Love the bonus, which I’m already starting to prepare ;) thank you! The selection is awesome, read some of the non duality gems of Jean Klein and John Wheeler and by the way, Peter Brown had it all covered in this incredible and detailed reading. Have a great 2025 and may the flow be with you⚡️
Thank you! I'm glad my suggestion is helpful, and I'm glad you find my 2024 reading list to be interesting. I feel fortunate to have discovered Peter Brown's writings this year, based on a suggestion by Joan Tollifson. Hope you have a great 2025, my friend.
Oooouuu ‼️Such a rich offering Matt👏 Your reading, writing& posting spins the Earth like a top! Which means you help the Sun to ‘Rise’ and ‘Set’ in the Heart Orbit of Epiphanies- - Does the Sun Rise if no one is Reading it? Well done👏👏👏
Ok, a sparse list of current reads :
“ The New Science of the Enchanted Universe” Marshall Sahlins ( his last book ) An epic contribution that almost more than any other book, and Lord I’ve read a lot, illuminates the ‘indigenous’ ( all our ancestors) experience of the world - a world brimming with IMMANENT SPIRIT - an alive Enchanted, Infinitely intelligent, conscious universe - from the stones on the beach, the tree in your yard, your Ancestors and the Sun, and beyond. How pathetically narrow the physical sciences have made creation, how soulless - and how senselessly we have made ‘science’ the measure of some soulless ‘Truth’. We and Creation, ecstatically alive in ways most people on the planet even now are alive to if they have not succumbed to Western Culture’s ‘ explanations’ of the whys and wherefores of Being… cultures across the globe and thru time have known Creation & Spirit are Immanent and crying out for our participation. Books like this give us courage to trust what we know in our heart of hearts - which leads to the next book which title says it rather nicely:
“Awakening from The Meaning Crisis” by John Vervaeke - if you need it, all the intellectual super structure you might need to to feed your soul and start to comprehend how we got into the cul de sac we find ourselves in as a culture- hard for us fish to see the polluted water we ( have created) and swim in - which is understandable on one level but we are in fact in a crisis hence my rather harsh tone this morning😉.
One piece of advice I’ll offer is asking… ‘how did we get here.’ This is the question in one form or another my own research has been trying to answer and there are more & more wonderful books answering those questions whether one is focused on any dimension of human concern - environmental, political, spiritual, artistic, … as someone said at a Bioneers conference a few years ago - ‘ we are the autoimmune response of the planets own consciousness kicking in.’
“Ani.Mystic” by Gordon White
“The Matter with Things” Ian McGilchrist- ( all comments above apply! )
Love the recommendations, Carl! You may be helping to populate my 2025 reading list.
What you say about the importance of asking "How did we get here?" pings on something I just read in an article by the neuroscientist James Cooke at Big Think. Or actually, the article is the text of the introduction to Cooke's new book DAWN OF MIND: HOW MATTER BECAME CONSCIOUS AND ALIVE. At one point, Cooke says:
"The issue of consciousness is consequential for understanding not only our own minds but also reality itself. Reckoning with the nature of experiences forces us to confront what is perhaps the most basic question that science, philosophy, and religion all try to answer: What is going on? Do we find ourselves in a clockwork universe that happened to produce some animal brains that excrete consciousness like a useless gas for no apparent reason? Are we in a matrix or some kind of simulation? Are we a dream in a cosmic mind? Taking a stance on the issue of consciousness necessarily requires us to also commit to a stance on the nature of reality. Consciousness theories and their associated worldviews are a package deal."
I find this passage, and the entire article/introduction, to be strikingly incisive. And as I said, it resonates with your point.
