five cranial supernovas
These are the most important books and authors I have ever read. Each has blown my mind, changed my life, and deeply informed and influenced my methods and thinking since I first read it.
| Book | Author | Published | First Read |
|---|---|---|---|
Atlas Shrugged |
Ayn Rand | 1957 | 1990 |
The Continuum Concept |
Jean Liedloff | 1975 | 1990 |
Ishmael |
Daniel Quinn | 1992 | 2000 |
In Search of the Miraculous  |
P D Ouspensky | 1947 | 2005 |
The 80/10/10 Diet |
Douglas Graham | 2006 | 2008 |
I read and liked nearly everything else by Rand, Liedloff, and Quinn. Ouspensky seems to have gotten lost in his head again once he parted from his teacher, Gurdjieff. I have just started to study Graham, whose crystalline book on diet I have sought for over 20 years.
Another book, Upasritan, might be in the above list, but I have not read it. It is the book of my spiritual teacher of eight years, P. But I received the essence of whatever is in it by direct, living transmission, whose effect on me is endless. Some of the basic ideas in the darkness conjecture come from this source. For me, P’s teaching is represented in the above list by Ouspensky’s book.
An honorable mention as a highly catalytic book that came at a critical moment in late 2006 is Introduction to Human Technology by William Arthur Evans.
The book that concretely sums up for me—and enabled me to finally wash my hands of trying to remediate—the diabolical process of this culture is John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
There are also few other books that really affected me when I was first reading things on my own, starting at age 15. They prepared me for the books above. They are so close to me, it is hard to assess their monumentality, their greatness. Also, they are so central to my thinking, it is hard to objectify them, to separate them from my perspective as I have done in the above list. They’re like the air I breathe. They are:
Summerhill
-A S Neill
Magical Child Matures
-Joseph Chilton Pearce
The Songlines
-Bruce Chatwin
Even earlier books, which came to me through my family, were:
The Natural House.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
-Richard Bach
The Prophet
-Khalil Gibran
