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Examining the religious and spiritual dimensions of dreams often leads directly to an awareness of the striking contrast between the reality of the dreamworld and the reality Western science describes. The mechanistic/materialistic model of the universe that underlies much of modern science, common sense, and mainstream psychology views human beings as biological machines and reduces consciousness to a function of the brain. The religious and spiritual dreamworld can help to enlarge this model of the human being and the universe by showing that we function not only as biological machines, but, under certain condition such as dreaming, also as vast fields of consciousness transcending the human body.The dreamworld offers a remarkable laboratory in which we can directly experience aspects of our world that go against cultural expectations and defy current mainstream scientific conceptions. This book argues that certain transpersonal dream phenomena provide convincing experiential support for considering consciousness as a primary attribute of existence and not simply a product of the physiological processes of the brain.

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James Gollnick, MA, PhD in psychology of religion (University of Toronto). Author of "Dreams in Psychology of Religion," "Love and the Soul," "The Religious Dreamworld of Apuleius´ Metamorphoses," and "Religion and Spirituality in the Life Cycle." Professor of Psychology of Religion, St. Paul´s College, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

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