How much of your waking time are you fully awake? How often do you stumble through the day on auto-pilot, half asleep and out of contact with yourself, instead of feeling connected and alive? In this astounding book, Steve Taylor suggests that our normal consciousness is really a kind of 'sleep' from which we sometimes 'wake up', into a more intense and complete reality. Waking from Sleep provides what is perhaps the first ever clear explanation of higher states of consciousness, or 'awakening experiences'. This book examines: * the methods that human beings have used throughout history to induce awakening experiences, including meditation, sex, nature, sport, psychedelic drugs and sleep deprivation * how higher states of consciousness were normal and natural to some of the world's peoples (and still are in some cases) * how we can make 'wakefulness' our normal state again. By fully explaining awakening experiences, this book makes them much more accessible, and may even lead to a revolution in our psychological development as human beings.