Ptolemy Tompkins

Last updated

Ptolemy Tompkins (born 1962) is an American writer specializing in books describing the role of the spiritual in ordinary life. His best-known work, "Proof of Angels" (Howard Books, 2014), co-authored with Utah police officer Tyler Beddoes, focuses on the death of Jennifer Lynn Groesbeck, whose car veered into the Spanish Fork River just outside the town of Spanish Fork, and the mysterious voice which Beddoes, along with three other responding officers, heard inside the car as they struggled to right it. Tompkins also collaborated with Eben Alexander on his mega-selling "Proof of Heaven" (Simon & Schuster, 2012) and its follow-up, "The Map of Heaven" (Simon & Schuster, 2014).

Contents

Biography

Tompkins was born in Washington, D.C., educated at Sarah Lawrence College, and currently lives off the coast of Maine. He is the son of best-selling author Peter Tompkins (A Spy in Rome, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, The Secret Life of Plants, and others), and for nine years was an in-house editor at Guideposts Magazine. Paradise Fever (Avon Books, ISBN   038097438X), his 1997 memoir, chronicles his childhood in the early seventies, focusing on the time his father spent searching for Atlantis in the waters off of the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. His The Divine Life of Animals (Crown, 2010), argues for the validity of the idea that animals possess souls, while The Modern Book of the Dead (Atria, 2012) sketches a contemporary map of the afterlife focusing on the work of mid-twentieth-century afterlife investigators Robert Crookall and Jane Sherwood. Other books include The Beaten Path: Field Notes on Getting Wise in a Wisdom-Crazy World (William Morrow, 2000, ISBN   978-0-380-97822-9), which focuses on Tompkins' step-brother, the Buddhist Abbot Nicholas Vreeland. His first book, This Tree Grows Out of Hell, first published in 1990 but re-released in revised form by Sterling Books in 2010 (Sterling, ISBN   978-1-4027-4882-0), is a spiritual history of Mesoamerica heavily influenced by the thinking of Ken Wilber and Owen Barfield. "Proof of God" (Howard Books, 2017), written with astrophysicist Bernard Haisch, explores Haisch's work on the Zero Point Field and Haisch's contention that the physical world is analogous to a computer simulation, the ultimate programmer of which is God. Tompkins also appears in "Monk with a Camera," a 2014 documentary about his step-brother Nicholas Vreeland.

Tompkins' mother is Jerree Talbot Smith. He has two siblings, Timothy Christopher Tompkins (deceased), and Robin Ray of Hobe Sound, Florida.

Related Research Articles

The afterlife or life after death is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's stream of consciousness or identity continues to exist after the death of their physical body. The surviving essential aspect varies between belief systems; it may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, which carries with it one's personal identity. Belief in an afterlife is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heaven</span> Supernatural place where gods, angels, or ancestors reside

Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reincarnation</span> Concept of rebirth in different physical form

Reincarnation, also known as rebirth, transmigration, or in Ancient Greek-inspired texts metempsychosis, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. In most beliefs involving reincarnation, the soul of a human being is immortal and does not disperse after the physical body has perished. Upon death, the soul merely becomes transmigrated into a newborn baby or an animal to continue its immortality. The term transmigration means the passing of a soul from one body to another after death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nikos Kazantzakis</span> Greek writer and philosopher (1883-1957)

Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer. Widely considered a giant of modern Greek literature, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in nine different years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duat</span> Underworld in Egyptian mythology

The Duat is the underworld in ancient Egyptian mythology. It has been represented in hieroglyphs as a star-in-circle: 𓇽. The god Osiris was believed to be the lord of the underworld. He was the first mummy as depicted in the Osiris myth and he personified rebirth and life after death. The underworld was also the residence of various other gods along with Osiris.

