New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: Within the little known ‘Century of Wonders’ between 1848 and 1948 in America, the physical phenomena manifesting in the séance rooms of the great psychic mediums baffles description. Two of its most famous mediums and yet, most vilified by the conjurers and critics of that day, were the Bangs Sisters, May and Elizabeth, of Chicago.

In their presence spirits of the departed would manifest and precipitate directly on to a blank canvas in front of the astonished witnesses and, equally wondrous, spirit writing would manifest directly on to blank sheets of paper or slates.

The present work, by author and researcher N. Riley Heagerty, explores through rare source material and eyewitness accounts by people of unimpeachable character, the seemingly “ miraculous ” phenomena that was produced. In a fair and balanced manner, the writer also takes a close look at the most heated and public charges of fraud brought against these Chicago wonder workers.

This in depth, complete work, the first of its kind, unravels the truth of the great psychic mystery of the Bangs Sisters.

About the author

N. Riley Heagerty, has been involved non-stop in research involving Spiritualism and Physical Mediumship since 1985. 

He has, up to the present day, collected and read more than 600 books - mostly rare, on the subject, and has lectured extensively in England and America.  His first published book, The French Revelation, dealt exclusively with the Independent Voice mediumship of Mrs. Emily S. French, of Rochester, New York. 

Mr. Heagerty, considered one of the leading authorities on American Physical Mediumship in the United States has said, “The research of Mediumship and Spirit Communication is just as exciting and enthralling to me in the present day as it was during the first days of my research. It is an ongoing adventure that will never cease.  The subject is vast, marvelous and contains, in this researchers opinion, the most important truths we could ever know.  The heyday of Spiritualism, what I have termed the ‘Century of Wonders,’ existed between 1848 & 1948. Mrs. French along with May and Elizabeth Bangs are just three of the many that demonstrated their wondrous gifts within this time period and I am honored to write about them. “

Further information, and samples of the book, can be found on the publisher's website.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher's website:

With development and practice, lucid dreaming can provide a powerful path to greater awareness, heightened creativity and spiritual awakening. Author David Jay Brown draws on his interactions with experts such as Stanley Krippner, Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, and others to explore the relationship between lucid dreaming, shamanic journeying, visionary plants, and psychedelic drugs.

A detailed guide to mastering lucid dreaming for physical and emotional healing, enhanced creativity, and spiritual awakening

• Offers methods to improve lucid dreaming abilities and techniques for developing superpowers in the dream realm

• Explains how to enhance dreaming with supplements, herbs, and psychedelics

• Explores the ability of lucid dreamers to communicate with the waking realm and the potential for shared lucid dreaming and access to our unconscious minds

In a lucid dream, you “awaken” within your dream and realize you are dreaming. With this extraordinary sense of awakening comes a clear perception of the continuity of self between waking and sleeping and the ability to significantly influence what happens within the dream, giving you the opportunity to genuinely experience anything without physical or social consequences. In this way, lucid dreaming offers therapeutic opportunities for fantasy fulfillment, fear confrontation, and releasing the trauma of past experiences. With development and practice, lucid dreaming can provide a powerful path to greater awareness, heightened creativity, spiritual awakening, and communication with the vast interconnected web of cosmic consciousness.

In this detailed guide to mastering the practice of lucid dreaming, David Jay Brown draws from his more than 20 years’ experience using these techniques and his interactions with dozens of experts on consciousness, physics, dreaming, and entheogens, such as Stanley Krippner, Rupert Sheldrake, Stephen LaBerge, Robert Waggoner, Dean Radin, Terence McKenna, and many others. He explores the intimate relationship between lucid dreaming, shamanic journeying, visionary plants, and psychedelic drugs and how they are used for healing and spiritual development. Offering methods for improving both lucid dreaming and shamanic journeying abilities, he explains how to enhance dreaming with oneirogens, supplements, herbs, and psychedelics and offers techniques for developing superpowers in the dream realm.

