Evan Thompson

By getting in the habit of doing “state checks” when you’re awake, you’ll eventually remember to do them when you’re dreaming. In this way, you can confirm that you’re dreaming and what you’re experiencing isn’t real.

Consciousness thus emerged as a product of increasing biological complexity, from non-conscious precursors composed of non-conscious components.

As Thomas Huxley said, ‘How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp’ (1866, 8, 210)