Consciousness

The oldest open question there is: what awareness is, where it comes from, and the scientists, soldiers and philosophers who went looking for an answer.

• The Bicameral Mind: Julian Jaynes and the Voices of the Gods In 1976 a Princeton psychologist argued that the heroes of the Iliad were not conscious. Fifty years on, the idea refuses to die.
• Gateway Process: The Army Report That Tried to Explain Consciousness In 1983 an Army officer wrote up astral travel in memo format. What the famous Gateway report says, what page 25 held, and what science supports.
• What Jung Actually Meant by the Shadow Jung's shadow was a moral problem, not a journaling prompt, and it held more than darkness.
• John C. Lilly and the Invention of the Isolation Tank He built the float tank, tried to talk to dolphins, then lost the plot. What John C. Lilly got right, and what flotation research finds now.
• The Hard Problem: Why Consciousness Still Has No Explanation In 1995 David Chalmers asked why brain activity feels like anything at all. Thirty years and one lost bet later, nobody has answered him.
• Synchronicity: Jung, Pauli and the Meaning of Coincidence A beetle at a window, a Nobel physicist, and an idea that statisticians have never accepted.