Blackmore, S. J. (2001). What can the paranor-
mal teach us about consciousness? Skeptical Inquirer,
25 (2), 22–27.Uses ganzfeld research to argue against belief in the
paranormal power of conscious will.Luna, L. E. (2016). Some observations on the phe-
nomenology of the ayahuasca experience. In L. E. Luna
and S. F. White (Eds), The ayahuasca reader: Encoun-
ters with the Amazon’s sacred vine (2nd ed.) (pp.
251–279). Santa Fe: Synergetic.Draws on extensive personal experience to discuss
visual experiences induced by ayahuasca and their
relation to lucid dreaming, creativity, and reality.Schacter, D. K., Addis, D. R., Hassabis, D.,
Martin, V. C., Spreng, R. N., and Szpunar,
K. K. (2012). The future of memory: Remembering,
imagining, and the brain. Neuron, 76 (4).Similarities and differences between remembering the
past and imagining the future.Sheldrake, R. (2005). The sense of being stared
at, Part 1: Is it real or illusory? Journal of Conscious-
ness Studies, 12 (6), 10–31. Peer commentaries (pp.
50–116), especially Braud, French, Radin, and Schlitz;
and response, pp. 117–126.Explores evidence for the idea that people know (with-
out seeing) that someone is looking at them.Siegel, R. K. (1992). The psychonaut and the
shaman. In R. K. Siegel, Fire in the brain. New York:
Penguin.Hallucinatory adventures with Siegel’s ‘psychonaut
team’ and a Mexican shaman.READING
sweat? Obviously something happened to you, and the experience itself was real
enough, wasn’t it?
In the next chapter, we will explore sleep, dreams, and some further weird expe-
riences that haunt the borderlands of sleep, including the example of sleep
paralysis just described. As with many of the ‘altered states’ that we considered
in the previous chapter, exploring these borderlands suggests that many of the
other distinctions we are so familiar with start to melt away – not just reality ver-
sus imagination, but body versus mind, self versus other, and conscious versus
unconscious.‘there’s nothing odd
about the sense in which
subjective phenomena
can be objective facts
[. . .] pain is real!’
(Strawson, 2011, p. 265)