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Book bin

Migrated topic.
i am currently reading A Beginners Guide To Reality and im enjoying it.

It quite a gentle introduction to a very complex topic (i understand it so it must be:wink:)

i would like something similar, but a bit more indepth, to move onto next, does anyone have any suggestions for books on the true nature of reality?

cheers
 
Just started reading The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, as not long ago I started consciously practicing lucid dreaming. This book is simple, comprehensible, with ideas not too difficult to practice. Let's see how it works out 😉

The other that I'm almost finished with, is another book by the same Rinpoche, entitled Wonders of the Natural Mind. It's stunning how deep psychedelic experiences take you directly to experience the pure state of mind. That's why I feel a deep connection to Buddhism, even though I'm not practicing it formally.

Both books can be ordered here: Ligmincha Institute

Or downloaded via torrentz...
 
Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku
The Elegant Universe, and The Hidden Reality, by Brian Greene

ALL of Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi

The Soft Machine, and Nova Express, by William Burroughs

The Dune series, by Frank Herbert

The Tao Te Ching (I like the penguin classics version)
 

Another manifestation of "the book" - following in the footsteps of Krishnamurti, Adyashanti, Tolle, etc.

Nice, short and straight to the point.

Elegance cannot be taught to each other, like yet another corpse from the graveyards of tradition and formalities.

It is the spontaneous outgrowth and expression of the natural self.

For gestures, thoughts and speech and movement to have that art, it cannot come from education, but from undoing, where these unwilled acts are born out of gentle compassion and simple awareness, where even the humblest of moments contains within, the infinite power of the totality of being.
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From the standpoint of being love is unconditional. That is love in its truest form. It is not how it is often experienced now, conditional, dependant upon certain acts and achievements, only to be given as a reward like you are feeding an animal.

Nor is it a commodity to be hoarded, amassed and traded.

In being there dwell no misers of love.

Still yourself and unlearn its false scarcity.

It is air, it is water, it is earth.

Quit huddling in dark corners with your prized possession.

Open your doors to those who are passing by, as the Kingdom of the Heart sweetly wears down and washes away the iron Empire of Mind.
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The-teachings-of-Don-Juan.jpg


About to finish this one. Anthropological documentation of 3 year relationship between student/apprentice and a wise old native mexican indian brujo or 'diablero', and the experiences he has working with datura, mescalito, and 'the little smoke' (magic mushrooms). As well as thorough examination of the ritualistic processes involved.

Relatively quick read. I've read another anthropological study called 'Peyote Hunt', involving a different tribe of indians residing in mexico, also published around the same time, which I really liked and would also highly recommend to anyone interested in cultural studies like these. Both books elaborate extensively in psychadelic language about both experiential and spiritual aspects.

(A proper review found here: Psychedelic Press)
 
nadir said:
maxzar100 said:
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky

One of the best books ever written.
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russian classical literature is very powerful .)
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I couldn't agree with these statements more. I would also like to add Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. My Russian Translated Literature professor was extremely passionate, and I couldn't help but get as excited as he was about these works of art. He advised us all to read Anna Karenina every 5 years because it offers so many insights into human nature. It's been 9, so it looks like I'm about 4 years overdue... :(

I would just like to send out my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has contributed here. This is definitely one of my favorite threads. I just purchased my Christmas present to myself, which consists of a stack of books from this thread 😁

Peace and Happy reading to all of you.
 
Enoon said:
Goedel, Escher Bach - Hofstadter
...
House of Leaves - Danielewsky (I can't believe this wasn't mentioned before)
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Aside from those, I'd recommend:

Only Revolutions
Dante's Paradiso
A Theory of Justice (John Rawls)
Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (Hayao Miyazaki)
On Revolution, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Human Condition (Hannah Arendt)
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Doctrine of Virtue, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, and Critique of Practical Reason
The Mathematical Traveler (Calvin Clawson)
Justice at Nuremberg by Robert Conot
The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark's Gospel (Peter Bolt)
Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Noam Chomsky)
Cur Deus Homo (Wherefore the God-man; Anselm of Canterbury)
Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Susan Neiman)
War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (John Dower)
America in Vietnam (Guenter Lewy: pretty much whitewashes the American role in the war, but it's amazing to read things that Lewy says without realizing how bad he's making the American military look)
A History of Bombing (Sven Lindqvist)
His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman)
All the Covenant novels by Stephen R. Donaldson

... and I should be able to figure out some others, but I'll stop with these for now.
 
