"Our consciousness is the fountainhead of all our study, observation, discovery, research and exploration, of all our ideas and concepts.  All our sense of good and bad, all our beliefs and disbeliefs, all we think and imagine, desire or dream of -- in short, all that makes human life and the universe in which we live from day to day -- we owe to consciousness." (2)

Can anyone deny that the one common element uniting all human life on earth is consciousness? Without it, no life as we understand it can be possible, and yet how much is known about it? Its element of expression, the brain, is held by some to be a chance product of random mutations, driven by natural selection; others feel such an optimised, self-sustaining design could not be the result of chance.

But if there is an intelligence behind the intricacy within our own selves, of what form does it take? And is it possible that, as in the physical world, consciousness takes many forms throughout the universe, from the extremely simple to the inconceivably vast, and that of all the possible types of sentient awareness, the human form represents only one type, and possibly not even a very advanced one in its present stage?

A glance through the 20th century shows that slavery, apartheid, and torture as a legitimate tool of the government are still in evidence, as is religious fanaticism, widespread and continuous warfare, and the sacrifice of health and sanity in the pursuit of wealth in almost all civilised nations of the world.

Is there good reason for pride in our intellectual superiority to the animal kingdom, and as modern thinkers confidently boast, that our brain represents the pinnacle of evolution, the very apex of all that is achievable in the univesre? Or is the modern world a sobering reminder of how far the human race has yet to travel in what might well be an unimaginably vast journey to levels of awareness of which we now only dimly imagine, if indeed we consider the issue at all?