Book excerpt: Why should anomalous experience, in a general sense, be proven to exist, before they can be taken seriously? Contrary to the conventional wisdom held by many scholars in human history hitherto existing, the imaginative exploration of anomalous phenomena, even if all of them were merely the fabricated products of psychological con artists, will have tremendous implications for the future of intelligent life, both on earth and in deep space unto multiverses. For the critics, this is a bold (or outrageous) claim, for sure. So, a good question to ask is, Why should the conventional wisdom on anomalous experience be challenged in this way? This question is all the more fascinating, when related to the nature of unconsciousness. Although unconscious experience does not necessarily imply anomalous experience, the two are closely intertwined, since an individual may not exactly know how and why an anomalous phenomenon he claims to encounter happens in the way that it does, and this constitutes the unconscious dimension of anomalous experience, which has remained the most controversial in the scientific community. This book thus focuses on this relationship between the nature of unconsciousness and the controversial aspects of anomalous experience so understood. To understand this, the book is organized into four main parts, that is, in relation to nature, the mind, culture, and society—together with the introductory and concluding chapters.