Who Reaches Empowerment vs. Who Remains Stuck

Threshold Contact and Sleep Paralysis with Sheila Pryce Brooks

Dr. Sheila Pryce Brooks received her doctoral degree from the University of York in the United Kingdom, where her dissertation examined the phenomenology of sleep paralysis. Her ongoing research explores Threshold Contact Experiences, bridging science, spirituality, and the paranormal. Dr. Brooks lives and works in Jamaica, offering unique insight as both an experiencer and scholar.

She discusses the phenomenology of sleep paralysis and how it can evolve into what she terms Threshold Contact Experiences. Drawing on both personal and academic research, she explains the transition from terror to empowerment and describes encounters with nonhuman intelligences. Her discussion explores the intersections between sleep states, consciousness, folklore, and transpersonal experience.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He currently serves as Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science.

(Recorded on October 11, 2025)

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Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove’s Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs/1st.pdf