Indeed, in the past (and even today?) some scientists had taken the absurd position that consciousness is an illusion. This, while providing a nonsensical reason to ignore the problem of consciousness, obviously fails to sate the curious inquirer's queries regarding how we got here and what we are doing here as conscious beings. Materialistic philosophy as we know it?"derived from the mechanistic worldview?"had, more or less since the dawning of the Age of Reason in the 1700s, steadfastly maintained that what we call experience arises solely as a by-product of the brain's internal workings. No brain, no consciousness. But is it really that simple? What about functions of consciousness that appear to transcend the cranial boundaries of our heads? The Age of Reason said that these forces had only ever existed in man's imagination; only reason could show man the truth about the universe. "The trouble was," according to Colin Wilson, "that man became a thinking pygmy, and the