Consciousness & Thought Books - Page 3

The Denial of Death

Ernest Becker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Clarifying Insight 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

A Pulitzer Prize winning book needs no recommendation from me, but I'll add my 2-cents. No book of philosophy, no novel, no discussion of religion, and no essay has had more impact on how I deal with life's issues than this book. I've read it and reread it, underlined passages, turned down page corners, and never go back to it without reading something that escaped me before. It always feels fresh. Becker's insight into human motivation is always on target. And he delivers crystal clear descriptions of ideas and issues that can be extremely difficult to articulate. If you're looking for understanding (not answers, which are not available in this life, regardless of argument to the contrary), then pick up a copy.

Editorial Review:

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.

A Brief History of Everything

Ken Wilber

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 99 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Brief History of Everything is an altogether friendly and accessible account of men and women's place in a universe of sex, soul, and spirit, written by an author of whom New York Times reporter Tony Schwartz says: "No one has described the path to wisdom better than Ken Wilber." Wilber examines the course of evolution as the unfolding manifestation of Spirit, from matter to life to mind, including the higher stages of spiritual development where Spirit becomes conscious of itself. In each of these domains, there are recurring patterns, and by looking closely at them, we can learn much about the predicament of our world—and the direction we must take if "global transformation" is to become a reality. Wilber offers a series of striking and original views on many topics of current interest and controversy, including the gender wars, modern liberation movements, multiculturalism, ecology and environmental ethics, and the conflict between this-worldly and otherworldly approaches to spirituality. The result is an extraordinary and exhilarating ride through the Kosmos in the company of one of the great thinkers of our time.

The Pocket Ken Wilber (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

Ken Wilber

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Editorial Review:

Ken Wilber—the author of over twenty books of philosophy and psychology—is a pioneering thinker who has developed an integral “theory of everything” that embraces the truths of both Eastern spirituality and Western science. The Pocket Ken Wilber highlights the personal wisdom of this popular author with short selections of inspirational and mystical passages drawn from his publications. These heartfelt writings include poetic passages of contemplative insights and reflections as well as inspired descriptions of Spirit, Nondual Awareness, the Witness, One Taste, and other topics.

The Science of Mind

Ernest Holmes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 61 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is a book for the ages.In precise and powerful prose it lays out the blueprint for the remaking of the mind and the reenchantment of the world. --Jean Houston, Ph.D., from her introduction In the early part of the twentieth century, a visionary named Ernest Holmes began a journey of exploration and research that profoundly affected thinkers throughout America. His work, based on the teachings of the great philosophers, the sacred wisdom of both Eastern and Western traditions, and the empirical nature of science, offers a philosophy of religion and psychology emphasizing the limitless potential of the human mind. Now, for the first time, The Science of Mind appears in paperback to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of Ernest Holmes's founding of the Religious Science movement. This book contains the fundamentals of Holmes's teachings and is a primary resource used by teaching centers and spiritual healers worldwide. Its universal principles apply to people of all spiritual backgrounds as they describe a higher level of existence attainable through the use of Nature's forces and the power of God. While imparting an unrivaled technique for living, Dr. Holmes's classic guide speaks clearly to a complex world caught in transition and searching for guidance.

The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Citadel Underground)

Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert, Karma-Glin-Pa Bar Do Thos Grol, Timothy (Francis) Leary

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Tomorrow Never Knows 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 18 people found this review helpful.

Since there is so much talk about the Beatles song, Tomorrow Never Knows, I have decided to use it as the 'working title' of this review.

We don't know what tomorrow will bring. It is a bit audacious on our part to even think that there might even be a tomorrow because all supposed tomorrows are simply extensions of our today.

I picked this book up in a used bookstore in San Francisco. I was at a crossroads in my life. I thought I really wanted to move up to the Bay Area for good. I thought that Southern California offered me as much as it possibly could, but now it was time to move to a different, higher part of the state.

What it was really time for was to move to a different, higher state of consciousness. It wasn't necessarily Southern California that wasn't offering anything more to my life, I wasn't offering anything more to my life. I was in a slump creatively, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually and you know what they say what the difference is between a slump and a grave --- about six feet.

Fortunately (or unfortunately according to some of my family members) I came across the three musketeers; Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert, and Timothy Leary. I had long been interested in LDS but I wasn't ready to give up coffee and I didn't realy believe in polygamy...oh, wait, that's Latter Day Saints...I meant, LSD...lysergic acid diethylamide...Albert Hoffman's "problem child".

