What book/s are you currently reading?

[Hurlyburly]

I just started Simon Singh's "Big Bang." I'm about 100 pages in and thoroughly loving it. I was learning about Stellar Parallax and then the next morning i watched an episode of "The Universe" which just happened to be all about Stellar Parallax! Simon's historical method of story telling is really enjoyable to read.

[Anthony Peake]

HB: At the moment I am reading "The Portable Atheist" edited by Christopher Hitchen. Indeed this book has brought about yet another itladian synchronicity that I would like to share with the forum.

A few days ago Dr. Mike Sabom (of NDE fame ... cf. the NDE forum for discussions on Mike's work) emailed me. He suggested that I read an article by the philosopher A.J. Ayer entitled "That Undiscovered Country". Mike was interested in my opinions on this. Ayer was a well known atheist but late in his life the great skeptic experienced something that can only really be described as a classic Near-Death Experience. I will post elsewhere (possibly in the NDE forum) a discussion about the article itself ... but for the moment I wish to mention the synchronicity that took place literally the day after I received Mike's email.

That morning I had managed to source a copy of the Ayer article on the web but found that I had run out of printer paper. Frustrated I decided that I would have to buy more printer-paper. I made my way into the local town and decided that before I bought the paper I would pop into the Library (Bebington Central for those who are interested).

Now this library always has a table showing the latest non-fiction books that they have purchased. I spotted "The Portable Atheist" on display. As I had recently bought a copy Hitchen's book "God Is Not Great" for my holiday reading I decided to check this book out and take it out on loan. Going to the library completely took my mind off the fact that my reason for going into Bebington Village was to buy some printer paper (my mind is a bit like that).

For those of you who know this book it is a fairly weighty tome of nearly 500 pages. It consists of articles taken from the writings of famous rationalists and atheists.

This Monday (28th August 2008) I began reading the book on my commute to work. Yesterday afternoon I reached page 270 and turned over to the next page. Now remember this is a book full of articles that are very grounded and rationalist. The last kind of book I would have expected to find on page 271 .... A.J. Ayer's "The Undiscovered Country" ... the very article that had instigated my journey to Bebington a few days before and in doing so brought about the circumstances whereby I visited Bebington Library and found the Hitchin book ..... !!!!

[Anthony Peake]

Apropos of my last posting .... on page 272 of the Hitchen book... and in the middle of the synchrondipitous Ayer article I found the following "significant coincidence" that links directly to my concept of "Cheating The Ferryman".. Ayer writes:

'The content of those remarks suggests that I have not wholly put my classical education behind me. In Greek mythology the souls of the dead, now only shadowly embodied, were obliged to to cross the river Styx in order to reach Hades, after paying an obul to the ferryman, Charon. I may also have been reminded of my favourite philosopher, David Hume who, during his last illness, "a disorder of the bowels," imagined that Charon, growing impatient, was calling him "a lazy loitering rogue."

Oh this is all getting very weird!!!

[Hurlyburly]

From the book i mentioned above. Read this and thought it was very clever!

First we had the luminiferous ether,

Then we had the electromagnetic ether,

And now we haven't e(i)ther.

Banesh Hoffmann

[roshni]

Im a fan of OSHO and now im reading the book"gender to superconsciousness"
heres a synopsis....

"When gender is expressed as pure gender -- and there is no sin in it, there is no need to feel guilty about it; this is the way your bodies are made, this is the way your biology functions -- express it. Just by expressing it naturally, there will come a moment when the compulsion to express it as gender will disappear. That is the turning moment, now transformation is possible.

First, natural expression to the satisfaction of the natural instinct in you, and then transformation is possible, because now the energy will not compel you to express it as gender; it is satisfied. It has known what sexual experience is. Only after this, the transformation is possible, and the transformation will happen through meditation.
So whenever you feel energy in you, and no desire to express it sexually, simply sit silently and meditate. Meditation will make the path for the energy to move higher, and you will know that the same energy which was expressed as gender, ultimately is expressed as samadhi, as superconsciousness. It is the same energy -- just the label of expression goes on changing. But if something remains incomplete, you will be dragged again and again to it.

The religions have a reason to repress gender. They all wanted to transform the energy, so naturally they thought that gender should be blocked, expressed in any other way; that blocked energy then could be transformed into spirituality. But they had no understanding about gender or energy or transformation.



Let me remind you that your sexual center is in your mind; genitals are just the extension of a center which is in the head. That's why you can dream about gender, you can fantasize about gender -- and each fantasy will immediately affect your genital organs. You are thinking, it is in the head. The genitals are the extension of a subtle center in your head, so when you repress the energy, your head becomes full of it. Your gender becomes cerebral, mental, so you think about it, you dream about it. And this is an ugly state.

Repression will do you harm in that it will make your mind full of gender... no transformation but only an ugly, cerebral sexuality.

Natural gender is far more beautiful. It is simple and innocent.
( hope everyone knows what gender stands for here)

[roshni]

Hello Cam, Im really happy that you thought my post fascinating!Now about the questions you asked-
a.I think ITLAD is all about being in connect with your true self, and I think energy can be transformed to consciousness,if you know how. Meditation is a wonderful tool for doing so. In India, yoga and meditiaiton is part of the curriculum in many schools for this very purpose.
b.RAJNEESH/OSHO was an Indian mystic, guru and philosopher.
"OSHO. Never Born, Never Died. Only Visited this Planet Earth between Dec 11 1931 – Jan 19 1990."
With these literally immortal words, Osho both dictates his epitaph and dispenses with his biography. Having previously removed his name from everything, he finally agrees to accept "Osho," explaining that it is derived from William James' "oceanic." "It is not my name," he says, "it is a healing sound."
His thousands of hours of extemporaneous talks, spoken to people around the world over a twenty-year period, are all recorded, often on video -- tapes that can be listened to anywhere by anyone, when, Osho says, "that same silence will be there."
The transcriptions of these talks are now published in hundreds of titles in dozens of languages.
In these talks, the human mind is put under the microscope as never before, analyzed to the smallest wrinkle. Mind as psychology, mind as emotion, mind as mind/body; mind as moralist, mind as belief; mind as religion, mind as history, mind as politics and social evolution -- all examined, studied, and integrated. Then graciously left behind in the essential quest for transcendence.
(you can read about him on osho.com or oshoworld.com)

[A Dark Philosopher]

Should this thread be moved to the ITLADian Literature section?

I won't even begin to chronicle my daily book reading but I will say that over the last week or so the following have been hugely ITLADic and well worth looking at:

The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami
Quantum Enigma by Bruce Rosenblum & Fred Kutner
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing by Richard Dawkins
Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey
Mirroring People by Marco Iacoboni

[Hurlyburly]

Sorry, i started this thread before your section was born! I think there's room for both. Just use this as a list and quick refference with any literary disection left for your thread maybe. Give it time, as i post more and more about 100's of films it'll slowley drop off the list anyway!

[A Dark Philosopher]

*salutes and continues reading*

[Hurlyburly]

I finished The Big Bang by Simon Singh last night. I really loved this book so much. Following the evolution of scientific discovery fuelled by bitter rivalries between scientist is really a fascinating read! I genuinely learned an awful lot from this book and would place it among one of the most interesting i've read. As i said, historically it was absolutely fantastic to learn about the great sacrificies that have been made over the centuries in the name of science. Loved it!

For a change of pace i am now reading Tom Cruise - The world's a stage.... say what you will!