90 Amazing Books that Awaken

This is a discussion and listing of a number of powerful books that help you on your path of awakening.  Examples are, The Infinite Way, The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment, Living Untethered, Autobiography of a Yogi, In Search of a Secret India, I am That, Pointers from Nisargadatta,  Any book by Thich Nhat Hahn, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, Essential Rumi, Tibetan book of Living and Dying, Power of Now, There is a River, and Loving What Is. Not included in the podcast but good, easy, and fun is Ram Das's book, "Be love now" 

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support. You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

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Hello, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. How are you doing today? I trust well. Today I'd like to talk about what I consider some life changing books. And most of them are books that are actually fun to read, page turners. Yet they can change your life on your own personal road to awakening. So as I list these books, see what resonates with you. Pick and choose what you would like to read. What seems to suit where you are in life. And let's see what happens. So let's start with Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. It was on the New York Times Best Sellers list. And in it, he talks about his view of awakening. I found it very powerful and so have most others who have read it. If you like that book, Untethered Soul, it's easy to read and it's fun. Also, you might want to read another one of his books, Surrender Experiment, which is his book on what happened as he experimented with just surrendering to life. Both books, very easy to read, fun and profound at the same time. So these first two books, the Untethered Soul and the Surrender Experiment are about Michael Singer's amazing journey to awakening. His third and newest book called Living Untethered is what he learned and distilled as to the process of awakening. It's extremely simple and powerful, easy to follow and gives clear perspective on the path of awakening and some helpful processes. I highly recommend this book, Living Untethered. Another book that's a classic that you probably have heard of and maybe already read is Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda. I would get that book. It is a very good view in my estimation of what actually goes on in India if you go to the right places. I know as you're reading it, you'll begin to question like, did that really happen? But Yogananda was very powerful. I do believe everything in the book did happen and I think you'll benefit by reading it. If nothing else, it's a lot of fun to read. Along those lines, a book that I brought up many, many times is called In Search of a Secret India by Paul Brunton. It is actually the closest book to describing what my experiences have been in India. I just loved reading it. He was a newspaper reporter in England and I believe it was the 1950s and he had wondered about India. Are these gurus real? Are they charlatans? Is there anything to it? Nah, probably not, but maybe I'm hearing things, but it can't be true. So as a reporter, he decided, well, I'll go to India and report on it. I'll just start interviewing people and I'll check it out for myself. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. So this is his biography on what he found and the steps he took. And some of the gurus that he found were charlatans. Others were kind of half and half. Some were pretty good, but not perfect. And others were literally amazing. I found it very interesting. You'll stay up late at night wanting to turn the pages and it will give you a quick trip to India. So I'm recommending that book, In Search of a Secret India. Another classic is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I've heard him speak a number of times and I read his book right after it came out. And it's also an amazing book. You've probably read it, or friends of yours have read it. It's a classic as well. It's easy to read and it's about awakening. Very understandable. So that's a good book. By the way, all of these books that I'm talking about here today likely can either be found at the library or you can just google the book and look at the used books. And you can buy them very inexpensively, usually. So these should be fun for you and very inexpensive. As long as we're talking about autobiography of a yogi and In Search of a Secret India, I'll point you to some podcasts by Ram Dass. Likely you've heard of him as well. You remember he wrote a book, Be Here Now, back in the early 70s, I think. But that's not where I'm guiding you to. He's got a series of podcasts. He passed away a couple years ago. I met him in California and in Austin. He has a series of podcasts and the one I'm directing you to, if you just google Ram Dass Indian Stories, he talks about some of the amazing experiences