by Malcolm
Graham
The recommended book lists are updated regularly, so come back soon. You can order books directly from chapters.indigo.ca by clicking on the book title. Also see Diabetes Books & Articles. For other books, search chapters.indigo.ca directly.
| Title (click on to order) | Review | ||
| The
Path of Least Resistance Robert Fritz |
This is the first book I recommend to people who want to be more creative. I’ve been applying the ideas in this book, with varying degrees of success, for the past 15 years. Fritz stresses the importance of recognizing the structures which constrain our thoughts and how to create new structures to foster the development of creativity. Also see The Path of Least Resistance for Managers, Creating, Corporate Tides, and the Fritz Group Home Page | ||
| The
Mythic Path David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner |
Each of us lives a personal mythology, an inner drama whose plot we enact over and over in our daily lives. This guiding mythology determines how we think and feel and even what we do. Understanding that mythology can be a powerful tool for self discovery. This book provides guidelines for discovering, examining, and changing personal myths and thereby becoming less bound by the mythologies of childhood and society and gaining greater influence over personal patterns of thought, feeling, and action. Also see Dreamtime & Dreamwork: Decoding the Language of the Night, Understanding Yourself by Understanding Your Dreams, Psychoenergetic Systems: The Interaction of Consciousness, Energy and Matter, and Personal Mythology | ||
| What
a Great Idea! Charles Thompson |
This is the second book I recommend to people who want to be more creative. It is full of techniques that are easily learned and which, based on personal experience, actually work | ||
| De
Bono’s Mind Pack Edward de Bono |
This is an interactive guide to help you think more creatively. Also see Lateral Thinking and Six Thinking Hats | ||
| Illusions Richard Bach |
This is the first self-help book that I recommend and Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the second. Buy them both. Also see The Bridge Across Forever, One, A Gift of Wings, and Nothing by Chance | ||
| The
Choice Og Mandino |
I’ve read more of Og Mandino’s books than any of other self-help author. Although I’d recommend you read all of Mandino’s books, read this one first. Also see A Better Way to Live, The Greatest Gift in the World, The Greatest Success in the World, Og Mandino’s University of Success, Og Mandino’s Great Trilogy, Mission: Success!, and The Christ Commission | ||
| The
Right Mind Robert Ornstein |
Do the left and right hemispheres of our brain perform different functions? Does the seat of consciousness reside in the left hemipshere? Is the right hemisphere simply the dumb slave of the left hemisphere? This book presents Ornstein’s answers to these, and many other, questions related to his interpretations of the latest findings of brain research. Also see The Psychology of Consciousness, On the Experience of Time, and The Evolution of Consciousness | ||
| Art
& Physics Leonard Shlain |
This book compares the history of Art and Physics side-by-side to reveal a correlation of visions. Shlain maintains that the work of artists foreshadows the discoveries or inventions of scientists. I found the connections made between art and science fascinating and supportive of my idea that anything new is discovered by intuitive or right-brained techiques and then developed by rational or left-brained techniques | ||
| Quantum
Reality Nick Herbert |
Physicist Nick Herbert states that “The search for a picture of ’the way the world really is’ is an enterprise that transcends the narrow interests of theoretical physicists. For better or for worse, humans have tended to pattern their domestic, social, and political arrangements according to the dominant vision of physical reality. Inevitably the cosmic view trickles down to the most mundane details of everyday life.” He goes on to demonstrate that there are three dominant visions of reality: from the middle ages—God directed; from the Newtonian revolution—law or group directed; from Quantum theory—individual directed. Also see Elemental Mind, Faster than Light, and The Matter Myth | ||
| Beyond
the Quantum Michael Talbot |
Explores the ideas and experiments within new physics of some of the most brilliant scientists of our time, including Rupert Sheldrake, Fred Hoyle, David Bohm, and John Eccles. This exploration shows how many of these recent discoveries are actually yielding answers to the great mystical questions of all time: Does God exist? What is consciousness? Is there life after death? Also see The Holographic Universe and Mysticism and the New Physics | ||
| Wholeness
and the Implicate Order David Bohm |
Bohm, a world-renowned physicist and seminal thinker of our generation, proposes a new model of reality; he argues for a holistic universe in which nothing operates in isolation. He is concerned with “understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole;” he also seeks to answer “what is the relationship of thinking to reality?” Also see On Creativity, Thought as a System, The Ending of Time, Unfolding Meaning, The Undivided Universe, and Infinite Potential | ||
| The
First and Last Freedom Krishnamurti |
Krishnamurti, one of the most important spiritual leaders of our time, looks beyond the symbols and associations we use in search of true freedom—the breaking of the debilitating, consuming concern of the self. He argues against taking symbols too seriously and to pay more attention to the realities that they reflect—realities that our society denies. He suggests that we tend to rely on others for validation of our experiences and that this fosters a people who don’t know themselves and who are continually looking for themselves. His remedy is that we should rely on our own thoughts and that we need to rely on our own internal direct experiences of love and insight. Paradoxically this reliance on one’s own experiences will lead to a greater unity because of the decline of internal strive which will manifest itself externally in society. Also see The Awakening of Intelligence, The Ending of Time, Education and the Significance of Life, Total Freedom, and Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening | ||
| Personal
Knowledge Michael Polanyi |
This book is primarily an enquiry into the nature of scientific knowledge. He starts by rejecting the ideal of scientific detachment stating that it is a false ideal and that it exercises a destructive influence in biology, psychology, and sociology, and falsifies our whole outlook far beyond the domain of science. Michael Polanyi regards knowing as an active comprehension of the things known, an action that requires skill. An action that affects both the knowledge and the knower. So there is personal participation of the knower in all acts of understanding. But this does not make our understanding subjective. Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity. Such knowing is objective in the sense of establishing contact with a hidden reality. Polanyi stresses that our vision of reality colors everything that we know and that our vision of reality is a kind of foreknowledge of what is to come. Also see Tacit Dimension, Meaning, Science, Faith and Society, and The Logic of Liberty | ||
| The
Wonder of Being Human John Eccles and Daniel Robinson |
Argues man’s happiness is related to man’s moral point of view and that this begins with “man’s awareness of the fact of his own transcendence; the recognition that human persons are different from and rise above those utterly material events comprised in the purely physical cosmos.” The authors, both prominent scientists, then present scientific evidence to support the transcendent nature of man. Also see Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self, How the Self Controls Its Brain, Self & Its Brain, Human Mystery, and Facing Reality Currently out-of-print, but you can get a used copy from amazon.com | ||
| A
New Science of Life Rupert Sheldrake |
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake strives to answer two major biological questions: What is the nature of life? How are the shapes and instincts of living organisms determined? His answer is the hypothesis of formative causation, which proposes that the form, development, and behavior of living organisms are shaped and maintained by “morphogenetic fields.” These fields are molded by the form and behavior of past organisms of the same species through direct connections across both space and time. The hypothesis brings into question many of our concepts about nature, brain function, and consciousness. Also see The Presence of the Past, The Rebirth of Nature, Seven Experiments that Could Change the World, Natural Grace, and The Physics of Angels | ||
| Visual
Thinking Rudolf Arnheim |
Arnheim asserts that all thinking is basically perceptual in nature and the dichotomy between seeing and thinking, between perceiving and reasoning, is false and misleading. He argues that the processes of vision involve mechanisms typical of reasoning. To him, our perceptual responses to the world are the basic means by which we structure events, and from which we derive ideas and language. Also see Art and Visual Perception and The Power of the Center | ||