While there are many courses and tutorials online, learning from a book is still one of the best ways to greatly improve your skills. Below I have selected top Consciousness books.
- The Origins and History of Consciousness (Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology) (2014)
- Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014)
- Genes vs Cultures vs Consciousness: A Brief Story of Our Computational Minds (2019)
- Consciousness Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness for Healing and Growth (2019)
- Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (2018)
- Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2017)
- Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist (The MIT Press) (2017)
- Consciousness: An Introduction (2nd ed.) (2011)
- Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness (2011)
- The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (2000)
The Origins and History of Consciousness (Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology) (2014)
The Origins and History of Consciousness draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann was one of C. G. Jung’s most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right. In this influential book, Neumann shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, the tail-eating serpent.
Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014)
How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before.In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state.
Genes vs Cultures vs Consciousness: A Brief Story of Our Computational Minds (2019)
Never before had there been nearly as many scientists, resources or productive research focused on these topics, and humanity has achieved some understanding and some clarification.
Consciousness Medicine: Indigenous Wisdom, Entheogens, and Expanded States of Consciousness for Healing and Growth (2019)
Psychedelic medicines also known as entheogens are entering the mainstream. And it’s no wonder: despite having access to the latest wellness trends and advances in technology, we’re no healthier, happier, or more meaningfully connected.
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (2018)
Consciousness, “the last great mystery for science,” remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion?
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2017)
Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes.
Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist (The MIT Press) (2017)
What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book―part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation―describes Koch’s search for an empirical explanation for consciousness.
Consciousness: An Introduction (2nd ed.) (2011)
Now in a new edition, this innovative text is the first volume to bring together all the major theories of consciousness studies–from those rooted in traditional Western philosophy to those coming out of neuroscience, quantum theory, and Eastern philosophy.
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness (2011)
In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science and the basis of one-third of our economy. They found, to their embarrassment, that with their theory, physics encounters consciousness. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory’s developers.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (2000)
At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes’s still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing.
Best Consciousness Books That Will Hook You
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some consciousness books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Pleiadian Earth Energy Astrology: Charting the Spirals of Consciousness
Author(s): Pia Orleane,Cullen Baird Smith
ID: 2287953, Publisher: Bear & Company, Year: Nov 06, 2018, Size: 45 Mb, Format: epub
The Alchemy of Nine Dimensions: The 2011/2012 Prophecies and Nine Dimensions of Consciousness
Author(s): Barbara Hand Clow, Gerry Clow
ID: 2284749, Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing, Year: April 1, 2010, Size: 6 Mb, Format: epub
Crystals Beyond Beginners: Awaken Your Consciousness with Precious Gifts from the Earth
Author(s): Margaret Ann Lembo
ID: 2327310, Publisher: Llewellyn Publications, Year: 8 Feb 2019, Size: 2 Mb, Format: epub
Please note that this booklist is not errorless. Some books are truly chart-busters according to USA Today, others are composed by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.