Matt - Yes, this is the crux of the essential conversation - 'modern' Western Science has been in a trance of materialism / physicalism for 500 + years which quantum discoveries have kicked the sh- t out of - to be blunt. But 'indigenous' cultures never bought into this silliness - (Upanishads etc but also other oral cultures - mystics as we might call them mastered 'direct knowing' LONG ago.) (current Western view = more hamberger meat eventually leads to emergent consciousness - Seriously?) it all gets resolved if consciousness is the fundamental 'stuff' of universe and matter is just a form of consciousness (awareness , intelligence whatever word one likes) Sorry to disappoint, Decarte, but 'objects are subjects' - your kind of thinking got us off track....
Apologies to be so glib but numerous physicists 'groked' this awhile ago (Max Planck, et al) ... people like Steven Pinker & others are intransigent which is their choice, we're all learning.
I'll have to buy this book you mention - sounds spot on (Dawn of Mind). Love this thread and of course your course! Jeffrey Kripal is very articulate about all this (youtube talks too) his Archives of the Impossible puts a ton of 'evidence' on the table that Western Science plods on with their 'scientism' just by ignoring the evidence that is all around us - stuck in a perspective.
I could list a whole lot of books that come at this from many angles - Real Magic by Dean Radin ...maybe we should have a phone chat sometime - one of the beauties of all this is it leads us back to an ensouled world - a world of inherent 'meaning' - that is THE HUMANITIES - you are in academia, isn't the current craze STEM? Sad... but the upside of pulling ourselves out of this trance is...coming home to ourselves and this mysterious beautiful world...
The best book I've read so far articulating the 'indigenous' experience of creation is "The New Science of the Enchanted Universe" by M Sahlins- great place to start!
Also, as I read the title of Dawn of Mind … how matter became conscious’ … I might change the subtitle to how consciousness became matter 😉 ( in a defiant mood today I guess…)🙏
Hmm. It's very hard to pick any absolute favorites that rise above the others. But here's a try:
If I had to pick a top few -- which I can't -- they'd be, in no particular order:
- Full Stop by John Wheeler
- I Am That: Talks with Nisargadatta Maharaj
- Liberation beyond Imagination by Peter Brown
- A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity by William Samuel
I make this judgment purely according to the depth or level of intensity with which each book hit me as I read it, combined with the depth and intensity of its ongoing afterechos in my thoughts and awareness.
Regarding how I create those PDFs, I've realized after receiving several questions about it that I need to publish a separate post explaining my process. I'll do that within the next week.
Just finished Stonefish by Scott R. Jones, and I've been considering purchasing Drill, although Stonefish was a little too weird for me. The most memorable novel I read in 2024 was a self-published first novel by Adrian M Gibson called Mushroom Blues: the Hoffman Report. His "fungalverse" was totally engrossing to me, a mushroom mavin. I also had to stop reading Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar by Robert W. Lebling because too many weird things started happening round the house. 🧞♂️ Maybe later.
This is the first I've heard of Mushroom Blues, so I appreciate the heads up. If Scott's Stonefish was too weird for you, maybe Drill would seem even weirder, so just a forewarning. It's still an amazing book. 😊
Any complaints about the Remarkable 2? I tried the PDF trick on my wife’s Kobo, and that device does not play nice with PDFs. So I was looking at the Remarkable 2 and the Boox Go 10.3.
I have nothing but good things to say about the reMarkable 2. Great things, in fact. I think there's probably no better e-ink device for working with PDFs. If you want color -- including the ability to see your colored highlights (if you're into marking up PDF pages), go for the still-new reMarkable Paper Pro. But the reMarkable 2 in grayscale is really a marvelous device, and I read, highlight, and annotate PDFs on it daily with great pleasure. I've seen it criticized sometimes for not being a very good reading device, with people saying it's really just a digital notebook for handwriting (and best in class for that function). But actually, as I said, it handles PDFs brilliantly, and also epubs (though there's no bookmarking function, which I admit is a lack).
Having read your “Read Less” essay, as well as this list, I have two thoughts. I own a very tall stack of books that I acquired in 2024 and didn’t get around to reading, so I am slowing down a bit and taking notes, but driving past your list without stopping to pick up any more… so as to practice your bit of whimsically written about wisdom and “read less.” But the list here is appreciated nonetheless.
