In the early years of my laboratory and clinical research, I was bombarded daily with experiences and observations for which my medical and psychiatric training had not prepared me. I was experiencing things that, in the context of the scientific worldview I was brought up with, were considered impossible and were not supposed to happen. And yet, those obviously impossible things were happening all the time.

When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-Ordinary Realities is a collection of stories describing various events in my professional and personal life that forced me to abandon my skeptical and materialistic scientific perspective on life and embrace the eastern spiritual philosophies and mystical teachings of the world. They also generated in me great respect for the ritual and spiritual life and for the healing traditions of native cultures that Western science dismisses as products of primitive superstition.

I am aware of the fact that reading these stories will not convey the full power of the actual real-life experiences that they describe. However, I hope that in their totality they will give the reader a taste of the re-enchantment of the universe that they brought into my own life.