David Luke is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich, Past President of the Parapsychological Association, and co-author of numerous books and journal articles.  In his first solo book Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience, Luke presents a comprehensive exploration of the links between psychedelics and exceptional human experience from a variety of different angles. He covers a good deal of ground surveying the psychedelic/neurochemical models for paranormal experience, puts on his anthropological hat and looks at the incorporation of spirit entities in religions that use ayahuasca, presents field reports of psychedelic phenomena and examines the capacities of various psychedelics for inducing synaesthesia. Also included is a thought-provoking essay on how psychedelics might induce a tendency for greater ecological awareness, if not inter-species connectedness.

Unlike many scholarly works that investigate psychedelics, Luke isn’t shy about providing first person accounts of his own experiences, including an investigation utilizing DMT in search of a rather frightening entity that appears in a number of myths. The book will be a must-have for scholars who do research in these areas, but it will likely find a much broader audience due to the interesting, entertaining, and timely nature of the material. For these and other contributions in Otherworlds, we give our PA Book Award with great pleasure to David Luke.

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The Parapsychological Association Book Award was established in 2015 to recognize books in the field of parapsychology that make significant contributions to science and to the cultural conversation about the implications of parapsychology. Visit the PA Book Award Page to learn more about the award and previous winners.