What book would you recommend everyone read in their lifetime

[rgray222]

Ultimately, the best book may vary based on personal interests and life experiences. What resonates with one person may not hold the same significance for another. But if you could limit your recommendation to one must-read book, which would it be? It makes no difference if it is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy or Sahara by Clive Cussler. Please add a brief reason for your choice. Thanks

[DNA]

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield.
It takes the concept of human energy field manipulation through negative interactions explaining people steal each other's energy through dramas designed to do so.
It's the single best book to teach such a thing and it does so quickly, short and very entertaining. It's genius in its simplicity.

[drneglector]

The Secret Life of Plants, originally published in 1973, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, completely changed the way I look at plants.

[Michel Leclerc]

Pythagoras’ Golden Verses.

Get the original Greek text (it is short, a 50-odd pages at most) – with a few translations, and compare them so that you can get as near as possible to the original. Alternatively learn classical Greek and read the original in the original.

Doing this is what meditating on them amounts to. Then that is in itself the metanoia, the “around-thinking”, the “trans-reflexion”, the conversion they want to bring about. Reading: getting nearest to truth, goodness and beauty, all three of them through each of them.

Reading is self-education. Pythagoras first and foremost.

Indispensable for young people – unlike tik-tok, unlike the thumped bible. Jesus may have read Pythagoras. He spoke Greek after all.

[Satori]

The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin.

[Satori]

Critical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller. And his short sequel, Grunch of Giants.

[George]

This is a great thread!
Quite often, when I have discovered yet another fascinating book, I think of it as the most important one, and I wished everyone of my friends and family would read it (which never happens, of course). Currently, I am re-reading Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts which (not coincidentally) appeared on my screen. It completely blows my mind a second time after many years. It is as if Seth is speaking directly to me.

I'd say the best book is always the one I am currently reading..!

[ulli]

In Search of the Miraculous, P. D. Ouspensky

[Bluegreen]

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

What is Quality?

An Event

[Inversion]

That would be a book I've mentioned many times The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life Vol. 1. I guess a good investigator would want to start at the so-called beginning to understand our present state. I should read some more books, so I don't seem redundant.

[earthdreamer]

Krishnamurti “Total Freedom” really makes me think .

What I am currently taking in bits at a time is “An Idealist View of Life”, that I picked up as a pdf book on my phone. It is excellent and it’s from lectures by Dr Sarvepelli Radhakhrishnan, being the Hibbert Lectures of 1929. Still fresh 100 years later although some references to philosophers and thinkers from before 1929 can be a challenge that I kind of gloss over because the messages are quite vital and timeless for human thinking.

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/a...-view-life.pdf

[Artemesia]

Posted by DNA (here)
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield.

DNA, I concur, The Celestine Prophecy is great, definitely changed things for me.
I especially loved how they discussed working with plants, and how to regard all life forms for their inherent sentience, although it is different than ours, it can still be engaged with via consciousness connection. These concepts helped me a lot as I traveled through the wilderness landcapes in my many years of backpacking and park ranger work and wilderness guiding, and the later settled down to where I began to garden and do permaculture. Listening to the plants is the key to all successful relationships with one’s garden.


Anyways, my addition to this brilliant and fun thread.
My list is not singular. Sorry, I live with D.I.D. …

The Douglas Adams Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequel books:

Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
And my total favorite,
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

[Strat]

It would depend on the genre being asked but since it's asked in this forum I would suggest Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle In The Dark"

Read that first so that you can have a foundational understanding of how to think and perceive the world. From there one can branch out into the 'woo' and separate the nonsense from the reality. You can believe in ghosts and aliens and whatever you want, but you need to be able to know when the particular case you're studying is worth your time or not.

[Hermoor]

"The Devil's Pulpit" by the Reverend Robert Taylor.

https://ia904503.us.archive.org/6/it...t%20Taylor.pdf

Taylor (1784-1844) was a vibrant polymath. Through birth he was able to move freely in high society. Initially he trained as a surgeon, but a strong spiritual calling lead him in to the Church of England after graduating from Cambridge University. He was an exceptional orator and freethinker of his era.

His razor sharp intellect soon figured out the fundamental purpose of the bible and Christianity in general society. Taylor implored religiously minded academics and senior members of the church to raise their game. They weren't having any of it. They didn't want to rock the boat and risk their position in the establishment. They just wanted Taylor to shut up and go away, or they actively ostracised and persecuted him.

Taylor was arrested and jailed more than once. He simply wouldn't back down. He was a fearless and principled soul. To those with eyes to see he was the biggest truther in the UK and Ireland. The sheeple knew him as an unhinged looney and ridiculed him accordingly.

The Rev. Robert Taylor was a force of nature, chapeau to him.

