Fans pick 100 books like The Ever-Present Origin

An Italian aristocrat who led a magical order in the 1920s, Evola is a fascinating and controversial figure who has become influential in the New Right. Even though I am a Leftist, I find many of his ideas important and helpful—along with his fellow “traditionalists.” Rene Guenon and Fritjof Schuon. Evola believes we are in a period of accelerating decline known as the Kali Yuga, the age of iron and materialism, where the true spiritual knowledge has been almost entirely lost. He argues there is no way to stop the destruction of this civilization and it is best to focus on self-transformation through alchemical and magical practices. His books on Buddhism, eroticism, tantra, and alchemy are also fascinating! 

Founder of Waldorf Schools and Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner was the greatest occult seer and philosopher of the modern age. His ideas about spirituality changed my world when I discovered him while researching my first book on psychedelic shamanism. In this book, he takes us through our cosmic history. He reveals that we currently possess four “bodies” (the physical, astral, etheric, and the I), and we are developing a fifth (the “spirit self”). He explores reincarnation, both of each of us individually and of the Earth as a whole. He explains that there are different super-sensible beings that work upon us all of the time, and that one of them, Ahirman, is destined to incarnate in this century. A fantastic inquiry into the deepest mysteries with practical advice for today. 

Edinger was a student of Carl Jung’s and this book picks up from Jung’s essential essay, “God’s Answer to Job”. Jung realized that God was in a dialectical relationship with his “Chosen People,” and when Job maintained his faith despite being subject to unspeakable cruelties, this compelled God to incarnate as Christ. Following Jung, Edinger believes we are currently living through the archetype of the Apocalypse. The word means “revealing” or “uncovering.” Psychologically, the Apocalypse is the “Coming of the self” into conscious realization. It is a point of maturity where we have gained the self-knowledge needed to integrate, rather than project, the Shadow. This portends a collective incarnation of God into our human world.

The Mayan Factor had a huge influence on me when I read it after reading Jose’s other amazing books, Earth Ascending and Time and the Technosphere. He makes the case that the classic Maya civilization of the Yucatan was related to a galactic civilization that travels across the universe as patterns of information transduced into DNA so they can incarnate at particular junctures to perform a cosmic ritual of “synchronization.” The Mayan calendar is an artifact of this “Galactic Maya” who wanted us to understand we were starting to enter a new dimensional portal with the end of the 5,125 year Long Count on December 21, 2012. While reading this book, I had a crazy experience of the Galactic Maya entering into me and looking out through my eyes at our turbulent reality. Jose argues that a new calendar could shift us from chaos to harmony. A fabulous visionary excursion!

I bought this book from a second hand shop; the book was fire damaged (perhaps as a result of a closed-minded reader spontaneously combusting?). It is a great introduction to anti-establishment, anti-materialist philosophers, thinkers, and whatnot. Gary Lachman writes in an accessible and conversational style and manages to remain questioning and thoughtful. He also used to play bass for Blondie and guitar for Iggy Pop.

I love this book because it shows that consciousness is the fundamental reality. It’s a very readable guide to the scientific discoveries that (paradoxically) will force science to reconsider its materialistic worldview. Laboratory results in quantum mechanics reveal that there is no “objective world” out there. Brain imaging studies in neuroscience indicate that consciousness is not “manufactured” by the brain.

In fact, consciousness expands when brain centers responsible for our sense of self are inhibited. And the ultimate consciousness expansion appears to take place at death as brain function ceases entirely, according to the growing number of people revived after cardiac arrest. Suddenly, science is discovering that the mystics have been right for thousands of years.

I found this book by accident and was very glad I came across it while pottering around the shelves of my favourite second-hand bookshop.
On first appearances, the book looks like a missing-person-stroke-body-turning-up-many-years-later-in-mysterious-circumstances kind of story, but it goes much further into a world of conspiracy theories, malign medical technologies, and seemingly unfathomable crimes.
I loved the sheer pace of the book – very hard to put down – and how Iain Edward Henn set about weaving the characters, settings, and indeed reader into a possible (probable) new scientific paradigm.

Great stuff.

Mario Bunge’s study is notable for the variety of its analyses of various diverse phenomena in which emergence is evident: in general systems theory, for example, as well as in language systems, social analysis, theories of holism, social systems, biology, epistemology, and biomedical sciences.

Bunge singles out a sense of “convergence” that highlights the integration of multiple sub-processes. It’s not just the specific relation between distinct parts that is a hallmark of emergence, but the integrated relation among these sub-processes. This book certainly broadened my perspective of the whole subject area.

I picked up this book because the back cover made it sound like this funny romp where a rock competition decides the fate of the Earth—and who doesn’t want that? But this isn’t just a more uplifting version of that one Rick and Morty episode about “Gettin’ Schwifty.” With vivid worlds and deeply flawed characters, Space Opera is like a psychedelic trip with that brilliant, probably-drunk friend whose gorgeous mind you could listen to for days. (Stop looking at me like that! I’m not in love with her syntax, you are!) Don’t get me wrong: there are so many behaviors in Space Opera that I recommend against as a sexual health physician—they’d increase your risk of disease and mental illness—and I’ve got moral positions that don’t jive with Valente’s vision, either. But there’s a scene where Valente touches on immigration and deportation that made me weep and left an indent… show more.

I’m a physician, so it’s probably not surprising that a book by a physician about an alien physician might hit my list of meaningful space operas. What is surprising is Star Surgeon’s double-twist—the patients aren’t who we think they are, and the secret to getting Earth into the prestigious Galactic Confederation isn’t what we think it is—both of which actually had huge real-world thematic implications. On face level, it’s a medical thriller: the protag’s the first alien to graduate from human medical school, and he’s got to prove himself by curing an epidemic on a remote planet without arousing the ire of his human teachers. (I felt like this in residency.) But on a metaphysical level, Star Surgeon is a quiet manifesto dissecting the origins of racism—and the very biology of sentience itself.