Meditation training resources

Books on the evolution of human consciousness and our ways of viewing the worlds in which we live

Kazantzakis, N. The last temptation.
            This book got Kazanzakis excommunicated from the Catholic church, but the church ended up the poorer in my view. A wonderful account of the life of Christ as though he were an ordinary person struggling with ordinary things albeit with extraordinary energy, determination and insight. This is far closer to how the path is than the ‘son of god’ myth – we are all children of god but we have to come to realise this by our own cultivation the path. This is a story of one such life by an awakened being. Highly recommended. Also Zorba the Greek by the same author.

Koestler, A. (1968). The sleepwalkers: a history of man's changing vision of the universe, Penguin.
            An inspiring account of how we humans have developed and changed our view of the world and the universe we live in over the ages. We are in an ongoing process of ‘unfolding’ view after view. No view can ever be final and closed no matter how much certainty we may invest in it - including of course our contemporary paradigms or accepted ways of viewing and ‘knowing’.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, University of Chicago.
            Demolishes the logical empiricist view of science as an objective progression toward the truth. An inspiring and challenging discussion of the way we see those things and evaluative processes we all take to be 'real' in terms of paradigms which are socially constructed and maintained. These paradigms are, of course, subject to upheaval when a more enabling paradigm comes along, as indeed is the new paradigm itself.

Leakey, R. (1977). Origins: what new discoveries reveal about the emergence of our species and its possible future. New York, Dutton.
            Goes into evolution in a way which departs from Darwin’s survival of the fittest idea in that he emphasises cooperation as a major factor in survival and evolution. Inspiring archaeology.

Sagan, C. (1977). The dragons of Eden: speculations on the evolution of human intelligence. London, Coronet.
            Excellent book on the evolution of the human brain and how we humans perceive, organise and create. Good on scientific detail and yet very well presented for the general reader.

Watson, L. The Romeo error.
            Challenges our ideas about life and death from a biological standpoint, again well presented for the general reader.

Zukav, G. (1979). The dancing Wu Li masters: an overview of the new physics, Fontana - Flamingo. Account of modern physics and implications for what we are used to call ‘reality’ - in particular, challenges our habit of splitting the world into ‘subject’ and ‘object’ - the consciousness of the observer inevitably interrelates with and influences what is observed. Along with The Tao of physics, this is the classic work and is very accessible. More recent references in a similar vein  can be found on the website for the film ‘What the bleep do we know’ (whatthebleep.com) and also at www.noetic.org.