It is hard to take the author seriously, or as an authority, when he rejects materialism and states something like "Physical death is merely a de-clenching of awareness", and he believes in the afterlife.
Well, when it comes to consciousness the alternative is dualism and dualism is the belief in magic.
Given how discredited dualism is it is amazing how far people will go to deny hey are dualists whilst spouting all the arguements and beliefs of dualists.
Dualism is the belief there is more than one fundamental substance in the world (mind & matter). There's nothing magical about that, it's just an ontological position. But it does have the problem of how mind & matter interact.