Also, I feel grateful and incredibly honored to have had something I wrote included among the many great (I imagine) essays and articles you listed here. I’m very much thanking my muse for that. And thank you as well for mentioning what I wrote. There are a few other articles in your list I am definitely interested in checking out.
For me, 2024 saw the most reading I’ve done yet in my life. But I can safely say, I read nowhere near the amount of what you did.
More or less… it’s always a gift to read what you write here. I look forward to what your writing brings forth into 2025.
Thank you, Georgia. I think your plan to honor your naturally upwelling desire to employ the "read less" approach is surely a good one. I go through cycles myself, and the times when I'm less textually engaged, whether as a reader or a writer (or sometimes both), tend to feel like blessings.
Very cool selection, Matt. I love John Wheeler. His books are nuclear. No wiggle room whatsoever. Peter Brown is a gem as well. I'm curious to hear what you think about Neville Goddard and the law of assumption. Have a blessed 2025!
I find Neville and his thought to be frankly fascinating. For some reason when I first started reading a few of his writings in an exploratory manner some years ago, I expected to be turned off and away by something shallow and insipid that I anticipated finding in them. Instead, I was impressed at his sharpness and depth in laying out a pretty coherent philosophy. His law of assumption strikes me as one of the more complete and sophisticated New Thought outlooks (worldviews, philosophies, systems, whatever one ought to call it), especially since it's fundamentally fused with a nondual outlook that is similarly sharp. I figure you could take his system, philosophy, outlook, and have a pretty holistic approach to life that honors nondual truth accurately while providing a worthwhile and effective way of navigating the dream of separation while it plays out.
Love the bonus, which I’m already starting to prepare ;) thank you! The selection is awesome, read some of the non duality gems of Jean Klein and John Wheeler and by the way, Peter Brown had it all covered in this incredible and detailed reading. Have a great 2025 and may the flow be with you⚡️
Thank you! I'm glad my suggestion is helpful, and I'm glad you find my 2024 reading list to be interesting. I feel fortunate to have discovered Peter Brown's writings this year, based on a suggestion by Joan Tollifson. Hope you have a great 2025, my friend.
Joan is fantastic, the way she writes and transfers her experience making non duality understanding sound really natural .
Oooouuu ‼️Such a rich offering Matt👏 Your reading, writing& posting spins the Earth like a top! Which means you help the Sun to ‘Rise’ and ‘Set’ in the Heart Orbit of Epiphanies- - Does the Sun Rise if no one is Reading it? Well done👏👏👏
Ok, a sparse list of current reads :
“ The New Science of the Enchanted Universe” Marshall Sahlins ( his last book ) An epic contribution that almost more than any other book, and Lord I’ve read a lot, illuminates the ‘indigenous’ ( all our ancestors) experience of the world - a world brimming with IMMANENT SPIRIT - an alive Enchanted, Infinitely intelligent, conscious universe - from the stones on the beach, the tree in your yard, your Ancestors and the Sun, and beyond. How pathetically narrow the physical sciences have made creation, how soulless - and how senselessly we have made ‘science’ the measure of some soulless ‘Truth’. We and Creation, ecstatically alive in ways most people on the planet even now are alive to if they have not succumbed to Western Culture’s ‘ explanations’ of the whys and wherefores of Being… cultures across the globe and thru time have known Creation & Spirit are Immanent and crying out for our participation. Books like this give us courage to trust what we know in our heart of hearts - which leads to the next book which title says it rather nicely:
“Awakening from The Meaning Crisis” by John Vervaeke - if you need it, all the intellectual super structure you might need to to feed your soul and start to comprehend how we got into the cul de sac we find ourselves in as a culture- hard for us fish to see the polluted water we ( have created) and swim in - which is understandable on one level but we are in fact in a crisis hence my rather harsh tone this morning😉.
