[akomtu]

There is a lot of literature on this topic, but nearly all of it is in the "restricted" section of the library: it's the section with book shelves for alchemy, occultism, buddhism and so on. Western literature is very shallow in this regard.

There a few interesting thoughts about consciousness that I've found in those books. One is that the boundary between consciousness and "real matter" is imaginary: consciousness exists only because of change in that matter, when the change stops - so does consciousness, consciousness creates reality for itself, and the two are in fact just two sides of the coin. In other words, static consciousness isnt a thing, and hence the need for "reality".

Human consciousness is a sum of many consciousnesses that exist at wildly different levels of reality. There are primitive cellular consciousnesses, and those sometimes influence our mental consciousness. Our neural cerebrospinal system has an advanced consciousness capable of independent existence: it manages all the activity of internal organs, and only loosly interacts with our higher mental consciousness. That cerebrospinal system is even self-conscious in a primitive way: it can observe its own internal changes and distinguish them from impulses from the outside. There's emotional and mental consciousness that mainly lives in the brain and is somewhat aware of the dark sea of lower consciousness below it.

Most people are conscious in dreams, as they can perceive in that state. However they cant make (yet) distinction between inner processes (self) and external effects (others), so to them it appears as if everything is happening inside their mind, i.e. they are not self-conscious. That's consciousness of a toddler. Some are more advanced, they start seeing the me-others difference and can form memories from dreams.

[astrange]

Hmm, I'm not sure I've ever been to a library that keeps the books about Buddhism in a restricted section.