Book Recommendations

Books by Bernardo Kastrup

 1. Dreamed up Reality   June 2011

A mesmerizing journey into the unconscious, where one uncovers the unfathomable mechanisms underlying a fractal reality made of thought forms.

Diving Into the Mind.  Interview about the book.

2. Rationalist Spirituality  January 2011

A book where all aspects of existence find a logical reason, leading to insightful guidelines for living a purposeful life.

Logic, Science, And The Meaning Of Life.  Interview about the book.

3. Meaning in Absurdity  January 2012

A compelling and eloquent articulation of a future when humanity will transcend logic and find profound meaning in the absurd.

What Can We Learn From Bizarre Phenomena?  Interview about the book.

4. Why Materialism Is Baloney  April 2014

A hard-nosed, logical, and skeptic non-materialist metaphysics according to which the body is in mind, not mind in the body.

Metaphysical Idealism.  Interview about the book.

5. Brief Peeks Beyond  May 2015

An incisive, original, compelling alternative to current mainstream cultural views and assumptions.

Implications of Metaphysical Idealism.  Interview about the book.

6. More Than Allegory  April 2016

A plausible, living validation of religion that doesn’t contradict reason.

The Deep Truth of Religious Myth.  Interview about the book.

7. Idea of the World, The  March 2019

A rigorous case for the primacy of mind in nature, from philosophy to neuroscience, psychology and physics.

Video of Defense of  the PhD dissertation published as the book The Idea of the World

8. Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics  August 2020

Provides answers not only to the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, but also to modern philosophical dilemmas such as the hard problem of consciousness.

A decoding key for unlocking the sense of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical contentions:

An interview about the book overall

An interview about the book and quantum physics

9. Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe  March 2021

The archetypal semantics of an experiential universe.

Untitled An interview about the book.

10. Science Ideated: The Fall Of Matter And The Contours Of The Next Mainstream Scientific Worldview  September 2021

The fall of matter and the contours of the next mainstream scientific worldview.

An interview about the book.

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A Trilogy from a project on consciousness and Science

Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century
by Edward Kelly (Author), Emily Williams Kelly (Author)

Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. The present volume, however, demonstrates empirically that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false.

Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality
by Edward F. Kelly (Editor) and Adam Crabtree (Editor)

Most contemporary scientists and philosophers believe that reality is at bottom purely physical, and that human beings are nothing more than extremely complicated biological machines. Beyond Physicalism is the product of an unusual fellowship of scientists and humanities scholars who dispute these views.

Consciousness Unbound: Liberating Mind from the Tyranny of Materialism
by Edward F. Kelly (Editor), Paul Marshall (Editor)

Building on the groundbreaking research of Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism, Edward Kelly and Paul Marshall gather a cohort of leading scholars to consider the significance of extraordinary experiences for our understanding of reality. The vision sketched here provides an antidote to the prevailing postmodern disenchantment of the world and demeaning of human possibilities.

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Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition  by Ken Wilber

Hailed as “one of the most significant books ever published,” this work of far-reaching vision is a comprehensive exploration of the evolution of human consciousness.

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World   by Iain McGilchrist

A pioneering exploration of the differences between the brain’s right and left hemispheres and their effects on society, history, and culture—”one of the few contemporary works deserving classic status” (Nicholas Shakespeare, The Times, London)

Below is a link to a page of 50 short comments on McGilchrist’s book The Master and his Emissary.

https://channelmcgilchrist.com/tmahe-video-commentaries/

The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest questions humanity faces – ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today. Who are we? What is the world? How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time? Is the cosmos without purpose or value? Can we really neglect the sacred and divine?

Below is a link to McGilchrist’s website and page where the dialogues with Alex Gomez-Marin, on each chapter of The Matter with Things, are available. The dialogue of Chapter One is at the bottom of the page, so scroll down to get to the beginning.

https://channelmcgilchrist.com/tmwt-chapter-videos/

REALITY  2020 by Peter Kingsley

REALITY introduces us to the extraordinary mystical tradition that lies right at the roots of western culture. This is the true story of Parmenides, Empedocles, and those like them…who laid the foundation for the world we now live in.

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning  (2017)  by Jeremy Lent

Winner of the 2017 Nautilus Silver Award!This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.

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Books by Nial Ferguson

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West  (2006)  by Niall Ferguson

Why, if life was improving so rapidly for so many people at the dawn of the 20th century, were the next hundred years full of brutal conflict? Ferguson (Colossus) has a relatively simple answer: ethnic unrest is prone to break out during periods of economic volatility—booms as well as busts. When they take place in or near areas of imperial decline or transition, the unrest is more likely to escalate into full-scale conflict. This compelling theory is applicable to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the “ethnic cleansing” perpetrated against Bosnians, but the overwhelming majority of Ferguson’s analysis is devoted to the two world wars and the fate of the Jews in Germany and eastern Europe.

The author discusses his book War of the World

The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook (2018)  by Niall Ferguson

The 21st century has been hailed as the Age of Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson argues that networks have always been with us, from the structure of the brain to the food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. Throughout history, hierarchies housed in high towers have claimed to rule, but often real power has resided in the networks in the town square below.

The author discusses his book The Square and the Tower

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (2021) by Niall Ferguson

Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Doom is the lesson of history that this country–indeed the West as a whole–urgently needs to learn.

The author discusses his book Doom

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Comments On or Excerpts from Other Books

The Philosophy of Consciousness-without-an-object

Franklin Merrell-Wolff (an American mystic)

 A Shadow of Zen Mind

A personal perspective on Zen

 Nothing Special: Living Zen

My personal notes on Beck’s book