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We are very experience is based on our consciousness. Will this delicate process, which philosophers and theologians have advocated and fought for the past several thousand years, the brain activity in what looks like “two fistfuls of gruel”?             The Mystery of Consciousness       Consciousness is the most subtle and complex entity in the universe. With it, humans have duplicated here on Earth the awe-inspiring methods by which stars produce their energy. By creative thinking the forces of nature have been probed from across the vastness of the visible universe to deep inside the atom; a beautiful theme for the construction of the whole has been powerfully constructed: ‘‘the Universe in a grain of sand and a twinkling star,’’ to extend the poet William Blake. By artistic imagination humans have created emotionally satisfying alternative universes that allow us to have new and surprising views of this one. These magnificent products have all been achieved by human consciousness.   But what is this elusive thing called consciousness, which is so important in the process of creativity and thinking? Our very experience is based on our being conscious. How does this subtle process, regarding which philosophers and theologians have argued and fought for several millennia, emerge from brain activity in what looks just like ‘‘two fistfuls of porridge’’? Or is there more to mind than mere matter? To answer these deep questions at the basis of the human condition, science is turning its sights onto the mind.         — John Taylor, The Race for Consciousness             Indexes/01