Explorers of the Infinite: The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes--and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communication, and Touching the Beyond

by Maria Coffey

Real-life psychic, near-death, and paranormal experiences are combined with cutting-edge science and vivid adventure stories in this energetic look at why extreme athletes and mountaineers take the risks that allow them to push the limits of consciousness, and what they encounter there.

In the life-or-death world of extreme adventure sports, there is one thing that athletes often keep quiet about: the “forbidden” territory of paranormal experiences. Ranging from fleeting moments of transcendence to full-blown encounters with ghosts and everything in between—visions, near-death experiences, psychic communication—many extreme athletes have experienced these moments of connection with the beyond, but have been reluctant to talk about them.

In Explorers of the Infinite, award-winning outdoors journalist and lifelong adventure sports devotee Maria Coffey probes the mystical and paranormal experiences of mountaineers, snowboarders, surfers, and more. She reviews cutting-edge science, and consults the history of philosophy and spirituality to answer the question: Could the state of intense “aliveness” that is the allure of extreme sports for so many actually be a route to a connection with the beyond?

Coffey investigates the scientific explanations for mystical phenomena, ranging from simple explanations to theories from consciousness studies and quantum physics, and leaves us wondering where science ends and spirituality begins.

An energetic, you-are-there look at the spiritual lives of extreme athletes, Explorers of the Infinite asks why extreme athletes take the risks that allow them to push the limits of consciousness, what they encounter there, and what we can learn from them.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Spirituality, Adventure, Mountaineering, History, Health

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Heidi Wiechert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coffey covers so many different sports and phenomenas in Explorers of the Infinite that I felt rushed through the chapters. I wish that she had written a separate book for each topic!

I had no idea that so many athletes experienced similar paranormal visions, dreams, and out-of-body experiences but I suppose I should have because their extreme sports are so similar to shamanistic journeys- where they push their bodies and minds to the limits to see beyond the world.

I haven't felt the call to push myself that far, but anyone who has should read this book. At the very least, you'll know that you're not alone in the search for transcendence through sport.

[Michael Schmicker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first and last time I jumped out of an airplane, I was 17 years old.

It was my mom who nearly died of fright. She had to sign a waiver that listed in gruesome detail all the ways her underage, unlucky son could die or sustain serious injury from skydiving. True to the odds, nothing went wrong. After four hours of “training,” the actual skydive, from Geronimo! to hard landing, lasted just a few minutes. My weekend parachute was an adrenaline rush, but hardly death-defying or life changing.

In contrast, the extreme adventurers in Mary Coffey's fascinating book "Explorers of the Infinite" push themselves physically and psychologically to the breaking point. Skydiver Cheryl Sterns jumped from an airplane 352 times in 24 hours, setting a Guinness World Record. Tanya Streeter free dove without oxygen to a depth of 525 feet below the ocean, holding her breath for almost three and a half minutes, her heart rate plummeting to five beats a minute, before resurfacing. Cyclist Jure Robic pedaled for 3,042 miles across the continental U.S. in 8 days, 19 hours and 33 minutes.

Such super-athletes suffer mind-numbing exhaustion, unbearable pain, intense solitude, sudden terror, and narrow escapes from death – conditions which parapsychologists know can generate paranormal experiences. And the heroes of this book have a journal’s worth, experiencing time distortions, altered states of consciousness, telepathic communications, out-of body experiences, precognition, premonitions of death, and visions of the dead.

I’ve investigated and written about these baffling phenomena for some time. So the reading pleasure for me came less from the garden-variety paranormal experiences these crazies report than from the god-awful, insane exploits which trigger them.

Fifty-five year old ultra-marathoner Marshall Ulrich had a classic out-of-body experience running the Badwater, a 135-mile, non-stop foot race across Death Valley in July when daytime temperatures can hit 129 degrees Fahrenheit. He’s done it 13 times, won it four times. Insanely, he once did it four times back and forth, non-stop, for over 77 hours, while pulling a modified baby jogger loaded with 200 pounds of water, ice and spare clothes. In 1993, while trying to break his own record, he suddenly stepped out of his body. From above, he watched himself running along, “like watching myself on a movie screen.” He remained out of body all night, until the next morning when he realized that “dawn was coming, the sun was about to rise. I knew it was time to go back into my body.” (Skydiver Sterns experienced a similar, extended OBE during her non-stop jumping.)

