TRANSFORMATIONS

James Joyce had the epiphany. The '60s had LSD. Today people are turning every which way in search of enlightenment and transformation. Tracy Cochran found it the hard way: She was embraced by the light during a mugging in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. Her husband, Jeff Zaleski, a lapsed Catholic, had his moment of revelation when his father died and he learned that ``because [death] is real, life is real.'' But brushes with death are not the only way to experience the sacred in life. And so, drawing on personal experience, literature, Tantric Buddhism, and other sources, freelance writer Cochran and Zaleski (former nonfiction editor of Kirkus) explore a range of events that can transform us and our perceptions of life, including love, creativity, and nature. Science takes a beating for the limitations of its logical empiricism. But cyberspace gets a thumbs-up, and a guide to electronic spiritual resources is included.