Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg

"Pearce's Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg is a brilliant analysis of the human condition, one of the very best I have ever seen . . . it is a must read."—(Charles T. Tart, Ph.D., author of The End of Materialism and Altered States of Consciousness) In this classic follow-up to his bestselling The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Joseph Chilton Pearce explains the process of acculturation and the mechanisms that create our self-limiting "cosmic egg" of consensus reality. Laying the groundwork for his later classic, Pearce shows that we go through early childhood connecting with the world through our senses. With the development of language and the process of acculturation not only do our direct experiences of the world become much less vivid but our innate states of nonordinary consciousness become suppressed. Trapped in a specific cultural context —a "cosmic egg"—we are no longer able to have or even recognize mystical experiences not mediated by our culture...