The 10 Best Books You’ll Find During Your Stay on Earth!
The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil aka Singularity Kurzmeyer–I had just dropped out of college when I read an article called “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.” This article introduced me to things that I had never even considered–namely, that the exponential growth of technology was leading humanity into some pretty unimaginable places in the near future.
The book referenced a passage from “The Age of Spiritual Machines” and I set to work on reading it. The book introduced me to the ideas of transhumanism and the singularity. These ideas point to the fact that as change continues to increase exponentially, technology will ultimately begin transforming humanity so rapidly that the question “what does it mean to be human?” may take on a whole new light.
Looking back 8 years now, the real thing that this book offered me was a framework to understand what is happening all around us with the explosion of the Internet and the crumbling of many systems that we have relied on since the Industrial Revolution. It seems that many people are finding these times quite bewildering and having this information gives me a sense of peace, cuz we ain’t seen nothin’ yet…
The Omega Point by Peter Russell aka Physicsmeyer–Peter Russell is a physicist-turned-mystic who points to a coming consciousness transformation on the planet as humanity shifts from the head-mind to the heart-mind. This was the first real spiritual book that I read and the language Russell uses to explain the spirit made me feel comfortable in considering the possibility that my current analytic, materialistic framework needed re-visioning.
When I read this book I had just experienced my first confirmed telepathic communication with another human and I was shaken. I was not prepared for the possibility of telepathy but at the same time I could not deny my experience. I was without question looking for answers. At the same time, the value systems that I had grown up with were no longer giving me satisfactory answers for what I was experiencing.
Among Russell’s hypotheses is that consumerism itself is the Anti-Christ spoken of in so many religious texts. Rather than a person, it is this idea, that it is only that which can be quantified and consumed that is of value, that holds humanity back from realizing its true nature as spirit. This idea hit me like an atom bomb and I could no longer look at malls and Best Buy and Wal-Mart without a deep feeling that their dominance in society meant that something was way off-track.
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda aka Gurumeyer–This book meant so much to me that I took discipleship with the author through another disciple at his ashram. So, I am certainly biased considering that Yogananda is my guru, but as I let my feelings about this book swirl around inside my head, I am left with the very distinct sensation that this was an extraordinary human who experienced many unbelievable things during his time on this Earth.
From teleportation to seeing people appear in two places at the same time to seeing someone rise from the dead, it’s all in here. And as time goes on, and my experience of life unfolds, I know it all to be true more and more deeply. These things are real, if we have the conviction to test reality.
I was deeply inspired by Yogananda’s adventure going on a penniless adventure to show his brother that his faith in God was most certainly solid. He was to leave with a one-way train ticket to a distant city, be fed without asking for food, and manage to get home without asking for money. His story of what ended up happening and being taken in as royalty is truly mind-blowing and I decided to do a “similar experiment for a month with a penniless one-way ticket to Bali.” I would never even have considered such a possibility before reading this book and it means so much to me for someone who really touched the deepest truths of this reality to have shared their experiences.
Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin aka Remarkameyer–Ahhhh Seth Godin. There ain’t no one like Seth. This book is ostensibly about “viral marketing” and is in fact one of the original treatises on the subject. But what’s so great about this book and really every other book by Seth Godin is that it just inspires so many ideas. It just makes you think about all the possibilities in the world and how little ol’ me can make something truly remarkable and get it to spread.
Godin describes various techniques, but his most valuable insights are two. One, that in order to stand out in the land of a trillion products, you must make something that is remarkable. Something that stands out. Something that gets people talking. Again, something that is remark-able, able to be remarked upon.
The second insight is that the marketing of the product must be built in to the creation of the product. To create something that spreads, that is unleashed upon the world, it must have a built-in mechanism that aids in its spreading. One example of this is Christianity. Once someone becomes Christian, they must now SPREAD THE IDEA to others in order to make sure that their fellow countrymen are not sent to Hell. Another example, and probably more useful for our purposes, is Hotmail. When someone signed up for a free hotmail e-mail account, every e-mail that the sent featured an ad for hotmail, encouraging the received of the e-mail to sign up for the service. Thus the users became the sales force.
I find this kind of thinking so wonderfully diabolical (in the best possible sense of that word) and exciting. The idea of creating something of value that spreads around the world and transforms people as it goes, that’s my idea of a good time!
