Tomislav Longinović, known to many as Tom Long, sent me a link to a recent article about consciousness. An MIT scientist claims that consciousness is a state of matter. Much of the article is beyond me, but the claim strikes me as obvious enough. This is what Tom also says. For how could consciousness be anything else but a state of matter? The only reason for any widespread interest in the topic obviously has to do with all the mind-and-matter crap that has accrued over the ages. The mind was supposed to be something entirely different from matter, just like soul, holy spirit, and the like. It belonged to another and mysterious world. Pure crap, to be sure. If there is anything of real interest in the state-of-matter hypothesis, it is the possibility of there being different sorts of consciousness corresponding to different states of matter underlying it. Predictably enough, this is where the article in question is entirely lacking. Alas, the state of matter associated with enlightenment is the only topic of any interest to me, but I am fully aware that science will never get me there even if it could define such a state of matter with great precision. Getting there is the only question of any real interest, indeed. And this is where sages have been well ahead of scientists for untold centuries at least with the sort of matter our brains happen to be made of. All other sorts of matter are for the birds here on earth, anyhow.