“Many mountaineers have sensed unexplainable presences in the high mountains,” notes Coffey. American climber Lou Whittaker in 1989 was guiding the first American assault on 28,169-foot high Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, the third tallest mountain in the world. At his base camp, he kept sensing the presence of a middle-aged, friendly Tibetan woman spirit who communicated with him mentally, telling him everything would go OK. His wife Ingrid arrived at the base camp shortly after Lou had departed for the summit, but her ascent to 16,000 feet was so fast she suffered severe altitude sickness. She spent three days in agony in Lou’s tent, ministered to by the same Tibetan spirit. “She was wearing a headscarf and a long dress. She was shadowy and two-dimensional, like a silhouette.” The spirit would put her hand on Ingrid’s forehead, very comforting, and help her to roll over. She didn’t speak; the two women communicated telepathically. Two months later, after they had returned to the States, Ingrid finally told Lou about her strange helper. Stunned, he admitted seeing her too. They’re convinced it wasn’t a hallucination, since both sensed the same apparition.

Coffee notes similar “spirit friends” assisted and comforted many well-known adventurers in their perils, including Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton during his desperate 36-hour trek across frigid South Georgia Island; aviator Charles “Lucky” Lindbergh on his record-breaking, non-stop transatlantic flight to Europe in 1927; and mariner Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail solo around the globe.

In 1997, Tony Bullimore was attempting to duplicate Slocum’s feat, competing in the around-the-world Vendee Globe single-handed yacht race. Two months into the race, a fierce storm in the Southern Ocean rolled his boat, trapping him upside down in his watertight cabin for almost five days. Race officials informed his wife Lalel his upturned boat had been spotted in huge seas; he was presumed dead. That night, kneeling by her bed, she received a telepathic message from him. He was alive, he had food and water, but he was exhausted and had to sleep. The following day, he mentally spoke to her again. “Oh Lal, I’m in a mess. It’s wet. The boat won’t stop rolling. I’m cold.” She told him to keep fighting. Back in his watery tomb, shivering and staring into darkness, he suddenly had a vision. He saw an Australian warship steaming for him, a boat was lowered, sailors started banging on the hull, and he watched himself swim to the surface where he was rescued. Twenty-four hours later, everything happened exactly as his vision had foretold.

Coffey presents dozens of such puzzling experiences while pondering their reality and meaning. For an outdoor adventure writer, she demonstrates a surprising familiarity with parapsychological literature, referencing among others Rupert Sheldrake’s ESP research; Montague Ullman’s dream lab investigations; NDE studies by Raymond Moody and Sam Parnia; plus conventional counter-explanations from popular skeptics like Susan Blackmore and Robert Persinger.

Her references are understandably brief and occasionally incorrect – for example, her assertion that scientists know very little about the out-of-body phenomenon. Psychologists, physicians and investigators such as Charles Tart, Stuart Twemlow and D. Scott Rogo mapped the phenomenon several decades ago, and recent NDE research has advanced our understanding. We know a lot about them; it’s just that, like so many other paranormal phenomena, we can’t agree on where they fit in our current model of reality.

But Coffey can be forgiven for not penning a dry parapsychology book few would read. She offers enough science to ground her stories, but wisely focuses on the sense of surprise and wonder her eclectic community of daredevils find in their unexpected brushes with the infinite. As British BASE jumper Shaun Ellison puts it, “There’s so much out there that we don’t understand.”

[Brian White · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great exploration into the ways in which adventure athletes can be affected psychologically and spiritually by extreme situations. I enjoyed reading the accounts of these athletes and the circumstances that brought them in touch with a state of consciousness that they couldn’t fully understand. Having had “white- light” experiences, I have learned that attempting to explain or verbalize them can be frustrating and seem pointless. That enabled me to identify with these athletes. They knew they had experiences something “other” but didn’t want to share those experiences, either because of fear they would not be believed, or because they couldn’t find the words to express it.

This book does an excellent job of not trying to over-explain and lets the reader draw his/her own conclusions about the nature of the experience being described. This was a fresh, almost factual way of examining these types of experiences.