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson aka Baldmeyer–I first discovered this book when it wasn’t even a book yet. After writing “an article in Wired” about the concept, author Baldmeyer did something that I had never heard of at that time: he put his book into a beta form on a blog and sort of wrote it in public, using the blog comments to help flesh out his ideas and ultimately make a stronger book.
And then there’s the book itself. Wowzers. Now that the idea has filtered pretty deeply into the mass psyche, it almost seems like common sense, but at the time, it was pretty crazily revolutionary. As people began selling bits and bytes and could thus store an almost infinite amount of inventory, as shelf space was free, Baldmeyer predicted that all sorts of niches would appear. For our mainstream mass culture may have only existed because there weren’t that many options to the average person. Once the niches appear, culture would begin fragmenting into sub-sub-sub-niches as people discovered what music, books, and films they were really into.
For me, this made me feel like now was the time to just be fully myself, to create the art that above all I want to see, because there are going to be so many niches that being popular in any niche is likely enough for financial self-sustainability.
The Law of Attraction by Abraham aka The Hicksmeyers–After I read this book, I decided to stop reading for about the next 4 months. I just wanted to spend some time and fully take in what this book was saying, namely that I was in all ways the one creating my reality, that the most important thing I could do was to FEEL good, and that my desires and thoughts and dreams were a far more important part of “getting things done” than any kind of action or productivity gizmo.
This book set me on a course to the high levels of weirdness that I now find myself swimming in. It became very perilous to me, experientially, on where I ended and where reality began. This fascinating discovery, which has been “experimentally verified,” is far stranged than I ever imagined it would be.
You see, most people who get into this “Law of Attraction” seem focused on getting a hot job or a hot car or a hot spouse. I was more interested in seeing what the whole mechanism was that was making this all happen and the deeper I looked, the more it appeared that I was touching the mirror in the matrix. It was like as I looked, I started becoming the thing I was looking at. The strangest part of it all is that I can no longer go back and un-know this information. It’s now sink or swim.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that information is a lot more shamanic than it presents itself as being. It all seems very lighthearted but as you begin to really internalize what it means that you create your reality, this life journey becomes a whole different thing–a stranger thing by the standards of mainstream society.
Basically, it’s like all I wanted was a Mercedes-Benz and I ended up on a non-stop shamanic journey. Bait and switch. Nothing is as it seems. That kinda thing.
Bashar: Blueprint for Change by Bashar aka Essassani Funkmeyer–Hidden inconspicuously in this list is the book that really changed my life. The one that ed me into this whole new reality business. The one that showed me that humanity is on a path that is so much stranger than most of us imagine, a path that seems like it should be relegated to science fiction movies. But maybe that’s why our collective unconscious made science fiction movies in the first place.
But beyond that, way beyond that, this book explained to me how reality works. It showed me what reality is, what I am, what a personality is, and how to really live a life worth living. How to jump into the unknown, how to be a star, how to do great things and champion great ideas and be realer and truer and more vulnerable than I ever imagined possible.
This was accomplished through the middle section of the book, called “Transforming Self.” This section explains how all of reality is really just one thing and thus operates by synchronicity–appearing to be two things that meet at exactly the right timing. Bashar explains that if you just drop your pretenses and allow yourself to drop into this synchronicity, you can stop planning, stop trying, and start living your dreams.
I tried it, it worked, and now I just keep going for the rest of eternity. Ahh, the Funkmeyer credo: FOLLOW YOUR EXCITEMENT FROM HERE TO ETERNITY!
Story by Robert McKee aka Righteousmeyer–This book was a huge boon to my artistic development, especially as a filmmaker. This book is basically the bible of screenplay writing, but somehow it goes deeper than that for me. The book inspired me to master craft, to make work that truly matters, to bring something into the world that has never existed before, and to do it with rigor.
McKee’s writing style is stunningly accessible and his use of actual scenes from movies you’ve seen really helps make his points clear.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card aka Mormonmeyer
Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson aka Cyber Punkmeyer
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins aka Bayou Bluesmeyer
The Cosmic Serpent
Celestine Prophecy by James Redwood aka Cheesemeyer
The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken aka Suavemeyer
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