he's had with gurus in India. That'll fit right along with Autobiography of a Yogi and In Search of a Secret India. And you can just click it and listen to it now if you wanted. It's free on the internet. It's actually episode 18 and a longer series of lots of talks he gave and he's very good to listen to. If you want to listen to his whole list of talks or any one of them, again, they're free. Go to the internet and google something like Ram Dass podcasts and what'll come up is Ram Dass Here and Now. And I don't know how many podcasts there are, maybe 200. Each one is very good and very informative. You'd be great just staying with the podcasts of Ram Dass. Again, likely you are familiar with Ram Dass, but just in case you're not, the way you spell his name is R-A-M-D-A-S-S, Ram Dass. He was a tenured professor at Harvard who ended up going to India, finding a guru and bringing back his experiences and offering them to the West. That's a short version. He's got a fascinating life, but rather than get all caught up in it right now, I'll let you discover it. He is one of the clearest articulators of the awakening experience that I've ever heard. So I think you'll enjoy his podcast. Speaking of very articulate expression of awakening, another great book, and I know you've heard of it, is the Tao Te Ching, T-A-O-T-E-C-H-I-N-G. This is a book of 81 verses or sayings written by Lao Tzu that encapsulate the awakening experience, both from an individual level, a societal level, lots of different levels. It's written from an awakened perspective and it's very easy to read, yet very profound. The vibration of each verse is extremely clear and profound. So as you read each verse, you almost have to awaken to understand it in that moment. So it really calls you to a high level as you read it. It's probably the highest literature that I've ever read. The translation that I like, though there are lots of good translations, is by Gaia Foo Fing and Jane English. When you google the book, you'll see them. It's a very popular translation. You can also just google the Tao Te Ching and on the internet, it'll pull up the 81 verses and you could read them and see how you like them. What I would suggest, if you do like the Tao Te Ching, do something like before you meditate or after you meditate each day, read one verse. They're relatively short and they really deepen you very powerfully. By the way, this is a Taoist text. You've heard of Taoism and it was written in China. As long as we're talking about very high vibration literature, let me give you one that was written in India. The ancient literature that was imparted by the great seers in ancient India is called the Upanishads. The Upanishads were distilled down into more specific literature called the Vedas. The Vedas were distilled down into a little story called the Bhagavad Gita. So that's what I'd like to talk about today is the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is a story of a ruler named Arjuna who is being challenged and attacked by other rulers that are actually his family. So he has a dilemma. How can he defend himself or attack his family? His chariot driver is God Krishna in the disguise of chariot driver. So this book, the Bhagavad Gita, is relatively short, but it's about the dialogue that Krishna has with Arjuna, which brings him into clear seeing and enlightenment. As you read this book, you can read the wisdom that Krishna imparts and it has a very high vibration as well, quite different than the Tao Te Ching, but still it moves you very deeply on your awakening path. In this book, I might just read a little bit every day, just like you do with the Tao Te Ching, because every paragraph or page is so powerful, you might need a moment or two to just digest it. There are many good translations of the Bhagavad Gita. The one that I like was written by Jack Hawley, H-A-W-L-E-Y, Jack Hawley. Well, here's another Western book that is very powerful in helping you see the lenses of your mind and letting them go. Remember, we've talked about this in prior podcasts, that we're often trapped in a world that we've created because we're looking through specific lenses of our personality and our mind. And if we were to let those lenses drop or melt away, our being, which is always present, would shine through and in clarity, we would walk through life awakened. We would flow through life. A good start with all of this is to read Byron Cady's book, Loving What Is. In that book, she really talks about how to drop those lenses using four simple questions. Trust me, it's an extremely powerful book and it is fun to read. She uses lots of examples with real people. Some of the dilemmas therein are pretty deep and you can definitely identify with them and you can see how the process worked with those people. I've met her a number of times, listened to her talk, talked to her, and really have the highest respect for Byron Cady. You'll enjoy this book a lot, I think. You