[stan_rogers]

At its base, it's an exploration of how a conscious mind can arise from unconscious matter. For anyone who's attempted to read the thing and never quite gotten what Hofstadter's on about, the central theme is encapsulated in the dialogue ... Ant Fugue, with the emergence of the character Aunt Hillary from her component ants, who don't directly participate in "her" consciousness. Literally everything else is a long explanation -- from various angles -- of how, given sufficient complexity, the rules don't adequately describe the system, and the system need not be aware of the rules that give it rise. The mathematics, computer science, music, art and "spirituality" are all frames of reference for exploring and (to a limited extent) proving the central thesis: consciousness is an emergent phenomenon.