One piece of advice I’ll offer is asking… ‘how did we get here.’ This is the question in one form or another my own research has been trying to answer and there are more & more wonderful books answering those questions whether one is focused on any dimension of human concern - environmental, political, spiritual, artistic, … as someone said at a Bioneers conference a few years ago - ‘ we are the autoimmune response of the planets own consciousness kicking in.’
“Ani.Mystic” by Gordon White
“The Matter with Things” Ian McGilchrist- ( all comments above apply! )
Love the recommendations, Carl! You may be helping to populate my 2025 reading list.
What you say about the importance of asking "How did we get here?" pings on something I just read in an article by the neuroscientist James Cooke at Big Think. Or actually, the article is the text of the introduction to Cooke's new book DAWN OF MIND: HOW MATTER BECAME CONSCIOUS AND ALIVE. At one point, Cooke says:
"The issue of consciousness is consequential for understanding not only our own minds but also reality itself. Reckoning with the nature of experiences forces us to confront what is perhaps the most basic question that science, philosophy, and religion all try to answer: What is going on? Do we find ourselves in a clockwork universe that happened to produce some animal brains that excrete consciousness like a useless gas for no apparent reason? Are we in a matrix or some kind of simulation? Are we a dream in a cosmic mind? Taking a stance on the issue of consciousness necessarily requires us to also commit to a stance on the nature of reality. Consciousness theories and their associated worldviews are a package deal."
I find this passage, and the entire article/introduction, to be strikingly incisive. And as I said, it resonates with your point.
Btw, you can read the piece here: https://bigthink.com/thinking/the-living-mirror-theory-why-all-living-organisms-may-have-consciousness/
Matt - Yes, this is the crux of the essential conversation - 'modern' Western Science has been in a trance of materialism / physicalism for 500 + years which quantum discoveries have kicked the sh- t out of - to be blunt. But 'indigenous' cultures never bought into this silliness - (Upanishads etc but also other oral cultures - mystics as we might call them mastered 'direct knowing' LONG ago.) (current Western view = more hamberger meat eventually leads to emergent consciousness - Seriously?) it all gets resolved if consciousness is the fundamental 'stuff' of universe and matter is just a form of consciousness (awareness , intelligence whatever word one likes) Sorry to disappoint, Decarte, but 'objects are subjects' - your kind of thinking got us off track....
Apologies to be so glib but numerous physicists 'groked' this awhile ago (Max Planck, et al) ... people like Steven Pinker & others are intransigent which is their choice, we're all learning.
I'll have to buy this book you mention - sounds spot on (Dawn of Mind). Love this thread and of course your course! Jeffrey Kripal is very articulate about all this (youtube talks too) his Archives of the Impossible puts a ton of 'evidence' on the table that Western Science plods on with their 'scientism' just by ignoring the evidence that is all around us - stuck in a perspective.
I could list a whole lot of books that come at this from many angles - Real Magic by Dean Radin ...maybe we should have a phone chat sometime - one of the beauties of all this is it leads us back to an ensouled world - a world of inherent 'meaning' - that is THE HUMANITIES - you are in academia, isn't the current craze STEM? Sad... but the upside of pulling ourselves out of this trance is...coming home to ourselves and this mysterious beautiful world...
The best book I've read so far articulating the 'indigenous' experience of creation is "The New Science of the Enchanted Universe" by M Sahlins- great place to start!
Also, as I read the title of Dawn of Mind … how matter became conscious’ … I might change the subtitle to how consciousness became matter 😉 ( in a defiant mood today I guess…)🙏
Of your top books any that rise to the very top?
And how to do that pdf trick?
Yes, would love to really know how to do the pdf trick as well for the tech. Challenged among us!
Look for a separate post that I'll publish in the next week or so to explain my process.
