The Ouroboros: Case For and Against Consciousness as Fundamental

What if both sides are right?THE OUROBOROS begins with the most explosive question in the history of human thought - why does anything feel like anything at all? - and does something no book on consciousness has attempted before: it builds the most rigorous possible case for each of the two available answers, back to back, at full length, without blinking.Volume I - The Ascent follows the evidence wherever it leads: quantum mechanics cannot explain reality without an observer; neuroscience cannot locate the self it claims to explain; thousands of children worldwide carry verified memories of previous lives; government physicists at Stanford measured psychic phenomena for twenty years; the universe is calibrated with incomprehensible precision for the existence of minds. One conclusion assembles itself: consciousness is not produced by the universe. Consciousness is what the universe is.Volume II - The Descent dismantles every floor of that building. The hard problem dissolves. The quantum observer needs no mind. Near-death experiences are dying brains. The children's memories have conventional explanations. The psychic program produced no operational results. Sacred geometry is beautiful apophenia. Consciousness is what brains do. Nothing else needs to be true.The Epilogue - The Circle arrives at the discovery both volumes had been suppressing: neither argument can be completed without using consciousness to make its case. The question returns, unanswered, inescapable. The circle closes.The Ouroboros is the book for anyone who has ever felt that both the scientific and the mystical answers to the question of mind were simultaneously completely right and completely insufficient. It will not resolve your uncertainty. It will make your uncertainty precise - which is the closest any honest inquiry can come to wisdom.