Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Consciousness and the Self - Hardcover

This book brings together ancient spiritual wisdom and modern science and philosophy to address age-old questions regarding our existence, free will and the nature of conscious awareness.

Stuart Hameroff MD,
Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology

Director, Center for Consciousness Studies

The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

www.quantum-mind.org

This book presents a rich, broad-ranging overview of contemporary research and scholarship into consciousness and the self. Included in its chapters are a number of bold ideas which stretch the bounds of long-established hypotheses in these areas, especially where issues of spirituality and mysticism impinge on psychological interpretations of consciousness. There is no doubt in my mind that the conundrum of consciousness requires us to integrate high-quality material from a range of disciplines which impinge on differing aspects of the subject. It is therefore to their credit that the editors have assembled a highly stimulating set of scholars whose expertise cover all the relevant areas. I strongly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in understanding the directions in which contemporary thinking about the nature of consciousness is headed.

B. Les Lancaster

Emeritus Professor of Transpersonal Psychology

Liverpool John Moores University, UK 

This book brings together ancient spiritual wisdom and modern science and philosophy to address age-old questions regarding our existence, free will and the nature of conscious awareness.

Stuart Hameroff MD
Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director, Center for Consciousness Studies

The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

This book presents a rich, broad-ranging overview of contemporary research and scholarship into consciousness and the self.... It is ... to their credit that the editors have assembled a highly stimulating set of scholars whose expertise cover all the relevant areas. I strongly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in understanding the directions in which contemporary thinking about the nature of consciousness is headed.

B. Les Lancaster

Emeritus Professor of Transpersonal Psychology

Liverpool John Moores University, UK

This volume is a collection of 23 essays that contribute to the emerging discipline of consciousness studies with particular focus on the concept of the self. The essays together argue that to understand consciousness is to understand the self that beholds consciousness. Two broad issues are addressed in the volume: the place of the self in the lives of humans and nonhuman primates; and the interrelations between the self and consciousness, which contribute to the understanding of cognitive functions, awareness, free will, nature of reality, and the complex experiential and behavioural attributes of consciousness. The book presents cutting-edge and original work from well-known authors and scholars of philosophy, psychiatry, behavioural sciences and physics. This is a pioneering attempt to present to the reader multiple ways of conceptualizing and thus understanding the relation between consciousness and self in a nuanced manner.