Books

Science / Psychology

• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong

• “The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.”

• The Idea of the Brain: A History, Matthew Cobb. 

• Throughout history, we’ve understood the brain through dominant metaphors (often connected to technology). Our perceptions of these metaphors have impacted how we’ve studied the brain, and ourselves. 

• Seven and ½ Lessons about the Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett

• mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research – where brains came from, how they’re structured (and why it matters), and how ours works in tandem with other brains to create everything we experience

• Consciousness: a very short introduction, Susan Blackmore

• Pocket review covering the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience on the subject of consciousness

• Synchronicity, C.G. Jung

• The culmination of research on the relationship between psychology, connections, and coincidences, inspired by conversations with Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and insights from the ancient book I Ching

• Consciousness, J. Allan Hobson. Scientific American Library, 1999.

• Hobson studied the consciousness of the brain during dream states. In this summary of his decades of research on consciousness he explains his theory of consciousness and how it emerges in our brain and nervous system

• Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings, Alan Lightman. 

• meditative essays on “the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between.”

• Science, Order, and Creativity, David Bohm and F. David Peat.

• Blackfoot Physics, F. David Peat. 

• One summer in the 1980s, theoretical physicist F. David Peat went to the Blackfoot Sun Dance ceremony in Alberta, Canada. Hitherto having spent all his life steeped in and influenced by linear Western science, he was entranced by the Native world view and, through dialogue circles between scientists and Native Elders, he began to explore it in greater depth.

• The River of Consciousness, Oliver Sacks

• A final collection of essays on human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, and consciousness from the neuroscientist that opened the world's eyes to the complexities and expansive possibilities of the brain - celebrated in the film Awakenings. 

• What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell ; with, Mind and Matter ; Erwin Schrödinger, et al. 

• one of the great science classics of the twentieth century proved to be one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA. Appears together with Mind and Matter, his Tarner Lecture presenting his theory of consciousness as a biological mechanism for learning.

• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Max Tegmark. 

• Wholeness and the Implicate Order, David Bohm. 

• Bohm’s seminal theory of the expansive cohesion and connectivity in our world and how the universe is simultaneously unfolding and enfolding

• On Creativity, David Bohm and Lee Nichol. 

• An exploration of creativity through the eyes of a scientist in pursuit of “a certain oneness and totality, or wholeness, constituting a kind of harmony that is felt to be beautiful.”

• On Dialogue, David Bohm and Lee Nichol. 

• A foundation for understanding the various ways we interact and communicate. Bohm articulates the fundamental elements of open exchange and mutual understanding

• Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, Anil Seth

• The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence, Susanna Schellenberg

Philosophy / Spirituality

• Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh

• In this book Thich Nhat Hanh shows how to make positive use of the very situations in our daily life that usually pressure and antagonise us. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next conscious breath and the smile we can form right now.

• Be Here Now, Ram Dass

• The Wisdom of No Escape, Pema Chodron

• Practicing Peace in Times of War, Pema Chodron

• A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield

• A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle

• The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer

• Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

• Philosophies of India, Zimmer, Heinrich Robert, and Joseph Campbell. 

• Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus

• The story of Maha Ghosananda: The Buddha of the Battlefield

• The Art of Listening, Erich Fromm

Sociology / Organizational Design

• The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul

• Presence and the Field of the Future, Otto Scharmer et al

• Synchronicity, Joe Jaworski

• On the Origins of Stories: evolution, cognition, and fiction, Brian Boyd

• Team Human, Douglas Rushkoff

• Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard. 

• The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values. Christian, Brian. 

• Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, Jahn, Robert G., and Brenda J. Dunne.