A diverse group of authors journey into the fringes of human consciousness, tackling psychic and paranormal phenomena, lucid dreaming, synchronistic encounters, and more. Collected from the online magazine Reality Sandwich, these essays explore regions of the mind often traversed by shamans, mystics, and visionary artists; adjacent and contiguous to our normal waking state, these realms may be encountered in dreams or out-of-body experiences, accessed through meditation or plant medicines, and marked by psychic phenomena and uncanny synchronicities. From demons encountered in sleep paralysis visions to psychic research conducted by the CIA, the seemingly disparate topics covered here congeal to form a larger picture of what these extraordinary states of consciousness might have to tell us about the nature of reality itself.

Welcome to this first book, Edges of Consciousness, in our series exploring our collective, global consciousness. Overall, the series of five books will become an embracing tome entitled Bubbles of Consciousness. The end goal is to affect a change in humanity's somewhat self-destructive behaviors, i.e., those behaviors that are steadily and increasingly poisoning our environment, our planet, and ourselves. The immediate aim is to offer creative solutions to humanity's pressing dilemmas. The first and second books have been written, and the third book is under development. The series will complete with a total of five books. The guiding assumption in developing this series is that our values and thoughts determine our behavior, and that in turn, our behavior impacts our environment for better, or for worse. In this series, topic areas touched upon will include (1) human history, psychology and sociology, (2) extra sensory perception, paranormal experience and parapsychology, and (3) spirituality, transcendentalism, mysticism, religion, and the supernatural. The first book, Edges of Consciousness, is a review of the transcendent powers lying within human consciousness. These transcendent powers have been largely either forgotten ~ hidden ~ ignored ~ or overlooked. Consequently, they have become quite mysterious to the average human being, and are currently categorized as belonging to the realm of the mystical paranormal. Edges of Consciousness, explores (1) paranormal phenomena such as psychokinesis, telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, out-of-body experiences, ghosts and reincarnation, (2) the possibility that there is far more to us than we consciously realize, and (3) that our hidden gifts may be helpful in pursuing our goal of saving our planet Earth from humanity's misguided adventures. This book does not attempt to persuade through argumentation, but rather through a comprehensive review of what is known today about paranormal phenomena, especially through the eyes of rigorous and objective scientific researchers. Paranormal research is very much an ongoing activity, and there is much happening today that most of us are not aware of. This book should bring us relatively up-to-date on current research activity, and the interesting possibilities that become evident from that research. Most of this is happening at the outer edges of our everyday normal, or conventional, mundane collective consciousness. Subsequent books in the series will continue the exploration of collective consciousness by examining related areas. Conventional thinking will be thoroughly investigated, including the different manifestations of conventional thinking, the paradoxical question of ownership, and the historical roots underpinning conventional thinking. Lesser known alternatives to conventional thinking will also be looked at, and possibilities probed for usefulness. In this series exploring collective human consciousness, the ultimate hope is that paths will be discovered and utilized in such a way so as to help us reclaim the beauty and well-being of our awesome planet Earth, and save ourselves in the process. All of us enjoy life here on this planet, and presently humanity is at the risk of losing that existence. The signs of imminent environmental collapse are all around us. This book is dedicated to all those who are making the effort to quickly turn things around.

A consciousness and dream hacker explains how to use liminal dreaming—the dreams that come between sleep and waking—for self-actualization and consciousness expansion. At the edges of consciousness, between waking and sleeping, there’s a swirling, free associative state of mind that is the domain of liminal dreams. Working with liminal dreams can improve sleep, mitigate anxiety and depression, help to heal trauma, and aid creativity and problem-solving. As we sink into slumber, we pass through hypnagogia, the first of the two liminal dream states. In this transitional zone, memories, perceptions, and imaginings arise in a fast moving, hallucinatory, semi-conscious remix. On the other end of the night, as we wake, we experience hypnopompia—the hazy, pleasant, drift that is the other liminal dream state. Readers of Liminal Dreaming will learn step-by-step how to create a dream practice outside of REM-sleep states that they can incorporate into their lives in personally meaningful ways. Liminal dreaming practice is also far easier to learn than lucid dreaming practice, making it possible for the reader to begin working with these dreams this very night.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Invented religions have been described as modern religions which advertise their invented status and reject traditional strategies of authorisation. But what does it mean for a religious formation to be ‘made up’, and how might this status affect perceptions of its legitimacy or authenticity in wider society? Based in original fieldwork and archival sources, and in the secondary literature on invented and constructed formations, this volume explores the allure of, as well as the limits of, the invention of religion. Through a series of case studies, the contributors discuss strategies of mobilization and legitimation for new traditions at their point of emergence, as well as taking issue with simplistic interpretations of the phenomenon which neglect wider cultural and political dimensions. This book was originally published as a special issue of Culture and Religion.

100+ writers, artists, philosophers and scientists explore the nature of consciousness.