What Lies Beyond?answers two questions: What's beyond the functional, mechanistic, and materialistic conceptions of life and consciousness? And why does that matter today? From an overview of paranormal and mystical experiences -?in the context of the prevailing mechanistic, materialist view of mind and life -?to exploring why the mystery of consciousness remains ?hard? and the reasons for doubting that this mystery will be resolved in mechanistic terms, this book aims to encourage open enquiry. For the reader who feels a bit lost, alienated, or disturbed by today?s aggressive scientism and technology worship, these pages offer alternative, more open approaches that reject neither science nor technology but rather insist upon a more humanistic outlook that?s sensitive to the vast but often hidden range of human experience.