[madrotter]

Yes, Carl Sagan! I've read his The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God and that one blew me away, re-read it a couple of times....

What also blew me away was not just one book but a series of books by Australian author Colleen McCullough, the Masters of Rome series, 7 pretty hefty books, incredibly well researched, starting around the time when Caesar was born, when low-born Marius took power, the insane Sulla came up (he put Caligula to shame that one) all the way to the end of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra... It goes deep into.... well.... everything! From their religion(s), their wars, their politics, their daily customs, their slaves and how they lived, goes deep into all their foreign wars (and pretty deep into the cultures they were trampling), I spend a very pleasant dry season reading all of them, couldn't put it down, they really suck you in those books (much like Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series) and it was amazing to see how much alike America is to old Rome, the corruption, the rot from within, but also some of the greatness... I cannot recommend those books enough.....

[Michi]

There are certainly more than one, but here is my pick:
Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey: The Magic Story

[Johnnycomelately]

The hardest book, of all the books I’ve taken on, was Please Kill Me - The Uncensored History of PUNK, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

Too hard to put down, and way gritty, worse than Moby Dick. Cured me of reading books, since 10 or so years anyway.

[Marbelo]

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

I imagine that everyone knows this book, but I believe that some people no longer remember the existence of this masterpiece.

There is even a movie with a soundtrack by Neil Diamond.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonath...l_(soundtrack)

[Dennis Leahy]

Journey of Souls - Dr Michael Newton. An exploration of reality.

[DNA]

Posted by Artemesia (here)

Posted by DNA (here)
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield.

DNA, I concur, The Celestine Prophecy is great, definitely changed things for me.
I especially loved how they discussed working with plants, and how to regard all life forms for their inherent sentience, although it is different than ours, it can still be engaged with via consciousness connection. These concepts helped me a lot as I traveled through the wilderness landcapes in my many years of backpacking and park ranger work and wilderness guiding, and the later settled down to where I began to garden and do permaculture. Listening to the plants is the key to all successful relationships with one’s garden.


Anyways, my addition to this brilliant and fun thread.
My list is not singular. Sorry, I live with D.I.D. …

The Douglas Adams Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequel books:

Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
And my total favorite,
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Picking the Celestine Prophecy was hard because there are better works in my opinion but none in just one short book that can be read in literally two or three sittings like the Celestine Prophecy.

It's funny, bluegreen mentioned Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance earlier and it's a great book.
That story starts off with a guy who can't and won't fix motorcycles.

If I didn't pick the Celestine Prophecy I would pick The Michael Teachings by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

In the Michael Teachings you learn about the source of human energy scarcity. You learn the source of the dramas outlined in the Celestine Prophecy used by human beings to steal attention and thus energy from one another.

If you read the Michael Teachings it becomes obvious that the person discussed in the zen and the art of motorcycle maintenence is suffering from impatience which is one of seven chief features outlined in The Michael Teachings that people are born with that suck at their energy and flavor a portion of their ego.


And if I had to pick a third book(set) it would be Carlos Castaneda whereupon he expands on this idea of being born with this situation and explains it as such and his entire set of books is dedicated to setting you free from this predicament.
Castaneda tells us that we are all born with a parasite. A energetic parasite that tricks us into being offended by your fellow man and that every time you are offended by your fellow man you feed this parasite. It is a living being intelligent and genius in its particular specialized field of stealing energy and staying invisible to the host.


1. The Celestine Prophecy makes you aware of the fact you are more than a physical being. That you have energy associated with your energy body that is affected by your actions, your environment and the actions of those around you.


2. The Micheal Teachings make you aware of the existence of 7 different chief features that everyone is born with. Knowing this will help you understand everyone in your life. It will help you understand yourself. It will help you understand that there is a thing siphoning off your energy and making you feel incomplete from the very beginning.


3. Carlos Castaneda, let's you know that the chief feature that everyone is born with is actually a living entity that feeds on us everytime we are offended. And gives the methods and practices one would need to utilize to detach from this entity. These practices work.

It's ironic I think that right now we are learning that most diseases are caused by parasites. I'm of the opinion that as above so below was never so fitting a phrase as it relates to physical and non-organic non- physical parasites in our existence . As we become more aware of one may we become more aware of the other.

Many of us walked away from the Matrix movie feeling like they may have hit the mark on the control aspect of reality.
When I watched it I felt they hit the mark on the parasitized aspect of our reality. When Neo woke up in the goo pod I felt like I woke up. I stood up and I said "no way", my friend embarrassed I was making a scene tugged at my garments asking I sit back down.

If the Demiurge is real. And I'm leaning in that direction. He would come under other names like Baal,Saturn,Moloch,Yaldaboath, Belial in Atlantis and Yehweh. If so these ingrained parasites are cords leading our energy back to the Demiurge. The ultimate cording if you will.