Consciousness is notoriously difficult to explain. On one hand, there are facts about conscious experience--the way clarinets sound, the way lemonade tastes--that we know subjectively, from the inside. On the other hand, such facts are not readily accommodated in the objective world described by science. How, after all, could the reediness of clarinets or the tartness of lemonade be predicted in advance?

Real Materialism draws together papers written over twenty years by Galen Strawson in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Strawson focuses on five main areas of enquiry: [1] the nature of the physical, consciousness, the "mind-body problem," and the prospects for panpsychism; [2] the self, the subject of experience, self-consciousness, and the 'narrative' self; [3] free will and moral responsibility; [4] the nature of thought and intentionality and their connection with consciousness; [5] the problem of causation with particular reference to the philosophy of David Hume.

Understanding consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. One increasingly important method of studying consciousness is to study disorders of consciousness, e.g. brain damage and disease states leading to vegetative states, coma, minimally conscious states, etc. Many of these studies are very much in the public eye because of their relationship to controversies about coma patients (e.g. Terry Schiavo case in the US recently), and the relationship to one of the major philosophical, sociological, political, and religious questions of humankind.

With fifty-five peer reviewed chapters written by the leading authors in the field, The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness is the most extensive and comprehensive survey of the study of consciousness available today. Provides a variety of philosophical and scientific perspectives that create a breadth of understanding of the topic - Topics include the origins and extent of consciousness, different consciousness experiences, such as meditation and drug-induced states, and the neuroscience of consciousness.

Jean Klein, a musicologist and doctor from Central Europe, spent his early years inquiring about the essence of life. He had the inner conviction that there was a 'principle' independent of all society and felt the urge to explore this conviction. His explorations led him to India where he was introduced through a 'direct approach' to the non-mental dimension of life.

This book teaches simple effective ways to view life from the heart, instead of just the head. All there is, is Consciousness. We are not the body. We are not the mind. The body and mind appear and disappear in our awareness. When we awaken in the morning, it is our body that awakens for Consciousness, what we
really are, never sleeps. We can learn to live from the heart.