I had already been meditating and deeply studying Spirituality/metaphysics for a few years and I had many breakthroughs in many areas of my life, but like I said earlier, I felt I was in a slump. Maybe I should've just kept on doing it the 'old fashioned way' because psychedelics may promise enlightenment, but like most drugs do, they tend to lie.

I did my first and only session the right way, with a guide who has been through the process herself. We picked out appropriate music and she read me passages from this book.

The woman who was guiding me was slowly morphing into a beautiful crystal being. I could literally look through her and see the Pure Love that she was made in and out of as she read:

"O John
The time has come for you to seek new levels of reality.
Your ego and the John game are about to cease.
You are about to be set face to face with the Clear Light
You are about to experience it in its reality.
In the ego-free state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky,
And the naked spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum;
At this moment, know yourself and abide in that state..."

I began to realize, with Real Eyes, that everything I ever knew was 'made up'. I never saw life the way it truly was, I only saw it as I was. I could feel myself dying while at the same time I could feel my true SELF coming forth...

"O John
That which is called ego-death is coming to you.
Remember:
This is now the hour of death and rebirth;
Take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state -
Enlightenment.
Concentrate on the unity of all living beings.
Hold onto the Clear Light.
Use it to attain understanding and love..."

I began to get very clear messages from within my own heart why I chose the life I did. There might be some people who are reading this who might be thinking, "Oh, you were making it all up..." And that is exactly the point! We are making up life as we go along. Most of us do not understand, however, that all of life is simply a projection of what we are in consciousness.

"If you cannot maintain the bliss of illumination and if you are slipping back into contact with the external world,
Remember:
The hallucinations which you may now experience,
The visions and insights,
Will teach you much about yourself and the world.
The veil of routine perception will be torn from you eyes.
Remember the unity of all living things.
Remember the bliss of the Clear Light.
Let it guide you through the visions of this experience.
Let it guide you through your new life to come.
If you feel confused; call upon the memory of your friends and the power of the person whom you most admire..."

I began to feel wave after wave of Love, of Life, of Light...the three symbols that I, to this day, refer to the One Guiding Spirit I call God as. I began to cry as she held my hand - or what I thought of as my hand - and slowly but surely I merged with her and she merged with me and we were One. We always were. But just as I was One with her, I was One with the All. In fact, I never left the One that created me out of Itself.

"O John,
Try to reach and keep the experience of the Clear Light.
Remember:
The light is the life energy.
The endless flame of life.
An ever-changing surging turmoil of color may engulf your vision.
This is the ceaseless transformation of energy.
The life process.
Do not fear it.
Surrender to it.
Join it.
It is part of you.
You are part of it.
Remember also:
Beyond the restless flowing electricity of life is the ultimate reality -
The Void.
Your own awareness, not formed into anything possessing form or color, is naturally void.
The Final Reality.
The All Good.
The All Peaceful.
The Light.
The Radiance.
The movement is the fire of life from which we all come.
Join it.
It is part of you.
Beyond the light of life is the peaceful silence of the void.
The quiet bliss beyond all transformations.
The Buddha smile.
The Void is not nothingness.
The Void is beginning and end itself.
Unobstructed; shining, thrilling, blissful.
Diamond consciousness.
The All-Good Buddha.
Your own consciousness, not formed into anything,
No thought, no vision, no color, is void.
The intellect shining and blissful and silent -
This is the state of perfect enlightenment.
Your own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth, nor death.
It is the immutable light which the Tibetans call Buddha Amitabha,
The awareness of the formless beginning.
Knowing this is enough.
Recognize the voidness of your own consciousness to be Buddhahood.
Keep this recognition and you will maintain the state of the divine mind of the Buddha."

All of my yesterdays and all of tomorrows are simply extensions of my today...of what I am being in this instant. People think that enlightenment or reaching a Christlike state takes years and years to reach. But even the Bible refers to it as something happening instaneously...

"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."
Corinthians 15:56

Many years have since passed since my one and only LSD experience. Sometimes my ego wants to go back and have "another one". Like the insatiable kid who could've satisfied his craving with just one piece of chocolate, but got sick after eating the whole box. Nope, all I need was confirmation, validation, appreciation for this Spiritual Path I was already on. It was truly a gift from my Self to my self.