Frank Edward Peretti is a New York Times best-selling author of Christian fiction, whose novels primarily focus on the supernatural. As of 2012, his works have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. He has been described by the New York Times as creating the Christian thriller genre. Peretti is best known for his novels This Present Darkness (1986) and Piercing the Darkness (1989). Peretti has held ministry credentials with the Assemblies of God, and formerly played the banjo in a bluegrass band called Northern Cross. He now lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho with his wife, Barbara.

Morgan Scott Peck (1936–2005) was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author who wrote the book The Road Less Traveled, published in 1978.

In esoteric cosmology, a plane is conceived as a subtle state, level, or region of reality, each plane corresponding to some type, kind, or category of being.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neale Donald Walsch</span> American author, screenwriter, actor and speaker (born 1943)

Neale Donald Walsch is an American author of the series Conversations with God. He is also an actor, screenwriter, and speaker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Kreeft</span> American philosopher (born 1937)

Peter John Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he is the author of over eighty books on Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics. He also formulated, together with Ronald K. Tacelli, Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God in their Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

<i>The Denial of Death</i> 1973 book by Ernest Becker

The Denial of Death is a 1973 book by American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker. The author builds on the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Norman O. Brown, and Otto Rank to discuss the psychological and philosophical implications of how people and cultures have reacted to the concept of death. The author argues most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1974, two months after the author's death. It is the main work responsible for the development of terror management theory.

<i>Heaven and Hell</i> (Swedenborg book)

Heaven and Hell is the common English title of a book written by Emanuel Swedenborg in Latin, published in 1758. The full title is Heaven and its Wonders and Hell From Things Heard and Seen, or, in Latin: De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus et de inferno, ex Auditis et Visis. It gives a detailed description of the afterlife; how people live after the death of the physical body. The book owes its popular appeal to that subject matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gene Stone</span> American writer

Gene Stone is an American writer and editor known for his books on animal rights and plant-based food.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Broad</span> American science and technology writer

William J. Broad is an American science journalist, author and a Senior Writer at The New York Times.

Peter Tompkins was an American journalist, World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) spy in Rome, and best-selling author.

Eben Alexander III is an American neurosurgeon and author. His book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife (2012) describes his near-death experience that happened in 2008 under medically-induced coma when treated for meningitis. He asserts that the coma resulted in brain death, that consciousness is not only a product of the brain and that this permits access to an afterlife.

<i>Proof of Heaven</i> 2012 nonfiction book by Eben Alexander

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife is a 2012 New York Times bestselling nonfiction book and autobiographical book written by the American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander and published by Simon & Schuster. The book describes a near-death experience Alexander had while suffering from what should have been a fatal case of acute, gram-negative Escherichia coli bacterial meningitis, while on a ventilator and in a coma. Alexander describes how the experience changed his perceptions of life and the afterlife. The book was a commercial success but also was the subject of scientific criticism in relation to misconceptions about neurology, like relating to medically induced coma as brain death.

The Baháʼí Faith affirms the existence of life after death while not defining everything about it. The soul on death is said to recognize the value of its deeds and begin a new phase of a conscious relationship with God though negative experiences are possible.

<i>Monk with a Camera</i> 2014 American documentary film by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara

Monk with a Camera: The Life and Journey of Nicholas Vreeland is a 2014 American feature-length documentary film directed by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara. The subject of this biographical film is Nicholas Vreeland, an American who is a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and also a photographer. He is the first westerner to be made abbot of a major Tibetan government monastery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atria Publishing Group</span> General interest publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster

Atria Publishing Group is a general interest publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster. The publishing group launched as Atria Books in 2002. The Atria Publishing Group was later created internally at Simon & Schuster to house a number of imprints including Atria Books, Atria Trade Paperbacks, Atrai Books Espanol, Atria Unbound, Washington Square Press, Emily Bestler Books, Atria/Beyond Words, Cash Money Content, Howard Books, Marble Arch Press, Strebor Books, 37 Ink, Keywords Press and Enliven Books. Atria is also known for creating innovative imprints and co-publishing deals with African-American writers as well as known for experimenting with digital or non-traditional print formats and authors.

References

    http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,356133,00.html