Consciousness leaks into awareness. Causes what is called, knowledge.‏

Consciousness overwhelming, all-surpassing. Its limits never imagined before. In fact, its boundless nature mind-numbing, hurting the brain. It exposes the futility of the pursuits capitalist societies adhere to, renders meaningless the ideals of the very nature of the western civilization, out of which consciousness current notions were spawned out of.

Consciousness housed within the confines of the brain. The brain being built out of the specifications required to accommodate consciousness's enormous capacity. Renders the current notions of anthropic principle, dwarfs, barely touching base with the true extent consciousness is about.

Reductionist vs. holistic or side by side?

We have to break it apart and put it back again. We need to know what is made out of, how each little bit works, how it influences every other bit of the whole and how it is influenced by every bit of the whole. We do that with the knowledge that it works only if all is put back together again. Nothing is obsolete. Everything is needed no matter how inconspicuous, how insignificant it might appear to our senses, to our awareness, to our consciousness. It can only act as a whole.

And in the process we build our consciousness up.

Mental phenomena. Questions in need for an answer:

How could any real progress be achieved towards solving the mysteries of how mental phenomena fit in with the physical universe?

Do we need some important changes in our picture of physical reality?

A picture of physical reality that includes and explains mental phenomena.

Can physics provide a theory of consciousness?

Physical laws that describe the mental phenomenon of consciousness as a physical function.

Is quantum mechanics relevant to understanding consciousness?

Can we explain the mental phenomenon of consciousness as a result of quantum functions?

Can we imagine a theory in which "consciousness" finds some place within the purely physical descriptions of the world?

Is a self or "I" necessary for consciousness or can consciousness exist independently of selves?

If the mental phenomenon of consciousness is a physical phenomenon and we have explained it, we can then visualise how an act of consciousness can be performed without being associated with an "I", a self.

Do we need an expanded science which includes subjective experience to understand human consciousness?

Since subjective experience is the base of the mental phenomenon of consciousness, subjective experience should be the field that science should include in order to be able to provide an explanation of consciousness as a physical process.

What are the attributes of subjective experience that science can deal with?

Any investigation for any subject of knowledge starts by evoking on our subjective experience first, then we feel compelled to assume an objective stance to make sure that what we experience, is what others experience. To verify its occurrence, the reasons for its occurrence, to accumulate subjective reasonings and built a body of evidence, we behave showing a lack of faith on our own reasoning, our own subjective experience. We do not trust our own subjective experience and in the process we loose perspective. In order to become objective we forget our own subjective experience, to the point that we treat our own subjective experience as an illusion, and try to assimilate our subjective experience into a collective objective experience, the whole process becoming a statistical exercise.

Must a new science that we perhaps need, be so different from the science of today that the evoke and explain issues with regard to mentality may finally find natural explanations?.

Consciousness crumpled?

Stuart Hameroff builds up a case that dethrones consciousness from its pedestal. His exposition starts with a reference of how evoked potentials are triggered. As I could understand evoked potentials are the way sensory information is conveyed in the brain. But these potentials are too late, they occur 150 to 500 milli-sec after the stimulus. Whereas the actions that are the responses to the sensory information in the environment have either, already been initiated or even completed, namely within 100 milli-sec.
That tells me one thing, and one thing only. I do not need to think to go on living in this world. As most of these stimuli and their associated responses are what determine the course of our lives. In some cases they even determine whether we die or live. In other cases again determine between failure or success in our lives. So despite all these, we are drawn to a conclusion that denies our most cherished quality as human beings, to consciously determine the course of our lives. The pinnacle of our personalities that we built, the pride we take in asserting responsibility for our actions, for the choices we make and for the decisions we take, all crumple right before our very eyes.
Whatever subjective feeling we have, that we consciously control these behaviours is an illusion, they are merely nonconscious reflexive responses.
Accordingly, consciousness is epiphenomenal (a secondary phenomenon, a consequence or side-effect of the primary phenomenon) and we are (as T.H. Huxley said) "conscious automata, helpless spectators", (in Stuart Hameroff).
So, if consciousness is not what we use in order to guide our lives then what is? What determines our actions in fight or flight situations? Is there anything that could provide an answer of what has been the factor that determined human responses in their myriad decisive acts in the past?
My own personal experience corroborates the illusion of consciousness. In my younger days there were a few occasions where I found myself under threatening conditions. Conditions which required immediate and decisive action. As, I vividly remember, though might sound as oxymoron in the light of what follows, right at the most decisive moment in these encounters, I experienced a temporary but complete blackout,total loss of consciousness. It lasted mere seconds, but in these seconds adrenalin powered actions resolved (cleansed) the threatening circumstances.
The explanation that I could amass was that the blood flow was diverted towards the parts of my body, where blood was needed most i.e. muscles and away from the regions that they needed blood less. And among these regions, were the regions that conferred towards consciousness. Consciousness being obsolete and therefore temporarily shut off.