Coffey also did an excellent job of blending athlete stories with scientific and statistical information to show how prevalent these experiences are in the world of extreme sports. The shift in consciousness that can be brought about by life-threatening situations was explored through real-life accounts and then scientific concepts were added to offer additional information on how these experiences could affect the athlete’s physiological and neurological systems. Coffey then explores how this altered perception can result in the manifestation of various forms of psychic abilities and experiences from precognition, to psychic communication, to conversing with the recently dead.

When I first picked this book up I thought these topics would be almost impossible to explore without sounding trite or “new age” but I was pleasantly surprise at Coffey’s storytelling ability. My favorite thing about this book was living through the lives of these athletes and hearing their stories. Being able to identify with them and sharing in their spiritual experiences made this a truly great read.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was engaging and philosophical and really opened my mind about so many different ideas of how we connect to the earth and others and how complex our brains are but also how little we understand of the fine line between all of these things. It covers a vast idea of why and how we are brought to connect or let go and really experience spirituality in a sense. It’s not religious or one-sided or suggestive and the author really sites a lot of scientific experiments as well as emotional experiences. It’s very well written and I am so glad I stumbled upon this book at the library book sale. A great read!!

[Bill Tress · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reviewer knows people who could possibly fit into the category of extreme athlete, so it was out of curiosity that this periodical was taken up. It did provide interesting reading for a while, then the stories became quite repetitive.
Why do people run or climb or surf or even walk? Exercise makes them feel good and activity is necessary for good health; than we go a few steps further, and it becomes obsessional and even dangerous. This book is about what happens when a person goes to extreme and what effect that has on the mind and body.
The author tells of the experiences extreme athletes share of paranormal experiences and hallucinations under extreme stress to their bodies.
The author makes glamorous some of this extreme activity and a quote kind of sums it up, “we are not here for comfort, we are here to learn and grow” and extreme activity is part and maybe necessary to achieve this growth. This reviewer does not endorse this theory because many of the paranormal states are achieved without extreme activity and these enhanced states are not all that uncommon, even in couch potatoes like me.
The author describes encounters with ghosts, spirits, telepathic communications, precognitive dreams, astral travel and bouts of superhuman strength.
I think this book has two story lines, one about extreme sport and another about paranormal occurrences, both interesting subjects. In the case of extreme “sport” is it rational for a person to obsessionally risk life by constantly putting themselves at risk of death? Some will say yes, in order to get the breakthrough experience, I question the sanity of such endeavors. The paranormal discussion while also interesting is not limited to participants in extreme activity. This reviewer does not doubt or find these altered states unusual. In one instance, my wife walked into our dining room and smelled her grandmothers scent a few hours after her death in another city, was she saying goodbye? Also, this reviewer has spoken with his father through a medium, no doubt in my mind it was my father. So yes, the book had interest! The book does not have real general interest for most readers, yet, in the sports community and with persons who have experienced some of the things discussed by the author, it might resonate!

[Aaron M. Sena · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read. This book not only inspired my wanderlust, but opened my mind to phenomena that occurs at the very edges of human constitution, mostly still unexplained by science. Bridging the physical, metaphysical and paranormal all while referencing the experiences of adventures past/present and historical anecdotes.

[Tami Door · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does pushing one’s self to the limit open a door to another layer of our universe? What is time and why does it seem to slow down in certain situations? Is it possible that entanglement plays out in human connection? Intertwine these concepts into stories shared by extreme athletes and you will look at the world differently. This book is a unique mix of extreme sports and the paranormal.

[Simon Cleveland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Be patient and give it a chance. It won’t disappoint you.

[Lbs Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thorough investigation into why people do extreme sports.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great intro book into the minds of people with extreme lifestyles that compel them to pursue great adventures in nature. You get enough of the science/spiritual information to validate the stories of real-life experiences that are explored on the pages. Actually I would have enjoyed even more of the climbers' stories since their lives are so far removed from my office cubicle lifestyle.

I only dinged this book one star because one of the first stories is about two women, one that perished on a ice climb and the other that felt that she knew exactly where she could find her friend's body because she felt her friend reach out to her telepathically. I waited the entire book and never found out if she was actually able to find her friend's body. I assume so but it would have been nice if we have more of their stories to know what happened.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this one, but it was too heavy to finish before the library wanted it back. Basically, the book is about the spiritual side of outdoor adventure. It explained a lot of the things I feel when I hike/climb/kayak/ski which was very enjoyable, but it also provokes a lot of thought which requires time and commitment. I'm probably just gonna buy this book so I can give it the time it deserves.

