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that already dominates and demeans our politics.
    In the end, then, I’m not arguing for or against religion or atheism. What I’m trying to do is illuminate their common ground. Each side claims to have worked out a way of looking at the world that holds the ultimate claim on truth. Neither side seems likely to change its position. So in light of this, it seems we had all better do one thing in particular: learn to get along. I’m arguing that we learn to talk about so-called paranormal issues productively, so that believers and disbelievers alike gain a better understanding not only of how the world works but of themselves and each other. The way I see it, we’re all land-based mammals on a planet with a greater surface area devoted to things that swim. We are all trapped on this same unforgiving rock, floating through space, with no rulebook for living other than the one we discover and write together. Under such circumstances, are we better off approaching each other in a posture of debate—or conversation?
    I’m not alone in thinking this way. I should point out that among the New Atheists, Sam Harris seems to clearly understand the difference between a paranormal claim, or ideas related to spirituality (for lack of a better term), and supernatural propositions, or the kind of thinking codified into a religion. “The question of what happens after death (if anything) is a question about the relationship between consciousness and the physical world,” writes Harris. “It is true that many atheists are convinced that we know what this relationship is, and that it is one of absolute dependence of the one upon the other. Those who have read the last chapters of The End of Faith know that I am not convinced of this. While I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the brain (as I am finishing my doctorate in neuroscience), I do not think that the utter reducibility of consciousness to matter has been established. It may be that the very concepts of mind and matter are fundamentally misleading us.”
    I suspect that most of us are reasonable enough to realize that systems of thought, whether religious or scientific, that have survived for centuries and for millennia must necessarily contain truths that are ours for the taking. What gets too little play, at least in our public discourse, is any sort of middle or integrated view in which both political parties have valid points to make, or both rationalists and mystics have something to teach.
    But the good news is that we, as a society, are already beyond both Pat Robertson and Richard Dawkins. Or, at least, a world beyond these partisan yelling matches is available to us. Whether it is Eagleman, philosophers like Jean Gebser or Ken Wilber, or for that matter the Dalai Lama, more and more serious thinkers are recognizing that the most enlightened view allows for a rich dialogue between science and religion—not the dominance of one at the expense of the other.
    Bringing more people into this kind of collaborative worldview won’t be easy. And the media is one of the obstacles we need to overcome. Journalists often portray the fight between mysticism and materialism in stark terms—and through the lens of some dramatically phrased question, like , Can science and spirituality coexist? In the following pages, this book is essentially making one argument: That in the fullness of time, it’s not only apparent that science and spirituality can coexist, as they have coexisted for centuries. The lesson is even more dramatic than that. The lesson is that they can serve one another.
    We are about to embark on a tour through a series of fundamental questions about the nature of human existence. In a sense, we will all be like the man, Paul, we saw at the beginning of this introduction. You may hear the foot-falls and bangings of various ghosts—or the workings of human imagination.
    You will definitely encounter a UFO.
    Mind