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A Journey into Consciousness
by Michael Pollan
Book Reviewed by:From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, a panoptic exploration of consciousness—what it is, who has it, and why—and a meditation on the essence of our humanity.
When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature's greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.
When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view—assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to "plant neurobiologists" searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.
In Pollan's dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/12/2026)
I finished Michael Pollan's latest, https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/24280/a-world-appears A World Appears , for review, and thought it was a fascinating exploration of human consciousness. Also finished up https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/inde...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/5/2026)
...g a Q & A with the author next week. Now I'm reading https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/24280/a-world-appears A World Appears by Michael Pollan. I've enjoyed this author's work since reading Botany of Desire many many years ago. This one is about human consciousness. I'm not very far into it...
-kim.kovacs
Pollan divides his subject into "four different dimensions of consciousness, beginning with its earliest and most elementary manifestation in nature and ending with its most complex and rare creation: selves like ours." Pollan offers no conclusions regarding the nature of consciousness. A World Appears, then, can be thought of more as a survey of what we currently know—and don't know—than a definitive explanation of the subject. Beyond the science, though, Pollan strives to help his readers share his awe for how truly remarkable we are. Through his research he comes to view consciousness "less as a scientific or philosophical puzzle to be solved and more as a practice, a way to once again be altogether here, present to life…That, I guess, is the prize won on this quest…Consciousness is a miracle, truly, and remains the deepest of mysteries." In A World Appears, the author welcomes us to join him in his wonderment...continued
Full Review
(811 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
In his book A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, Michael Pollan states that his interest in human consciousness sprang from an experiment he undertook using magic mushrooms, a fungus that produces a chemical known as psilocybin.
Many use the terms hallucinogenic and psychedelic interchangeably when talking about certain drugs, but technically they're not the same thing. Hallucinogen is a broad term for any chemical that alters one's perception of reality, while psychedelic drugs accomplish this effect by acting on a specific receptor in the nervous system (i.e., all psychedelics are hallucinogens, but not all hallucinogens are psychedelics). Psilocybin is considered a psychedelic, along with LSD and mescaline (also ...
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