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explores the spiritual aspects of extreme sports, mostly through stories from the extreem athletes. The book also trys to explain what these experiences might be or mean through science and various religious traditions. I liked the stories alot the explanations weren't that interesting since they are things that by definition cannot be explained. Although I did like knowing how the individuals who had the experiences interpreted them.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I am fascinated by extreme sports and the people that choose to participate in them, but the way this was written was too helter skelter for me. It seemed to "jump around" too often and, although the sports interest me, I am not up on all the "lingo" that was used. I'll continue to read about these crazy people that do things I would/could ever even imagine, but I'm hoping to find a clearer, more in depth, organized book.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a lot of examples of near death psychic experiences, this is it. It was nice to read a book that examined so many of these while also introducing some of the scientific analysis as well. Having read a number of true life "adventure" books it was interesting to have familiar names and places turn up providing a different perspective or a more thorough examination of the individuals and events themselves. A little choppy, but a good read overall.

[m. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book exploring the psychological and spiritual impacts of extreme athletes and adventurers, written by someone who isn't simply an armchair academic but who has lived the life of a mountaineer and adventurer. The beauty of the book is that it details both scientific and spiritual aspects, both in detail, but without pushing either as an agenda, giving a well-rounded and extremely thought-provoking work that I could not recommend highly enough. Brilliant.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books showcased the extreme side of extreme sports. I honestly am not the individual to push myself to these limits as of right now, so reading about them was awe-inspiring. Being so closely in-tuned with the natural world on the brink of exhaustion with a heighten consciousness in environments where, honestly, no human should ever be, made me wonder so much about the intersection between the paranormal and the normal.

[Balthasaradell · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty dope. almost a 4 star. didnt like the beginning and then it picked up nice....pretty trippy...then got weird again...basically she interviews ten million people about their vibes during extreme hiking in Tibet and stuff...so it seems totally basic but when you keep going the stories start to intensify until you are in the vortex...then it gets average again and ill be finishing soon

[Tony Pelosi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the taboo topics explored in the book as well as blend of science and perception of reality, but the author jumps around a lot making it tough to keep all the characters straight. As long as you can bear through the less than perfect flow between stories, I recommend reading for the perspectives offered.

[Terri Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

She nails something I’ve pondered often and have been interviewed about—that perhaps physical duress really is a foothold to much higher places in our mind and beyond. A compelling writer who always redirects the light onto the world of extreme sports and mountaineering. Also recommend: Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow.

[Mike S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book, lots of cool stories sprinkled with a little science, and some great stuff about Tibetan meditation practices. If you're interested in achieving altered states through sports or meditation you'll probably find this book interesting.

[KC Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book.
About extreme athletes and their experiences reaching places within themselves (strengths, communication abilities, "knowings", etc.)that are way out of the ordinary . You have to have some interest in spiritual life and the "unknown", but other than that, it's a great read.

[Emlyn Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts of fascinating, then starts to repeat identical stories continuously. Lost interest half way through, though finished anyway.
Visual cover and lay outs beautiful, but misleads the reader of it being a gem to add to your self

[Jennifer Myers]

Didn't finish all the chapters before the book had to be back to the library, but I liked the variety of stories that Ms. Coffey introduced us to. Being an athlete myself, I've had some of these experiences but definitely not to the extent of these extreme athletes!

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never in a million years thought I'd ever find myself in the general meta-physical studies section of a bookstore.

[Wendy Hollister · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book from start to finish. A good book for young readers as it was inspiring and gave insights on how to conquer difficult physical conditions and feats.

[Dana Sugg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting.

[Jamiewas · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHY climb mountains and put yourself in dangerous and possibly life threatening situations? Because ....there's just something about it. Another excellent book by Coffey.

[Joanna Croston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and intriguing. A must read for lovers of mountain and adventure lit.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely interesting read!

[David Montoya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bueno para leer en un viaje si eres medio hippie y te gustan las energías, los fantasmas de montaña y la pacha mama.