Dreaming Reality

How Neuroscience and Mysticism Can Unlock the Secrets of Consciousness

By: Vladimir Miskovic, Steven Jay Lynn

Narrated by: Lesa Lockford

A cutting-edge neuroscientist and a leading clinical psychologist look to religious, mystical, and mind-altering experiences to challenge scientific orthodoxies concerning consciousness.

We are nothing but a pack of neurons, Francis Crick once said. Vladimir Miskovic and Steven Jay Lynn show that this way of thinking is both limited and an obstacle to understanding consciousness. In Dreaming Reality, Miskovic and Lynn connect the latest findings from neuroscience―which studies the brain from the outside in, as a purely physical object―to the insights of the world’s mystical traditions, which chart elaborate cartographies of the mind from inside out through experiences of meditation, prayer, and ecstasy. We can tackle the biggest questions surrounding the nature of consciousness when we place objective scientific research alongside the phenomenology of “altered” states.

Dreaming Reality offers a rich synthesis of brains and minds, new and old, that challenges many cherished notions of how we experience our worlds and selves. Instead of privileging the experience of waking life, Miskovic and Lynn take this only as the starting point of a progressive disentanglement of consciousness. Delving into Buddhism, Vedanta, and Christian mysticism, they find that we have much to learn from dreams, hallucinations, visionary states, ego death, mind wandering, sensory deprivation, psychedelic experimentation, meditation, and minimal phenomenal experiences of consciousness.

Each chapter brings us closer to understanding how we dream reality into existence and how we might transcend impoverished materialist models, whose unacknowledged effect is to drive us toward nihilism. Instead, we arrive at a model of consciousness that is more capacious and compassionate than biological sciences alone can imagine.

©2025 Vladimir Miskovic and Steven Jay Lynn (P)2025 Dreamscape Media

Wild Ride!

As more or less of a laymen when it comes to neuroscience but a student of mysticism, this book was a fascinating, high-level summary of the intersections of biology and spirituality. I found myself saying “wow” out loud a number of times and especially enjoyed the interactive exercises suggested in each chapter.

Marvelous

Eloquently crafted, approachable but not dumbed down, and thoroughly enjoyable to read. A gripping primer for budding psychonauts and pensive introspectives alike.

Did not live up to expectations at all.

I hoped for a provocative and profound synthesis of modern neurological science and ancient contemplative mysticism towards a better understanding of the nature of consciousness. What I got was a scattershot of ideas from across psychology, neurology, pharmacology, and comparative religion that only vaguely support the authors' assertions about the nature of consciousness and reality as a whole. I expected much more coherent, substantive, and persuasive argumentation considering this was published by Harvard's Belknap press. I can't remember being this disappointed in a book in a long time.