I still live in Southern California. I became a Spiritual Counselor, met my wife, and every day is a beautiful new experience. Sometimes I'm not in awe and appreciation. Sometimes I'm really "stuck" in this world of form but as soon as I close my eyes and breathe in and out and just sloooooow dooooown...I can deeply realize with real eyes see that what I am looking for is always what I am looking with.

Read this book with an open mind and an expanded heart. Feel the Presence of Light all around you...all within you.

I am not advicating psychedelics in any way, shape, or form. I firmly believe you can "get" to another place in consciousness if you "let" yourself let go and just jump in. You are not your body. You never have been. You are the Light, the Life, and the Love of Something I call God, but it is from this Invisible Presence that all life stands forth out of.

Peace & Blessings,
john, 'the Light Coach'

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

David Abram

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

mind magic 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the rarest, most utterly original books there is, and indeed could ever be. It is written by someone whose soul is that of a magician and poet and whose art is so triumphant with sheer spirit that every sentence is radical and radicalizing. It is a book whose comprehension of the human condition is generous, natural and enormous. It describes the necessity of nature not just for human being but for human thinking; this is a cry for the protection of the human mind.

It has deeply influenced my own thinking, from the moment I read it, and has remained one of the best books I've ever read.

Editorial Review:

David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with passion and intellectual daring.

"Long awaited, revolutionary...This book ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it."--Los Angeles Times

Creating Affluence: The A-to-Z Steps to a Richer Life (Chopra, Deepak)

Deepak Chopra

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Extremely Slim, Readable, and Penetrating 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 14 people found this review helpful.

I am in the middle of a cross-over from being a former spy and infantry officer--metrics driven--to partnering with 23 others to create the Earth Intelligence Network and empower the public with public intelligence that forces the policymakers into accountability. So I find myself in strange territory--I used to blow off all the spiritual "squishy" stuff, and now I am finding that it provides not only a bridge, but a safety network as I venture into a "leap of faith" on what might be possible.

I found the same authors DVD The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and book by the same title, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Pocketbook Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams (One Hour of Wisdom) to be so worthwhile that I watched and then read them in combination.

This is a gem of a book, the kind of thing that the author himself says should be read once, and then used as a daily reminder, reading several pages each day. I agree.

Most fascinating for me, as a specialist in information and intelligence, is the authors emphasis on pursuing the goddess of knowledge so as to make the goddess of wealth envious (hence attracting wealth), and also his emphasis on how the raw material of the world is non-material, everything is a hierarchy of states of information and energy, a seamless matrix of nothingness. What I used to write off as gobblygook now has meaning to me.

The author's emphasis on Failure as good finally resonates with me. I have just closed the door on fifteen years of trying to help governments get in touch with the 96% of the information they do not and cannot steal, and as I reflect back on all that leads to the founding of the Earth Intelligence Network, I see a string of failures that led to this day:

Refused an offer from Lloyd's Bank Internation to join US Marine Corps
Average infantry officer, accepted by CIA because of background
Resigned from CIA when I found the clandestine service corrupt
Resigned from the Civil Service as founder of USMC Intelligence Center when the lawyers refused to let me run another conference on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Abandoned effort to help US Government specificially in achieving access to the 96%v via a Multinational Decision Support Center, when too many factors precluded engagement.

Now I am here, about to begin my true life's work as intellligence officer to the five billion poor (and to those corporations that wish to follow the green to gold path, as well as those foundations that wish to use a global impact plan to armonize their spending for poverty, disease, environmental degradation and so on).

"Failing" at infantry, spying, bureaucracy was all a prelude to my life's work--I cannot yet say it is destiny, but my published books are now starting to show a pattern, and the next three (all free online as well as offered via Amazon, now, finally, "make sense:" Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace; Peace Intelligence: Assuring a Good Life for All; and Commercial Intelligence: From Moral Green to Golden Peace.

This book, which has two sections, one offering a page (sometimes more) on 26 steps, followed by one on 25 quantities of a unified field, is real and it is not at all squishy. I'd like to see more hard-nosed CEOs and others give this book a chance.

Some other items I have enjoyed over the years that you might like also:
Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development.
Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics
What the Bleep Do We Know!?