Hmm. It's very hard to pick any absolute favorites that rise above the others. But here's a try:
If I had to pick a top few -- which I can't -- they'd be, in no particular order:
- Full Stop by John Wheeler
- I Am That: Talks with Nisargadatta Maharaj
- Liberation beyond Imagination by Peter Brown
- A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity by William Samuel
I make this judgment purely according to the depth or level of intensity with which each book hit me as I read it, combined with the depth and intensity of its ongoing afterechos in my thoughts and awareness.
Regarding how I create those PDFs, I've realized after receiving several questions about it that I need to publish a separate post explaining my process. I'll do that within the next week.
Thank you
Just finished Stonefish by Scott R. Jones, and I've been considering purchasing Drill, although Stonefish was a little too weird for me. The most memorable novel I read in 2024 was a self-published first novel by Adrian M Gibson called Mushroom Blues: the Hoffman Report. His "fungalverse" was totally engrossing to me, a mushroom mavin. I also had to stop reading Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar by Robert W. Lebling because too many weird things started happening round the house. 🧞♂️ Maybe later.
This is the first I've heard of Mushroom Blues, so I appreciate the heads up. If Scott's Stonefish was too weird for you, maybe Drill would seem even weirder, so just a forewarning. It's still an amazing book. 😊
Any complaints about the Remarkable 2? I tried the PDF trick on my wife’s Kobo, and that device does not play nice with PDFs. So I was looking at the Remarkable 2 and the Boox Go 10.3.
I have nothing but good things to say about the reMarkable 2. Great things, in fact. I think there's probably no better e-ink device for working with PDFs. If you want color -- including the ability to see your colored highlights (if you're into marking up PDF pages), go for the still-new reMarkable Paper Pro. But the reMarkable 2 in grayscale is really a marvelous device, and I read, highlight, and annotate PDFs on it daily with great pleasure. I've seen it criticized sometimes for not being a very good reading device, with people saying it's really just a digital notebook for handwriting (and best in class for that function). But actually, as I said, it handles PDFs brilliantly, and also epubs (though there's no bookmarking function, which I admit is a lack).
Having read your “Read Less” essay, as well as this list, I have two thoughts. I own a very tall stack of books that I acquired in 2024 and didn’t get around to reading, so I am slowing down a bit and taking notes, but driving past your list without stopping to pick up any more… so as to practice your bit of whimsically written about wisdom and “read less.” But the list here is appreciated nonetheless.
Also, I feel grateful and incredibly honored to have had something I wrote included among the many great (I imagine) essays and articles you listed here. I’m very much thanking my muse for that. And thank you as well for mentioning what I wrote. There are a few other articles in your list I am definitely interested in checking out.
For me, 2024 saw the most reading I’ve done yet in my life. But I can safely say, I read nowhere near the amount of what you did.
More or less… it’s always a gift to read what you write here. I look forward to what your writing brings forth into 2025.
Thank you, Georgia. I think your plan to honor your naturally upwelling desire to employ the "read less" approach is surely a good one. I go through cycles myself, and the times when I'm less textually engaged, whether as a reader or a writer (or sometimes both), tend to feel like blessings.
Very cool selection, Matt. I love John Wheeler. His books are nuclear. No wiggle room whatsoever. Peter Brown is a gem as well. I'm curious to hear what you think about Neville Goddard and the law of assumption. Have a blessed 2025!
I find Neville and his thought to be frankly fascinating. For some reason when I first started reading a few of his writings in an exploratory manner some years ago, I expected to be turned off and away by something shallow and insipid that I anticipated finding in them. Instead, I was impressed at his sharpness and depth in laying out a pretty coherent philosophy. His law of assumption strikes me as one of the more complete and sophisticated New Thought outlooks (worldviews, philosophies, systems, whatever one ought to call it), especially since it's fundamentally fused with a nondual outlook that is similarly sharp. I figure you could take his system, philosophy, outlook, and have a pretty holistic approach to life that honors nondual truth accurately while providing a worthwhile and effective way of navigating the dream of separation while it plays out.
Wonderfully put and I can only echo your experience. Also, I've tested some of his approaches and to my surprise found that they work.