Here is my latest reading list and so far it is quite enjoyable.
I returned ‘Spook’ to the library unfinished and give it half a star being generous.
That is pretty hard to do when it’s a subject that I’m interested in.
Anyhow...the new books so far are great, maybe one will spark your interest and we can start a book club...lol.
Enjoy!
Long-listed for the 2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
“An important book that provides insight into key new developments in our understanding of the nature of space, time and the universe. It will repay careful study.” ―John Gribbin, The Wall Street Journal
“An endlessly surprising foray into the current mother of physics' many knotty mysteries, the solving of which may unveil the weirdness of quantum particles, black holes, and the essential unity of nature.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
What is space?
It isn't a question that most of us normally ask.
Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape.
Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time: nonlocality-the ability of two particles to act in harmony no matter how far apart they may be.
It appears to be almost magical.
Einstein grappled with this oddity and couldn't come to terms with it, describing it as "spooky action at a distance.”
More recently, the mystery has deepened as other forms of nonlocality have been uncovered.
This strange occurrence, which has direct connections to black holes, particle collisions, and even the workings of gravity, holds the potential to undermine our most basic understandings of physical reality.
If space isn't what we thought it was, then what is it?
In Spooky Action at a Distance, George Musser sets out to answer that question, offering a provocative exploration of nonlocality and a celebration of the scientists who are trying to explain it.
Musser guides us on an epic journey into the lives of experimental physicists observing particles acting in tandem, astronomers finding galaxies that look statistically identical, and cosmologists hoping to unravel the paradoxes surrounding the big bang.
He traces the often contentious debates over nonlocality through major discoveries and disruptions of the twentieth century and shows how scientists faced with the same undisputed experimental evidence develop wildly different explanations for that evidence.
Their conclusions challenge our understanding of not only space and time but also the origins of the universe-and they suggest a new grand unified theory of physics.
Delightfully readable, Spooky Action at a Distance is a mind-bending voyage to the frontiers of modern physics that will change the way we think about reality.
This epic study unveils the esoteric masters who have covertly impacted the intellectual development of the West, from Pythagoras and Zoroaster to the little-known modern icons Jean Gebser and Schwaller de Lubicz.
Running alongside the mainstream of Western intellectual history there is another current which, in a very real sense, should take pride of place, but which for the last few centuries has occupied a shadowy, inferior position, somewhere underground.
This "other" stream forms the subject of Gary Lachman’s epic history and analysis,
The Secret Teachers of the Western World.
In this clarifying, accessible, and fascinating study, the acclaimed historian explores the Western esoteric tradition – a thought movement with ancient roots and modern expressions, which, in a broad sense, regards the cosmos as a living, spiritual, meaningful being and humankind as having a unique obligation and responsibility in it.
The historical roots of our “counter tradition,” as Lachman explores, have their beginning in Alexandria around the time of Christ.
It was then that we find the first written accounts of the ancient tradition, which had earlier been passed on orally.
Here, in this remarkable city, filled with teachers, philosophers, and mystics from Egypt, Greece, Asia, and other parts of the world, in a multi-cultural, multi-faith, and pluralistic society, a synthesis took place, a creative blending of different ideas and visions, which gave the hidden tradition the eclectic character it retains today.
The history of our esoteric tradition roughly forms three parts:
Part One: After looking back at the earliest roots of the esoteric tradition in ancient Egypt and Greece, the historical narrative opens in Alexandria in the first centuries of the Christian era.
Over the following centuries, it traces our “other” tradition through such agents as the Hermeticists; Kabbalists; Gnostics; Neoplatonists; and early Church fathers, among many others.
We examine the reemergence of the lost Hermetic books in the Renaissance and their influence on the emerging modern mind.
Part Two begins with the fall of Hermeticism in the late Renaissance and the beginning of “the esoteric counterculture.”
In 1614, the same year that the Hermetic teachings fell from grace, a strange document appeared in Kassel, Germany announcing the existence of a mysterious fraternity: the Rosicrucians.
Part two charts the impact of the Rosicrucians and the esoteric currents that followed, such as the Romance movement and the European occult revival of the late nineteenth century, including Madame Blavatsky and the opening of the western mind to the wisdom of the East, and the fin-de-siècle occultism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Part Three chronicles the rise of “modern esotericism,” as seen in the influence of Rudolf Steiner, Gurdjieff, Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, Aleister Crowley, R. A Schwaller de Lubicz, and many others.
Central is the life and work of C.G. Jung, perhaps the most important figure in the development of modern spirituality.
The book looks at the occult revival of the “mystic sixties” and our own New Age, and how this itself has given birth to a more critical, rigorous investigation of the ancient wisdom.
With many detours and dead ends, we now seem to be slowly moving into a watershed.
It has become clear that the dominant, left-brain, reductionist view, once so liberating and exciting, has run out of steam, and the promise of that much-sought-after “paradigm change” seems possible.
We may be on the brink of a culminating moment of the esoteric intellectual tradition of the West.
How holographic patterns of information underlie our physical reality
• Includes myriad evidence from a wide range of cutting-edge scientific discoveries showing our Universe is an interconnected hologram of information
• Explains how consciousness is a major component of the cosmic hologram of information, making us both manifestations and co-creators of our reality
• Reconciles Quantum Mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity by showing that energy-matter and space-time are complementary expressions of information
Our understanding of the Universe is about to transform at all levels, from the tiniest Planck scale to the vast reaches of space.
Recent scientific discoveries show that the information that upholds all of our modern technologies is exactly the same as the universal in-formation that underpins, pervades, and is all we call physical reality.
Exploring how information is more fundamental than energy, matter, space, or time, Jude Currivan, Ph.D., examines the latest research across many fields of study and many scales of existence to show how our Universe is in-formed and holographically manifested.
She explains how the fractal in-formational patterns that guide behavior at the atomic level also guide the structure of galactic clusters in space.
She demonstrates how the in-formational relationships that underlie earthquakes are the same as those that play out during human conflicts.
She shows how cities grow in the same in-formational ways that galaxies evolve and how the dynamic in-formational forms that pervade ecosystems are identical to the informational structures of the Internet and our social behaviors.
Demonstrating how information is physically real, the author explores how consciousness connects us to the many interconnected layers of universal in-formation, making us both manifestations and co-creators of the cosmic hologram of reality.
She explains how Quantum Mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity can at last be reconciled if we consider energy-matter and space-time as complementary expressions of information, and she explores how the cosmic hologram underlies the true origin of species and our own evolution.
Concurring too with ancient spiritual wisdom, the author offers solid evidence that consciousness is not something we “have” but the fundamental nature of what we and the entire Universe are.
With this understanding, we can each transform our own lives and help co-create and in-form the world around us.