Editorial Review:

In this remarkable book lies the secret to creating affluence. Here you will discover that you are the dancer and the dance, the creator and the creation, and unlimited wealth is yours merely for the asking. With clear and simple wisdom, Deepak Chopra explores the full meaning of wealth consciousness and presents a step-by-step plan for creating affluence and fulfillment on all levels of our lives.
According to the author, affluence is our natural state, and the entire physical universe with all its abundance is the offspring of an unbounded, limitless field of all possibilities. Through a series of simple steps and everyday actions, Creating Affluence gently fosters the wealth consciousness needed to tap into this field and create anything you desire.

The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing Is Hidden

Dr. David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A truly remarkable book 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

After reading "Power vs. Force," I immediately started reading Hawkins's "The Eye of the I." It was just as amazing as the former book, and really took me deep into numerous areas of intellectuall, philosophical, and spiritual study. The study of the nature of consciousness is indeed intriguing, and by reading this book you will be exposed to many profound ideas and new ways to think about consciousness. A MUST READ.

Helpful 3 out of 5 stars.
7 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This book, while helpful, is not as powerful a work as the first book (Power vs Force). I also take issue with his calibrations. Following the method he outlines in several of his books I conducted calibrations and got results: Dr. Howkins calibrates at 422 (Mother Theresa at 424); Power vs Force at 570; The Eye of I at 350 and I, Reality and Subjectivity at 364. On virtually any calibration he gave that I have tried to confirm, I got a different result. I believe this guy has done a lot of good work, but I also think he is subject to the ego like the rest of us.

Spiritual Insight 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

One of, if not the, most valuable reads encountered relative to enhancing personal spirituality. It puts full responsbility on the individual reader to walk his/her own talk if truly committed to the path of personal enlightenment, now an attainable level of human awareness. With specific suggestions and insightful explanatons, the reader is provided the tools to grapple with his own ego issues, leading naturally into increased balance and harmony with all life. Be prepared to look into the mirror of reality which you have personally created, like it or not. I felt like I had been put through an intensive monastery experience - loved it!

The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

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Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

As elegant as his bestselling How to Know God and as practical as his phenomenal The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, this groundbreaking new book from Deepak Chopra contains a dramatic premise: Not only are everyday coincidences meaningful, they actually provide us with glimpses of the field of infinite possibilities that lies at the heart of all things. By gaining access to this wellspring of creation, we can literally rewrite our destinies in any way we wish.

From this realm of pure potential we are connected to everything that exists and everything that is yet to come. “Coincidences” can then be recognized as containing precious clues about particular facets of our lives that require our attention. As you become more aware of coincidences and their meanings, you begin to connect more and more with the underlying field of infinite possibilities. This is when the magic begins. This is when you achieve the spontaneous fulfillment of desire.

At a time when world events may leave us feeling especially insignificant and vulnerable, Deepak Chopra restores our awareness of the awesome powers within us. And through specific principles and exercises he provides the tools with which to create the magnificent, miraculous life that is our birthright.


From the Hardcover edition.

Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World

Chris Frith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Smashing 5 out of 5 stars.
82 of 82 people found this review helpful.

Every once in a while, I read a book which performs a sort of miraculous feat. It sets out to do the seemingly impossible, and then not only does so, but does so in a way which seems almost effortless.

Chris Frith's book "The Making Up The Mind" is like this. Its task is nothing less than to explain "how the brain creates our mental world" to a popular but educated audience - and in the space of 193 pages, he actually does it. Along the way, he references dozens of the most important studies on conscious/unconscious perception, computation, self-image construction, etc., extracting from them their most relevant points, and weaves them into an engaging narrative characterized as much by its clarity as by its genial tone.

A few particular personal high points in this book: Frith's tidy explanation of Bayesianism, his remarks on the inevitability of pre-judging, the brain as a cultural organ, and most of all, his chapter on prediction/evaluation mechanisms.

When I started the book, I kept a pencil handy so as to underline all the most important sentences/concepts. By the time I was done reading it, my book looked like a band of hypergraphic monkeys had gotten hold of it, so full of circles and lines and scribbled notes was it.

Verdict: five big stars.

Editorial Review:

Written by one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, Making Up the Mind is the first accessible account of experimental studies showing how the brain creates our mental world.

• Uses evidence from brain imaging, psychological experiments and studies of patients to explore the relationship between the mind and the brain
  
• Demonstrates that our knowledge of both the mental and physical comes to us through models created by our brain
  
• Shows how the brain makes communication of ideas from one mind to another possible