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)

http://www.scribd.com/do...19493/Who-You-Really-Are

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

Nice, short and straight to the point.

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: http://psypressuk.com/20...dge-by-carlos-castaneda/)

I told my friend I want to be love, he turned me to Ram Dass:
http://kat.ph/ram-dass-c...collection-t6597150.html

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.

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.

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.

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."

this was a good read

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 :



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

http://vimeo.com/4294757

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxAZ8TPqfPE


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

True Hallucinations

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

Yea UC, I am listening now. about 2 hours in. Really fun!

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.

Completely true. 19th-century Russian literature is an incredible blend of philosophy and art.



That is indeed a recommended book from me, as well.



I recently ordered this book based upon this recommendation; I will likely read it soon.

As for me, I recommend Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained, Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, David Barash's Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution, Richard Joyce's The Evolution of Morality, Patricia Churchland's Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy, W.V.O. Quine's Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine, F.A. Hayek's The Fatal Conceit, Harold Winter's Trade-Offs: An Introduction to Economic Reasoning and Social Issues, Pierre Hadot's Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision, Ken Wilber's Eye to Eye, Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter, Paul Seabright's The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, John Leslie's Immortality Defended, Pope Benedict XVI's The Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings and Speeches, Plato's Republic, Thomas Nagel's The Last Word, Kabir Helminski's The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation, Stephan Beyer's Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, and on and on it goes.

Finally, to echo another member,

Cleansing the Doors of Perception : The religious significance of Entheogenic Plants

By Huston Smith


GOLD, GOLD I TELL YOU!