Consciousness is just a word we use to describe the interaction between our brains and bodies. It cannot be pinned down to one area of the brain, however that does not make it mystical in any way, it simply means we cannot describe it yet, in the same way how at one point we couldn't adequately describe what stars were.

At that point some people decided to call stars angels, or aliens, or whatever mystical story they could think of, however that didn't detract away from the reality that stars were other suns, sometimes they represented entire galaxies.

So consciousness is something we cannot yet adequately describe, however we do know that it does not reside outside of the brain, many tests have determined this, and nobody is yet to prove otherwise.

So in that sense, I guess that's the long way of saying it is part of material reality, because without that reality, there is no consciousness. The process of creating a material world, that can create beings to appreciate it, is well explained via the Big Bang theory and evolution.

Of course we run into another area we can't adequately describe, what happened before the Big Bang. I am happy with the simple answer, we don't know yet. Others, will again, like they have been throughout history, be happy to fill that ignorance with magic and mysticism, god, aliens, cosmic vibrations or whatever.

At one point we close that gap in knowledge, and the magic jumps back to another gap. Every time we find out something we did not know before, the answer has never been magic, it is always something amazing, but explainable and ultimately, predictable.

Cg