The best books on consciousness
“Consciousness” is used for everything from being awake to the hardest problem in philosophy. The books here share one question: is consciousness produced by the brain, or is the brain something consciousness works through?
They run from physics and neuroscience to psychology and the mystical traditions. Start with the physicists and psychologists, then read the rest as arguments about what the first group leaves out. Every title is non-fiction and is cited in Brendan D. Murphy’s work.
- 1
The Self-Aware Universe
Amit Goswami, 1995
A quantum physicist argues that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of everything, and that the way quantum measurement works points that way. A clear first statement of the consciousness-first view.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Question of Consciousness; Quantum Weirdness And Cosmic Oneness; The Mystical Experience; Thought-Forms)
- 2
Shadows of the Mind
Roger Penrose, 1994
A mathematical physicist argues that human understanding cannot be reduced to computation and that quantum physics may supply what is missing. Demanding, but the strongest argument from inside the scientific establishment.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Question of Consciousness)
- 3
The Conscious Universe
Dean Radin, 1997
Dean Radin lays out the experimental evidence for psychic phenomena, with the meta-analyses. If the findings hold, the mind reaches beyond the brain, which is why it belongs on a consciousness list.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Question of Consciousness; Telepathy; Clairvoyance; Psychokinesis And The Belief Effect)
- 4
Stalking the Wild Pendulum
Itzhak Bentov, 1988
Bentov pictures the universe and the mind as vibration, part physics and part mysticism, written for a general reader.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Mystical Experience; The Occult Aether; Creating And Perceiving The Superhologram; The Occultist’s Seven Planes)
- 5
The Holotropic Mind
Stanislav Grof, 1993
Stanislav Grof maps the levels of consciousness that open up in non-ordinary states, from his decades of clinical work.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (Quantum Weirdness And Cosmic Oneness; The Mystical Experience)
- 6
Man and His Symbols
C.G. Jung, 1968
Jung’s last work, written for general readers, introduces archetypes and the unconscious, which the Consciousness Transition Model uses to explain the imagery people meet at death.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Question of Consciousness)
- 7
The Roots of Consciousness
Jeffrey Mishlove
Mishlove surveys the history of consciousness research, from the early psychical researchers onwards. A good map of who argued what.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Question of Consciousness)
- 8
The Biology of Transcendence
Joseph Chilton Pearce, 2002
Joseph Chilton Pearce argues that the brain is built to go beyond itself, and that development depends on it.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Question of Consciousness; Creating And Perceiving The Superhologram; The Occultist’s Seven Planes; Psychokinesis And The Belief Effect)
- 9
The Atman Project, New Edition
Ken Wilber, 1996
Ken Wilber’s model of how consciousness develops, from infancy to the transpersonal. Useful for seeing where the mystics place the top of the scale.
Brendan cites it in The Grand Illusion (The Mystical Experience)
The argument of The Grand Illusion is that consciousness is primary and the brain is how it is expressed in the body. The Consciousness Transition Model asks what follows if that is right: what happens to consciousness when the body stops.
Brendan cites every book here. That does not mean he agrees with all of it.
All 22 books
Take one down to see why it is here and where to find it.
What is the best book to start with on consciousness?
For the consciousness-first argument from physics, Amit Goswami’s The Self-Aware Universe. For the strongest case from inside the establishment that the mind is not a computation, Roger Penrose’s Shadows of the Mind.
Is consciousness produced by the brain?
Most neuroscience assumes so, but it has not explained how. The books on this list argue that consciousness is primary and the brain filters or focuses it. That is a minority view among scientists, so read these alongside the standard accounts.
What is the hard problem of consciousness?
The question of why physical processes in the brain are accompanied by experience at all. Describing what the brain does does not explain why it feels like something to be a person. The glossary entry on the hard problem sets out how the Consciousness Transition Model treats it.
What are the best books on consciousness and quantum physics?
Goswami’s The Self-Aware Universe and Penrose’s Shadows of the Mind are the two on this list that take the question furthest. Both are cited in The Grand Illusion, which also covers quantum nonlocality and its bearing on the mind.
- The whole bookshelf
- Primacy of consciousness (glossary)
- Non-local consciousness (glossary)
- The hard problem of consciousness (glossary)
- The best non-fiction books about the afterlife
- The best books on near-death experiences
- The best books on remote viewing
- The best books on mysticism
- The best books on chakras and the human aura
- The best books on Theosophy
- The best books on energy healing and the biofield
- The best parapsychology books
- The best books on physics, space and consciousness
- The best books on lost civilisations, ancient mysteries and suppressed science
- The best books on plasma and the Electric Universe
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