spell her name B-Y-R-O-N, Byron Cady, K-A-T-I-E. She's pretty popular, so there are a lot of used books out there that you can buy online fairly inexpensively. Do you want another easy, fun, yet profound book to read? I would read any book by Thich Nhat Hanh, T-H-I-C-H-N-H-A-T-H-A-N-H, Thich Nhat Hanh. You can google and it'll come up with lots of books, tons of used books. I would just pick any of them and read them easy and heart-opening. He was a Zen monk from Vietnam. He actually started an ashram in France and very powerful. You could look him up on YouTube and hear him talk on YouTube, as well, or probably find some podcasts about him. But I would get any of his books. You'll enjoy them. A nice, relaxing read that, at the same time, will deepen your awakening. Do you like poetry? I love Rumi. He was a Sufi mystic poet who lived in the 1200s, and his poems are often very concise and very powerful. Some are, actually, could be quite long, as well. The translation that I like is a book called Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks, C-O-L-E-M-A-N-B-A-R-K-S. He is a scholar on Rumi. I heard him read his book in California, and it was so profound and moving. It really exhibits and exudes the presence of Rumi himself, and this comes through his translations. So, Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks. If you want a sample of Rumi, again, just google Rumi, and you'll get tons of poems. R-U-M-I. You could google something like, what are the best Rumi poems? And you'll get a handful, and you'll get a good sampling. Another fascinating and profound book, from a Buddhist perspective, is called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. It's easy to read, and it covers lots of very powerful experiences and concepts. It was written by Sogyal Rinpoche, S-O-G-Y-A-L-R-I-N-P-O-C-H-E. Again, such a popular book that you can find lots of copies used on the internet for a very low price. I think you'll enjoy it. Relaxing, fun, interesting, and deepening all at the same time, from a Buddhist perspective. The Bhagavad Gita that I mentioned earlier is from the Hindu tradition, but I don't want to be too simplistic because the Hindu tradition encompasses everything. However, this is a central facet of it. Yet, as my Indian friend said when asked about India, he said, India is everything. Well, the Hindu religion is pretty much everything. Everything that's out there is in there somewhere. I often like to say that Buddhism, which came from Hinduism, is more or less like organized Hinduism. Everything's in Hinduism, but it's scattered very deep. You have to kind of go with the flow and find what it is that resonates with you at this moment in your path. The Bhagavad Gita sort of pulls it together, but I don't want to limit your view of Hinduism by the Bhagavad Gita, as expansive as it is. So, let's stay in India for a moment. There was a guru in Bombay, now called Mumbai, named Nisargadatta. People would come to him. He was a shop owner. He had a number, a few little Indian shops. He was known as a salesman. Those are Indian cigarettes, basically. Handmade, flavored Indian cigarettes. He used to like to smoke these. People would come to him far and wide to ask him questions, because he was very clear and very profound. He would speak from his experience as an awakened being. So, recordings of these short conversations in book form is the book, I Am That, talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. N-I-S-A-R-G-A-D-A-T-T-A. Maharaj. M-A-H-A-R-A-J. I Am That talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. It's a pretty thick book, but inside each dialogue, it will be the person coming to ask him questions. They'll ask the question, he'll respond, and perhaps they follow up. Well, that whole exchange might only be one page, or maybe it's two pages. So, each exchange isn't very long. You can take it in bite-sized chunks. It will give you the experience of what it is like to talk to an awakened master. There are all different varieties of these gurus in India. Some you interact with in a dialogue, like you did with Nisargadatta. Some you interact with simply through energy, and you'll see some of those gurus in some of the books I mentioned earlier, like Autobiography of a Yogi, or In Search of a Secret India, or Indian Stories by Ram Dass, that podcast. So, you'll get a nice flavoring of India through all of these different books and podcasts. Another book I like a lot, that is also very, very deep, is called Pointers from Nisargadatta by Ramesh Balsakar. And it's R-A-M-E-S-H Balsakar, B-A-L-S-E-K-A-R. Although Nisargadatta had passed away, I went to Mumbai, and I was with Ramesh Balsakar, and he did a thing, and the room was packed, and he would do something. He would put you on the hot seat if you wanted, and that was a seat that was opposite him, and you could ask whatever question you wanted, and he would fire back and forth. So, it's kind of what went on with the