Ripheus23 said:
Only Revolutions
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I loved House of Leaves, but Only Revolutions struck me as an absolute trainwreck. If there was any content beyond self-indulgent bloviation, I must have missed it... I couldn't even get halfway through.

Still, I intend to check out his newest, The Fifty Year Sword when I get a chance.
 
Entropymancer said:
I loved House of Leaves, but Only Revolutions struck me as an absolute trainwreck. If there was any content beyond self-indulgent bloviation, I must have missed it... I couldn't even get halfway through.

Still, I intend to check out his newest, The Fifty Year Sword when I get a chance.
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I looked at the book like a puzzle, a very difficult puzzle. What does he mean by anything he says? Why the news-tickeresque sidebar? Why spellings for some words like "feer"? Is it random or is there a pattern? And if I can find the pattern...?

I can't honestly claim to know what the book is all about, but I did get some profound thoughts from it, like an emotion that goes beyond love, and an emotion that goes beyond that one in turn, or "the compass of all that's never discovered."
 
thymamai said:
The-teachings-of-Don-Juan.jpg


About to finish this one. Anthropological documentation of 3 year relationship between student/apprentice and a wise old native mexican indian brujo or 'diablero', and the experieinces he has working with datura, mescalito, and 'the little smoke' (magic mushrooms). As well as thorough examination of the ritualistic processes involved.

Relatively quick read. I've read another anthropological study called 'Peyote Hunt', involving a different tribe of indians residing in mexico, also published around the same time, which I really liked and would also highly recommend to anyone interested in cultural studies like these. Both books elaborate extensively in psychadelic language about both experiential and spiritual aspects.

(A proper review found here: Psychedelic Press)
Click to expand...


Doubt anyone doesn't know it by now, but carlos castaneda made this all up. It's not ethnography on the traditions of northern Mexican indigenous peoples, it's fiction.
 
recently read Alex Grey's the mission of art, which i found inspiring and would reccomend to all artists, whether or not you're personally in to his work [anymore].

and just started this :

9780978263713.jpg


slightly heavy'ish reading but quite interesting.this video will give you an idea on the type of thing it covers

vimeo.com

The Visionary Art of L. Caruana: Life as a Gradual Unfolding of the Sacred

A 35 minute motion graphics narrative about the Visionary art & life of L. Caruana. The work premiered at the Chimeria Festival of Visionary Arts in Sedan France…
vimeo.com vimeo.com


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Vishnu-Christ.Avatar-72dpi.600w.jpg
 
DeDao said:


Full book link read to you by none other then Terrence.

True Hallucinations
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can't overemphasize how facking awesome this is ^

i guess i'm biased though, since the first time i ever got incredibly stoned off of some purple weed, i happened to stumbled across this surfing the web- and listened to the entire thing in a day or two. It was just a perfect introduction to the mckennas, for me at least
 
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

An incredible mind. This is a bi-annual read for me, and new stuff is discovered each time.

All of his stuff is pretty wild, a lot of investment to work through, but well worth it.
 
I just finished a short story, Utriusque Cosmi by Robert Charles Wilson. It appeared in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection. A tale of a disembodied hyperspace journey. Sound familiar?

Also I have to mention One River if you want to get a real feel for what ethnobotanists do and Shadows in The Sun, Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire both by Wade Davis.

I'm currently reading Dark Pool of Light, Vol. 1: The Neuroscience, Evolution, and Ontology of Conciousness by Richard Grossinger. This is a somewhat too wordy, but fascinating treatise on conciousness (chapter 1, "What the Fuck is This?"). The three volume set will explore "The Convergence of Physical, Philosophical, Psychological, Psychospiritual, and Psychic Views". Right down our alley.

Also Design in Nature, How the Cronstructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization by the physicist Adrian Bejan and journalist J. Peder Zane. Constuctal Law explains a lot about flow, (like what's up with all those fractals in nature?) and will strike a chord with psychonauts who have an aversion for supernatural explanations of reality.

Chapter 11 of The Bhagavad Gita is a must read. If that charioteer didn't turn Arjuna on to
some of The Molecule then I am not Cosmic Vibration.
 
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