Mind is made up out of happenings distinctive in space and time and therefore consuming energy and subject to the laws of physics. If consciousness is also a happening, something like mind to the second degree, then it is also limited by the economics of the conservation of energy and increasing entropy. In this case there is no hope for idealism or anything like it. What is the alternative? That consciousness doesn't happen, but is the intrinsic nature of happening itself. It is not a phenomenon, and so can't be measured in energetic terms, but is rather what measures, what makes phenomena possible - without itself being any sort of 'what'. And so mind will always seek and understanding of consciousness but can never achieve it - the looking, neither present nor absent, can never be seen.