Any good spiritual books?

siddhartha is a literary classic, but is pretty inaccurate in a number of respects (for instance, hesse even identified him as belonging to the wrong caste)

still slightly innaccurate, but far more in depth and in my opinion a more enjoyable (and much longer) book is old path, white clouds.

still, i've read a number of spiritual based novels such as these, and a wide array of religious texts from various faiths, and nothing has ever spoken to me as directly or offered more sane, applicable advice on living a spiritually grounded, happy life than benjamin hoff's The Tao of Pooh
a non-mystical guide to -practical- taoist beliefs for non-taoists. the ultimate non denominational guide to life....while i dont agree 100% with everything in them, the tao of pooh and the te of piglet are a phenominal set of books for just about anyone.

 

I forgot to mention the Upanishads. A bit more esoteric, maybe, but there is a lot of really good stuff in there.

 

I really enjoy any book by the Dali Lama. Another book I like is "The Dharma of Star Wars". Really good read.

Peace and love

 

for simple wisdom, you might try the prophet, by kahlil gibran.

 

"The Celestine Prophesy". I just started reading the sequal to it today called "The 10th insight". Apparently they made a movie out of the 1st one too.

 

'Cosmic Trigger' by Robert Anton Wilson. This book is absolutely great!


http://www.rawilson.com/main.shtml

 

wait a minute.

Siddhartha is a novel, and the central character is a fictional contemporary of Gotama the Buddha

So how can he belong to the 'wrong' caste?

 

Hesse says he is a Brahmin - that is the priest caste, and in the context of the story the 'right caste'.

 

I am reading Awakening the Buddhist Heart by Lama Surya Das. His books are great and I highly recommend them!

Peace and love

 

The Phat News of Mark is a righteous book by 2 Hawks.

 

The book was written by a hippie named 2 Hawks. Has anybody read it?

 

Wow some great books here. One by bach is a favorite as well as all of Dan Millman's work. Just gettin into Demons and Angels by Dan Brown (divinci code). One out there that is really good and not many people know about is Jesus Christ by Ann Rice...yeah that's right the Vampire Goddess wrote one about Jesus.

 

I think my favourite spiritual book would be
"Leap" by Terry Tempest Williams.

The woman really exposes her soul to you. It is a mixture of enviormental information, poetry, art, history, religon and her hopes and dreams. She is a mormon which might turn some people off- but because of her I have a much deeper respect for the mormon faith.

Really a beautiful book- I cannot tell you how much I enjoy it.

 

Wow, I could not agree more. The last ones on the list (ie. popular "religious" texts) are heavy reads, but can really speak volumes and can be very enlightening (for lack of a better word, but ya know what I mean folks) ...one book that I hold very dear, that helped me through some hard times and helped me surface my spirituality is "Think on These Things" by Krishnamurti. Read the book, and do just what he advises...think on the topics he brings up... You will undoubtedly discover more about yourself. This might work with anything by Krishnamurti, come to think of it.
Happy reading!

 

Some of my favorite spiritual books are..

Ask and It Is Given / Esther & Jerry Hicks
As A Man Thinketh / James Allen
Conversations with God / Neale Donald Walsh
Science of Mind / Ernest Holmes
Six Pillars of Self-Esteem / Nathaniel Branden ( great for soul-searching )
All of James Redfield's books
Real Magic / Wayne Dyer
The Gift of Change & Illuminata / Marianne Williamson
Divine Intuition/ Lynn Robinson
The Seth Material/ Jane Roberts

 

I'm not sure if your into the christian books but some of the biographies are pretty intenste, for example "the heavenly man". Or for something more general I loved "the way of the wild heart" although thats written predominantly for men seeking spirituality. Captivating is written for women....hope this helpd .

 

I don't know if some of these count as 'spiritual' but they do investigate "the meaning of life."

The Bhagavad Gita
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Children of Gebalaawi - Nagib Mahfouz
Existentialism is a Humanism - Sartre
The Upanishads
The Dao De Ching
The Dhammapada
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche
Ethics - Spinoza
The Meaning of Life - A Reader - E. D. Klemke, Editor

 

I recommend The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.

Here's a nice summary of the first few chapters:

http://users.tpg.com.au/wookie99/

 

Siddhartha is total blasphemy for lack of a better word. That book is poison for the mind. If you are interested in the Buddhist path the one that will tell you everything is Profound Buddhism. The greatest book ever written is Vijnana Bhairava, it shows 112 ways to realize God. Another book just as good is Spanda Karikas, an ancient text that shows thousands of years ago mystics already knew what physicists are just now learning and then some.

 

Poison for the "mind" perhaps but not for the soul. :^)

This was a provocative statement on your part, but how one "experiences" this book depends on the
general angle of approach that one embraces as their own inner-process of expansive clarification.

I read Siddhartha back in the mid seventies and immediately understood it's significance. There
has long been trends within spiritual movements to essentially discount our current experience as humans,
in relation to our immediate environment and each other. In favor of a goal which remains out-of-sight,
that we then press ourselves persistently forward in the hopes of eventually discovering.

It's approached as though we can effectively "replace" the thoughts that we currently hold about
life, family, friends, religion with a more rarified and learned dialogue of higher-focused rhythms of
greater "expectation".

That this dialogue, when built upon aggressively and through determination, will provided us with the
needed bridge toward greater awareness, if not enlightenment itself.

Siddhartha, for me anyway, essentially pulled the rug out from under this approach and
highlighted the value of intimate participation in all levels of experience as it spontaneously
emerges from "all" that we continually involve ourselves in.

That "progression" is less about building linear mental associations, with the resulting far-reaching
assumptions.... as it is about developing the inner-appreciations which are continually percolating among the
inner currents of our daily interactions.

Approached in this latter way there can be found as much, if not more, value in "letting go"
of the distracting belief structures that tend to distance us from our intuitive-connection with life...
That it's probably not the best use of ones time trying to "learn" another way of applying even "better"
filters in the hopes of accomplishing that which the other filters couldn't.

In a sense Siddhartha had come to abandon expectation, through participation and involvement,
till he spontaneously melded-as-one with that essential blend of the ever present now.

I found the story magnificent...! :^)