book, I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj, but I got to participate in that with Ramesh Balsakar. Ramesh Balsakar was an awakened disciple of Nisargadatta Maharaj, and this book, Pointers from Nisargadatta, is Ramesh Balsakar's translation of dialogues between Nisargadatta and visitors, along with Ramesh Balsakar's commentary. So, you have the interesting effect of an enlightened master dialoguing and commentary, as well as translation by his enlightened disciple. So, it's two layers of enlightenment, and it's a very powerful book. I actually read it because I was waiting for my book I Am That by Nisargadatta to come in, and it was delayed. So, I borrowed this book, Pointers from Nisargadatta, from a friend, and I was reading it, and I really didn't know what to expect. I am a good reader, but I was new to this kind of very deep, powerful spiritual literature that actually transforms you as you read it. So, I wasn't used to that, and I would start to read this book, Pointers from Nisargadatta, and I would read about a paragraph or a half page, and my mind would disappear because you have to sort of go into an awakened state in order to understand the awakened dialogue that's going on, and I didn't even understand the mechanics of any of this. I was reading it like it was a normal book. My mind would disappear, and I would just sort of be looking at the wall for five minutes, and then I would come to, and I would a little bit berate myself, like, what's wrong with you? Why are you spacing out? Why are you daydreaming? Why can't you concentrate? Concentrate. This is an easy book. Just read it. And I was kind of hard on myself back then. That's another story. I'll probably do a podcast, but it's that powerful, and just by reading it, it does something to you. So, I would definitely recommend that one, too. It's, again, kind of, I want to say hard reading. There are a lot of concepts that were new to me, and also with my mind disappearing all over the place. It's not one of these easy reading books like most of the other ones I've mentioned to you. It's not one of those, but it's definitely worthwhile, and you might just get it and try it out. Read a paragraph, read a chapter or two. Read a few chapters before you make a judgment because it's quite different. So, that's a good book. Pointers from Nisargadatta, and it's not to take away from I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj, also very powerful. That is even a little more dense, the I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj, even though they're little conversations. You know, there was somewhat of a relaxing thing to read the commentary by Ramesh Balsakar, as well as the translation of the dialogue. So, I don't know, it worked for me. Both books are very good. Another book that I would get, and I'm going to throw you a curveball here, is called There Is A River by Thomas Sugrue, S-U-G-R-U-E. This is a biography of a, oh, I don't know, let's call him a psychic, Edgar Cayce. And it's an extremely fun book to read, but it's extremely profound. And I read it way back in the 80s when I wasn't sure what to believe about psychic stuff, or does any of this make sense, and deep spirituality. This was way before the Eastern stuff, way before that, all these other books I'm giving you. This was just, is there anything to some of these crazy things you hear? Read this book. It's extremely, it's a page turner. You'll love it, regardless of how you end up feeling about the content of the book. But the content is very profound. I would read it. There Is A River. Another book that's very powerful is called The Infinite Way by Joel Goldsmith. I think he died maybe in the 60s. But this is a book kind of like, quite different, but like the Tao Te Ching in the respect that when you read it, you almost have to go into an awakened state just to stick with it. So bite-sized chunks would be helpful. He's a Westerner, so it's easy to read in that regard. But what he talks about is so powerful. And he's in this book, The Infinite Way, he's describing living a life from an awakened state, where you're so open and you're not using thoughts in order to get things that you perceive you don't have. Instead, you're using your mind as an expression of what you do have, your awakened state. So you see what it is that you desire. You see things clearly, things that are negative don't really exist because all you see is the love and peace and well-being in every aspect of life. So it's a bit jolting to read it because we're not used to seeing life that way. But it is very powerful and I would recommend it. Maybe after you've read some of the other books, it's very straightforward and it, I don't know, I would just read it. It's very powerful. Okay, so that's a number of great books that I think you'll enjoy. That'll keep you busy for a while. I look forward to hearing how you enjoy them and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Take care. Bye.