(Source: planestrainsnpages)
“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
~ Alan Watts
You are both the source and the culmination
A slapdash smorgasbord of great minds that have influenced my thought to date.
on philosophy, psychology, consciousness, drugs, religion, spirituality, myth, art, architecture, poetry, film, comedy, music, economics, society, culture, politics, history, nature, science, the human condition.
There’s a fair few I’ve missed (e.g. Gaspar Noé, John Lennon) but this could never be definitive, only constantly evolving.
List with recommended reading, viewing, listening:
Adam Curtis - The Power of Nightmares (not available on DVD, but up YouTube)
Alan Watts - Eastern Wisdom Modern Life (lots of his lectures up online too)
Albert Camus - The Fall
Albert Einstein - The World As I See It
Albert Hoffman - Hoffman’s Elixir
Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception
Andrei Tarkovsky - Mirror
Antonio Gramsci - Prison Notebooks
Bertrand Russell - History of Western Philosophy
Bill Hicks - Rant in E Minor
Bruce Lee - Striking Thoughts & any of his films
Buckminster Fuller - Operating Manual for Planet Earth
Carl Jung - The Undivided Self (good place to start)
Carl Sagan - Cosmos
Charles Bukowski - Post Office
Christopher Hitchens - Letters to a Young Contrarian
David Attenborough - every documentary he’s ever made
David Lynch - Twin Peaks
Frank Lloyd Wright - try the Taschen book on his work
Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart - Hot Rats
Dostoyevsky - Crime & Punishment
George Carlin - All My Stuff (if you can afford it)
George Orwell - 1984 (duh)
Graham Hancock - Supernatural
Henri Bergson - Creative Evolution
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Heraclitus - Fragments
Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf
Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary
J. Krishnamurti - Total Freedom (or try UG instead - the master of moot)
Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums
Jacob Bronowski - The Ascent of Man
James Lovelock - Gaia
Jean-Paul Miserables - Nausea
Jeffrey Mishlove - great show on PBS (available on DVD) Thinking Allowed
Jeremy Bentham (w/ John Stuart Mill) - Utilitarianism
Jesus Christ - The Gospels (Matthew & John)
John Ruskin - Unto This Last
John Stuart Mill - On Liberty
José Mujica - just read about him, he’s brilliant
Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Groucho Marx - A Night At The Opera
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
Manly P. Hall - The Secret Teachings of All Ages
Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage
Milton Freidman - Capitalism and Freedom
Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power
Peter Kropotkin - Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution
Philip K. Dick - Ubik
Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) - Be Here Now
the late Ray Harryhausen (RIP) - Jason and the Argonauts (that skeleton fight!)
Robert Anton Wilson - Explains Everything or Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance
Robert Fisk - The Great War for Civilisation
Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Major Works
Buddha - there’s a great graphic novel series on him by Osamu Tezuka or Bhikku Bodhi’s In Buddha’s Words
Sigmund Freud - Interpretation of Dreams (the illustrated ed. is quite nice)
Socrates & Plato - I read The Republic first, but Complete Works is worth getting
Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature
Terence McKenna - download everything, read Food of the Gods, The Archaic Revival
Tim Leary - nothing in particular, I just love his lust for life, The Psychedelic Experience is alright
Werner Herzog - any of his docs or films with Klaus Kinski (Aguirre: Wrath of God)
William Blake - The Complete Illuminated Works
William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience
William Morris - News From NowhereThat should keep you busy.
Tarot cards redesigned by Timothy Leary for The Game of Life incorporating DNA structure (in place of the four suits) and his eight-circuit model of consciousness.
"Chapel Perilous is a stage in the magickal quest in which your maps turn out to be totally inadequate for the territory and you’re completely lost. And at that point you get an ally who helps you find your way back to something you can understand. And then after that for the rest of your life you’ve got this question: Was that ally a supernatural helper, or was it just part of my own mind trying to save me from going totally bonkers with this stuff? And the people I know who’ve had that kind of experience, very few of them have come to an absolutely certain conclusion about this."
— Robert Anton Wilson (via hijodelagua)
90 minutes of Robert Anton Wilson speaking at the Libertarian Party’s Presidential Nominating Convention in 1987.
Some really really cool stuff in this talk.
