New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: “Parapsychology and Religion” is perhaps the most controversial research area in the psychology of religion. However, in recent decades, psychology of religion has witnessed a growing literature bearing on ontological issues including parapsychological topics such as distant healing and near-death experiences. This book argues that despite the methodological and theoretical controversies that still surround the field of parapsychology, the findings of research on alleged anomalous processes can inform the study of religious/spiritual experiences. Psychological literature on the paranormal is critically reviewed and it is argued that it became less a scientific endeavor and more an ideological program devised to denigrate paranormal believers and experiencers. This volume explores how an open-minded dialogue between parapsychology and psychology of religion might help us move beyond the present ideological disputes and reviewes the complex relations between parapsychology and religion over time as well as their implications for interdisciplinary research on religion and spirituality.

Further information at the publisher's website: Brill. 

From the publisher's website: Glimpses of Another World: Impressions and Reflections of an EVP Operator is Anabela Cardoso’s third work.

Following on from Electronic Voices: Contact with Another Dimension? and Electronic Contact with the Dead: What do the Voices Tell Us? in this book the author shares her thoughts and ruminations on Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC), the phenomena whereby allegedly deceased communicators relay messages and images to the living via radio equipment, televisions, computers, phones and other electronic devices. It’s a subject Anabela has devoted her life to in recent decades.

The communication is both fascinating and mysterious and the wisdom meted out by higher dimension human and nonhuman intelligences is profound. Glimpses of Another World is a memoir and a how-to-do ITC manual rolled into one and essential reading for those pondering the possibility of an afterlife.

Further information at the publisher's website: White Crow Books. 

From the publisher's website: A Quest for Wisdom is a wide-ranging volume which brings together 25 of David Lorimer’s highly acclaimed essays. Among the significant thinkers featured here are many who have shone their light on his path, and which can provide enriching nourishment for readers on their own life journeys. The essays explore philosophy, meaning and spirituality; consciousness, death and transformation; and responsibility, ethics and society. Perceptive and illuminating, they examine the nature of life and death, questions of meaning and purpose, and the challenge of how we can live more harmoniously together. David hopes that readers will be inspired, as Dr Albert Schweitzer put it, in our common task ‘to become more finely and deeply human.’

Review by Gary Lachman.

A collection of stories from my life as a highly-sensitive, unwitting clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient, and claircognizant. Can you hear what other people are thinking? How about using telepathy to communicate with others? Or have you ever been visited by a deceased relative? CLAIRVOYAGE is about artist and graphic designer Stephanie Milanowski experiencing all these things and more.

From the publisher's website: During the 1930s a new approach to exploring human consciousness began at Duke University with Professor J. B. Rhine’s experimental research on extra-sensory perception, or ESP. His findings on telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis challenged conventional disbelief. Rhine’s findings and his first popular book, New Frontiers of the Mind, ignited excitement and controversy—among not only scientists but the public at large.

Rhine’s letters chronicle his efforts to find reliable evidence of psychic ability, from the séance room to psychic animals and finally to a university research laboratory. Covering the years 1923–1939, they reveal a gripping story of groundbreaking research, told in the words of the main player as he worked with his team, subjects, critics and supporters alike.

Further information at the publisher's website: McFarland. 

From the publisher's website: Reincarnation as a Scientific Concept focuses on the question of whether reincarnation should be recognized as a serious subject by the contemporary scientific community. After a historical overview of the psychical research into reincarnation memories, the authors present well-documented cases that have been studied by scholars from East and West.

Further information at the publisher's website: White Crow Books.

From the publisher's website: The world's leading expert on near-death experiences reveals his journey toward rethinking the nature of death, life, and the continuity of consciousness. Cases of remarkable experiences on the threshold of death have been reported since ancient times, and are described today by 10% of people whose hearts stop. The medical world has generally ignored these “near-death experiences,” dismissing them as “tricks of the brain” or wishful thinking. But after his patients started describing events that he could not just sweep under the rug, Dr. Bruce Greyson began to investigate.

Further information at the publisher's website: St. Martin's Essentials.

Inspired by the author's personal experiences, this book is a thorough survey of parapsychology, the scientific studies done in the field, and possible explanations for its various phenomena suggested by quantum physics, medicine, psychology, and spirituality research. Thompson-Slaughter takes us a big step forward in closing the gap between science and religion, showing that they may be simply different aspects of the same awe-inspiring whole.

From the publisher's website: Building on the groundbreaking research of Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism, Edward Kelly and Paul Marshall gather a cohort of leading scholars to address the most recent advances in the psychology of consciousness. Currently emerging as a middle ground between warring fundamentalisms of religion andscience, an expanded science-based understanding of nature finally accommodates empirical realities of spiritual sorts while also rejecting rationally untenable overbeliefs.

The vision sketched here provides an antidote to the prevailing postmodern disenchantment of the world and demeaning of human possibilities. It not only more accurately and fully reflects our human condition but engenders hope and encourages ego-surpassing forms of human flourishing. It offers reasons for us to believe that freedom is real, that our human choices matter, and that we have barely scratched the surface of our human potentials. It also addresses the urgent need for a greater sense of worldwide community and interdependence - a sustainable ethos - by demonstrating that under the surface we and the world are much more extensively interconnected than previously recognized. 

Further information at the publisher's website: Rowman & Littlefield.

From the publisher's website: A guide to dream precognition and its implications

Exploring the mind-blowing implications of precognition for our lives, including how our present thoughts actually shape--or shaped--our past, Eric Wargo explains how to detect precognitive dreams through characteristic features and outlines a set of clear principles to help guide dreamworkers, illustrated through real precognitive dream experiences.

Further information at the publisher's website: Inner Traditions.

From the publisher's website: Within days of the widely-publicised disaster of 1912, stories began circulating of extraordinary omens and individuals who supposedly had supernatural premonitions of the disaster. Furthermore, four fictional works – one dating as far back as twenty-six years – came to be seen as anticipating the disaster.  

Between 1960 and 2006, five major commentators published extended analyses of the alleged premonitions, none of which is now easily accessible to an English readership. This book examines them all in detail. The whole treatment of the matter opens up fascinating questions concerning the paranormal, but also raises and leaves unresolved crucial issues specific to premonitions and how they can be legitimately examined. 

Readers are left to make their own judgement on Titanic premonitions.

Further information at the publisher's website: Matador. 

From the publisher's website: Courageous scientists challenge the dominant paradigm of reality. Why are they so brave and what does their research reveal? What is reality? Is there more than we know from our five senses? Vanguard scientists believe there is more than we see so they formulate a non-materialist paradigm that expands human potential, to include mind and matter interaction. Since going against the dominant worldview provokes opposition, this book explores the personal backgrounds of the scientists to find out why they are so courageous. We learn that there is another dimension that allows for enhanced abilities. Based on interviews conducted by Gayle Kimball, The Mysteries of Reality: Dialogues with Visionary Scientists reports on the current research and personal characteristics of visionaries from around the world.

Further information at the publisher's website: John Hunt Publishing.