Summarizing the scientific research on lucid dreaming, Brown explores the ability of lucid dreamers to communicate with people in the waking realm and the potential for dream telepathy, shared lucid dreaming, and access to the vast unconscious regions of our minds, opening up a path that takes us beyond dreaming and waking to dreaming wide awake.

From the publisher's website:

In the top corner of the window a pale, milky-white wisp is rising almost to the top of our ten-foot ceiling.... I am startled but not afraid....Mostly, I am engrossed; I have never seen anything like this before (or since) and it fascinates me.

Dennis Waskul writes these lines—about his first-hand experience with the supernatural—in the introduction to his beguiling book Ghostly Encounters. Based on two years of fieldwork and interviews with 71 midwestern Americans, the Waskuls' book is a reflexive ethnography that examines how people experience ghosts and hauntings in everyday life. The authors explore how uncanny happenings become ghosts, and the reasons people struggle with or against a will to believe. They present the variety and character of hauntings and ghostly encounters, outcomes of people telling haunted legends, and the nested consequences of ghostly experiences.

Through these stories, Ghostly Encounters seeks to understand the persistence of uncanny experiences and beliefs in ghosts in an age of reason, science, education, and technology—as well as how those beliefs and experiences both reflect and serve important social and cultural functions.

About the Authors:

Dennis Waskul is a Professor of Sociology and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Minnesota State University Mankato, and has served as president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He has authored or co-authored several books including Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body (with Phillip Vannini), The Senses in Self, Culture, and Society (with Phillip Vannini and Simon Gottschalk), and Popular Culture as Everyday Life (with Phillip Vannini).

Michele Waskul is an independent scholar with a focus on special education.

From the publisher’s website: Master the skills of leaving the body using logic and reason. Improve self-understanding and achieve personal growth with over a dozen exit techniques. With well-ordered, rational explanations,Demystifying the Out-of-Body Experience describes how and why OBEs work. This is a groundbreaking guide for using OBEs to understand your place in the worlds that exist beyond our daily lives.

Meet spiritual guides, loved ones who have crossed over, and even other out-of-body travellers who want to help you understand who you are and why you are here. Learn communication techniques and memory aids to get the most out of each experience, in addition to tips for creating a program of OBE mastery. Contrary to popular belief, many people have come back from “the other side” and shared their experiences. And now, you can be part of this life-changing exploration.

Perfect for beginners and experienced seekers who want to learn about the non-physical planes in a non-mystical context and want to evolve the condition of their soul. This practical workbook for spiritual transformation is based on the research of the International Academy of Consciousness.

From the publisher’s website: Scientific evidence for the continual presence of consciousness with or without connection to a living organism

• Examines findings on the survival of consciousness beyond life, including near-death experiences, after-death communication, and reincarnation

• Explains how this correlates precisely with cutting-edge physics theories on superstrings, information fields, and energy matrices

• Reveals how consciousness manifests in living beings to continue its evolution

Evidence now points to consciousness existing beyond the brain, such as when the brain is temporarily incapacitated, as well as to the survival of consciousness after death. Conventional science prefers to dismiss these findings because they cannot be accommodated by a materialist view of reality. Spirituality and religion embrace the continuity of consciousness and ascribe it to a nonmaterial spirit or soul that is immortal. As such, spirituality/religion and science continually find conflict in their views. But what if there truly is no conflict?

Based on a new scientific paradigm in sync with experience-based spirituality, Ervin Laszlo and Anthony Peake explore how consciousness is continually present in the cosmos and can exist without connection to a living organism. They examine the rapidly growing body of scientific evidence supporting the continuity of consciousness, including near-death experiences, after-death communication, reincarnation, and neurosensory information received in altered states. They explain how the persistence of consciousness beyond the demise of the body means that, in essence, we are not mortal--we continue to exist even when our physical existence has come to an end. This correlates precisely with cutting-edge physics, which posits that things in our plane of time and space are not intrinsically real but are manifestations of a hidden dimension where they exist in the form of superstrings, information fields, and energy matrices.

With proof that consciousness is basic to the cosmos and immortal in its deeper, nonmanifest realm, Laszlo and Peake reveal the purpose of consciousness is to manifest in living beings in order to continuously evolve.