Archive for the ‘Book’ Category

Osho books.

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

I enjoy reading Osho’s books, even though they do get repetitive (for a good reason), here are some thoughts about them.
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself (Insights for a New Way of Living Series)

Freedom. This book introduced me to a few interesting concepts: “freedom for”, and “three dimensions of freedom”. Given that for Osho (and I agree with him) freedom is the ultimate goal, the topic of freedom is a very important topic. Surprisingly I was thinking very little about this topic before (yet another stab into self-hypocrisy). Great read.

Joy: The Happiness That Comes from Within (Osho, Insights for a New Way of Living.)

Joy. Yet, another good read. If you understand the difference between pleasure, happiness, and joy, there is no need to read the book. If you do not know what is the opposite of joy, or how pain and pleasure are connected, then, please, read the book.

Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic

Intuition. Taxonomy of bases for our actions: instinct, intellect, and intuition. The differences and similarities between these methods are explained. A very good book to read for a scientist.

Meditation: The First and Last Freedom

Meditation. Different meditation techniques with some explanation of why and how they work. An amusing read, but I am not sure that it is fully applicable to our times.

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The Holy

Monday, October 5th, 2009

The HolyThe Holly by Daniel Quinn.

I was and is greatly impressed with Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Hence, I am trying hard to find the same greatness in his other books by comparing them to Ishmael. I understand, though, that every work must be judged by itself and not as a clone of something else. Still, it seems to me, that all of the Daniel’s books, I have read, do touch the similar subjects and talk about the same messages. Surprisingly, each time, the author finds very different angles to deliver the messages, which is very entertaining.

The Holy did not impress me as something exceptional. It did not provide the comprehensive picture of the environment and did not even hinted into the direction of how the environment can be explained. The notion of “them” vs “us” is an old one and is well popularized by Matrix movies. But Matrix does show how this separation came about, why it was possible, and where it would lead. I failed to grasp that reading The Holy. The book, of course, is well written and reminded me of Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Still I found myself waiting for something more until the very end of the book. In my opinion, the last few chapters of the book contained the important things, which were not really explored during the rest of the book.

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Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

Atlas shrugged CoverI have finished reading Atlas shrugged by Any Rand. The author talks about strong people, fighting and winning. The book is long and I had a feeling that the book consists of three more on less independent books. But towards the final pages I felt that I do not want the book to end.

I read “Atlas shrugged”, because I liked “The Fountainhead” by Rand (my wife suggested both books to me). “The Fountainhead” talks about struggle of individual men to remain true to their values. “Atlas shrugged” takes this struggle to a national level. Now the fight is between groups of people. One group is represented by men of mind aka industrialists, and the other group is men of no-mind aka politicians. The book outlines what methods are used by both groups and why they use them. The main point of the book is that a person must use mind to live and happiness is the ultimate goal. The author provides very logical explanation of why this statement must be true. Of course, the statement comes with a premise that one can not obtain happiness by the price of someone else happiness. I did not remember that it was explained why this premise is logical. In either way, my major concern with the book is that it creates a vision that people achieve by the means of logical reasoning alone. Rearden (one of the books main characters) spent 10 years in the lab to create his metal. The picture that books draw is that logic was the tool for discovering the metal. As a scientist myself, I know that it is very unlikely scenario. “Intuition” by Osho has a very good explanation of the sources for our achievements.

Overall, “Atlas shrugged” is a great book. It is very well written and the subject of the book is worthy of writing a book about.

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Healthy at 100

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

“Healthy at 100” by John Robbins impressed me with the amount of scientific references the author used to support his points. I found this book a little too long, but it’s hard to disagree with the approach that John uses in his book. I have found certain statements in this book surprising, because of my assumption, that information of such importance would be known. But it turns out that even though there is a lot of conclusive research on some important subjects (nutrition, exercise, cancer, heart disease, etc…), I would never know about it. The excuse for that is that I do not read medical publications (how many people do?) and the research is not widely publicized in any other way. But the actual reason for my ignorance is that I never even tried to look for this information. Hence I never knew what the white flour is and why we have it. It has low nutrition value (lower than 50% of whole grain flour) but long shelf live. As a consumer I see no reason to chose white flour instead of whole grain flour. It maybe a common knowledge for some people, but it was not for me.

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Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Friday, September 14th, 2007

I was advised by my friend Cory (who is a gymnast) to read Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. I enjoyed this book a lot. Highly recommended to people who suspect that “thinking” is not our only option.

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Must read book

Monday, July 30th, 2007

I’d say that Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is a book everyone must read. It gives the answer to the question “What’s wrong with this picture?” (picture being everything around).

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