find and read a copy of his first book, Excursions to the Spirit World, which I'm sure is better.

The book is 43 pages, with small font and tight margins. There's barely enough content to satisfy. I'll give this book just 2 stars out of 5. Maybe his earlier, more successful, book is better?

Bob Peterson
9 January 2024

----------------------------

If you want me to review a book about out-of-body experiences or astral projection, send me an email: bob@robertpeterson.org, but please check the index first to see if I've already reviewed it. Also, I've got a huge pile of books I'm planning to review, so don't expect a quick turnaround.

If you like my work, visit my website, robertpeterson.org, where you'll find lots of other free OBE advice and links.

Return to the index of my OBE Book reviews