How often do you ask the big questions: Why are we here, why do we
think, is everything around me an illusion? Susan Blackmore takes one
of these hard topics --- consciousness and 21 of the brightest minds
in the area of study, maybe some of the brightest minds on the
planet, to discuss their views on some of these topics.

She sets out with some simple questions: What makes studying
conscioucness hard? Where does our concept of self come in? Is there
consciousness after our body dies? Do we have free will? And has
studying consciousness changed the way you look at the world. The one
common theme amongst all the brilliant minds seems to be that there
is no common theme -- yet. Wonderful studies have been done that
shine the bright light on enquiry on some dark corners of our minds,
like lucid dreaming and some very obvious seeming issues: does your
conscious mind have control over your body? The results in all of
these have been rich and astounding.

Stephan LaBerge tells us about his studies in lucid dreaming. One
part of our bodies of which our control doesn't shut down when we
dream is our eyes. He managed to find out exactly when someone is in
a lucid dream by pre-arranging eye signals with the dreamers when
they notice that they are lucid in their dreams. By looking hard left
and right a few times in the dream, the researchers were able to tell
exactly when the subjects were busy with their lucid dreams: in the
most intense periods of REM sleep.

Stuart Hameroff recounts his search for links between consciousness
and the quantum world. This is a very serious issue as from the
physics side, the normal interpretation of quantum mechanics evokes
an "observer" that to all appearances need to be conscious. While
linking brain function and quantum mechanics is not the most
fashionable gang on the playground, my money is on this in the long
run. The largest number of the scientists weigh in on the side that
death is final and that we need our hardware to exist as sentient
entities Stuart Hameroff sketches the possibility that some of the
information could sublimate into the universe as a whole. Maybe
heaven is the quantum field?

All in all it was a delightfull book to read that asks many questions
and gets many opposing answers. The best part of the book it that it
invites you to think and search for yourself.