Consciousness Studies: A Book of Reading

Dear Readers,

I hope you found the resources posted earlier, interesting and useful. Consciousness Studies is a book by Robin, Schmidt and Shamantics, hosted on Wikibooks. An excerpt from the Introduction section of the books says “Everyone has their own view of the nature of consciousness based on their education and background. The intention of this book is to expand this view by providing an insight into the various ideas and beliefs on the subject as well as a review of current work in neuroscience…… It is often said that consciousness cannot be defined. This is not true; philosophers have indeed defined it in its own terms. It can be described in terms of two principle components: firstly phenomenal consciousness which consists of our experience with things laid out in space and time, sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc., and secondly access consciousness which is the processes that act on the things in experience. Phenomenal consciousness is much like the “perceptual space” of psychological and physiological research. It is the many simultaneous events that become the space of experience in general and it is now a legitimate target of scientific research.”
Wikibooks is an excellent source of e-books spanning over wide range of subjects and disciplines. Also brought forth by Wiki is an initiative for children - Wikijunior for children. Apart from these there are good books on general reading.

Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

Dear Theology students,
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James is one of the suggested readings as per the list of recommended reading provided to you. Incidentally, a web version of the same is available here. You may download the contents of your choice and read at leisure.
Also Charles T. Tart's States of Consciousness is one of the suggested readings, which I had previously posted.
There's also a plethora of resources on Mysticism and like on University of Central Florida's web server. But they are heavily slanted towards Western Mysticism. However, you can also visit this site and choose to have a look at other resources too.
Do some of you like writing? As you learn you may want to express your thoughts. You may wish to publish too. Or you may wish to read more research oriented literature in your area of interest. Perhaps these online journals will be of some interest to you like: Journal of Consciousness Studies, Mind and Matter, Zygon etc. Though access to fulltext articles and papers in the first two journals is not completely free, most of them are available online. If you get interested in anything from Zygon, you can contact me for reprints. Sometimes Nature also publishes interesting articles on consciousness and religion.
Do try these resources at leisure and let me know of their usefulness.