M&C PUBLISHING JOURNAL

Stories worth thinking about.

LATEST | BEHIND THE BOOK | CONVERSATIONS | PERSPECTIVES | AUTHORS | ARCHIVE

An Editorial Publication of M&C Publishing House

A growing collection of evidence-informed articles exploring human behaviour, communication, awareness, and the Human Reframe Model™.

Some Conversations Change the Direction of a Book

By Malaika Cohen | M&C Publishing Journal· 1. October 2026 ·

Journal No. 01

Have You Ever Known Without Knowing?

Consciousness vs Perception

Reflections on completing Have You Ever Known Without Knowing? — Consciousness vs Perception and what I hope begins when it reaches its readers.

There is a strange moment that arrives when a book is finished.

For months, sometimes years, there is always another sentence to reconsider, another thought to follow, another question appearing behind the one you thought you had answered. And then, eventually, you reach the point where you have to stop writing.

That is where I find myself now with Have You Ever Known Without Knowing?

The manuscript is complete. The final stages of publication are underway, and for the first time I am no longer looking at the book primarily as its writer. I am beginning to wonder what will happen when it belongs to its readers.

And perhaps that is the more interesting part.

I didn't want to tell people what to believe

This book began with questions surrounding consciousness and perception, but the deeper I went, the less interested I became in providing neat answers.

We live much of our lives interpreting what happens around us. We see, hear, remember, feel and intuit—and from those fragments we construct our understanding of reality.

But how much of what we experience is the event itself, and how much is our perception of it?

What happens when we know something but cannot explain how we know it?

What happens when another person's experience sits completely outside our own understanding?

Do we become curious?

Do we dismiss it?

Do we reinterpret it until it fits what we already believe?

Those questions became far more important to me than arriving at a conclusion.

My hope is therefore not that readers finish this book agreeing with me. In fact, I would consider that a rather limited measure of its success.

I hope they question me.

I hope they question themselves.

I hope there are moments when they stop reading for a second because something has reminded them of an experience they had forgotten, dismissed or never quite knew how to explain.

And I hope they occasionally find themselves saying:

I hadn't thought about it that way.

The book stopped belonging only to me

Something else happened during the writing.

Other people's experiences entered the book.

They trusted me with memories, observations and deeply personal moments. Some of those experiences challenged my own perception. Others made me look differently at questions I thought I understood.

That carries responsibility.

When someone gives you part of their story, particularly something vulnerable or difficult to explain, it should never simply become material.

There are real people behind these pages.

I wanted their experiences to retain their humanity without turning them into evidence for an argument. I did not want to tell the reader, This proves something.

I wanted to be able to say:

This happened. This is how it was experienced. Now sit with it.

There is a difference.

And to everyone who allowed some part of their experience to become part of this book: thank you for trusting me with it.

What I hope happens next

Soon the book will leave my hands.

Readers will bring something to it that I could never write into the manuscript: their own lives.

Two people can read precisely the same page and encounter entirely different things within it. Their history, beliefs, losses, relationships, fears and experiences will inevitably travel into the book with them.

That is perception at work even as they read a book about perception.

And I rather love that contradiction.

Perhaps someone will disagree strongly with a chapter. Perhaps another person will recognise themselves in it. Someone else may close the book with more questions than they had when they opened it.

I am comfortable with all three.

Because if I have achieved what I set out to do, Have You Ever Known Without Knowing? will not end with its final page.

The conversation should begin there.

Beyond the book

That is also why some of the people and conversations behind the book will eventually come into the M&C Publishing Journal.

After publication, I will sit down with Joyce Staton for a Reader Circle Conversation on my YouTube channel.

Joyce's experiences form part of the wider journey behind this book, but I don't want to tell that story here—not yet.

Readers deserve to encounter it first where it belongs: inside the book.

Afterwards, Joyce and I can go beyond the written page and talk openly about perception, intuition, mediumship, doubt, responsibility, what she has experienced—and importantly, what she cannot know.

It won't be a conversation designed to convince anyone.

I am far more interested in what happens when two people are willing to explore an experience without demanding that everyone arrive at the same explanation.

There will be room for belief.

There will be room for scepticism.

And there will be room for the most interesting position of all:

I don't know.

Perhaps that has become one of the most important things I have learned while writing this book.

Not knowing does not always require an immediate answer.

Sometimes it requires another question.

And so, as I wait for Have You Ever Known Without Knowing? to make its way from manuscript to published book, I find myself returning to the question with which this journey began.

Have you ever known something—without knowing how you knew?

I hope you'll bring your own answer when the book arrives.

— Malaika Cohen
Author, Have You Ever Known Without Knowing?
M&C Publishing House

‍ Issue 001

Upcoming Issues