3 Books that You MUST Read

Alright , ladies and gentlemen , welcome to the book recommendation video .

You guys have been asking me for a very long time .

What are your book recommendations ?

I'm 18 .

I'm 25 .

I'm 32 .

What books would you recommend ?

I read .

And so to figure out how people usually go about recommending books in a video , what is the format ?

I looked around youtube and I saw people recommend like 10 2030 books at a time .

And I thought that is way too much .

Like if I give you 30 books , I don't think you'd read even one .

I don't even think you'd pick one .

And I don't even think I know 30 books off the top of my head to recommend .

So I boiled it down to three foundational books and these three foundational books are in some way , the core of how I think about stuff .

These three books relate to psychology , purely human behavior , two consciousness and the science of consciousness and three spiritual ways of being .

And so in that , I think it covers largely everything from how do you do your everyday to peak performance to deep spiritual being , right ?

And for that purpose I decided I choose these three books .

I want you to watch the video till the very end because not just are we going to discuss what books you should be reading ?

But why ?

And we'll talk about these books in a way they've influenced me and the way they've given me things to think about beyond just what is in the book itself , the way meta concepts have arrived to me from reading those books .

12 Rules For Life by Jordan Peterson

I've recommended this book more times than I can count .

I've gifted this book to friends more times than I can count .

Like at this point , Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules For Life is the one book I say to anybody who asks me for a book recommendation and part of it is because when I was a struggling early 20 or something in my life , going from place to place , I just landed in New York .

I had just gone from being a big fish in a small pond where things were figured out to a small fish in a huge pond where things were completely alien .

I didn't understand what my actions meant .

I didn't even begin to comprehend what I should do with my life .

I felt like a lost puppy as my friend describes .

And that's when Jordan Peterson entered my life first through youtube videos and podcasts , but eventually through the book .

And I think that book transformed my life .

It was so simple and so beautiful .

The book went through complex information on psychology , deep psychology , neurobiology , neuroscience , right ?

Mythology .

All of those things combined .

Peterson would find a way to take all that information and how it would play out between disciplines and compress them in simple aphorisms .

And through that book , not only did I learn the Simple rules of Life , stand up straight with your shoulder back , clean your room before you set out to clean the world .

All of that .

But more importantly , I understood what the idea of wisdom meant .

I understood that wisdom is essentially the compression of complex information down to simple aphorisms down to simple one liners .

And I saw a man do it in action .

And the best part was I saw this man do it in audio for me on the audio book on audible that I was listening to because I'd be working out at the gym or I'd be walking around the city , cleaning my apartment sometimes , right ?

Like just doing laundry listening to the man talk to me .

Some of the fondest memories I have in my early time in New York , I was a boy from in New York man .

I was that , that was all I was a boy with potential just like so many of us are and the way he told me step by step with enough information , with enough details , with enough sophistication and nuance , how to fix my life , how to slowly put the pieces of my life together , transformed the way I worked .

And I functioned in my everyday level .

This book , I would read an easy 9.5 out of 10 because I do not know what a 10 on 10 might look like a 10 on 10 would blow my mind a little more .

Maybe because of the simplicity of its writing , because of the complexity of the information .

And because of the wisdom it pours out on an everyday level , I definitely recommend you get this book and I recommend you get this book in audio format .

Let the man whisper to you .

Trust me .

There's very few people in the world who I would let whisper in your ear .

And Peterson is one of them .

stealing fire by Stephen Cotler

Stephen Cotler is known for running the Flow Genome Project , which is a project that explores the many ways in which flow states can be achieved .

And that is what the book is about .

I read this book back in 2015 .

This is back when I was still running my conversation club .

And I think a friend who'd come over had recommended this book .

And I remember reading like the first four or five pages of this book .

And I was just like , why is this information hidden stealing fire is essentially the name stealing fire comes from the myth of Prometheus .

In Greek mythology , Prometheus was a Titan .

Titans are one level above gods .

They are the fathers and that , that generation of Olympian gods .

So the zoo and Poseidon and Hades and whatever .

And then there is cronos and Prometheus and all these guys , right ?

So at this point in the Greek mythology , the gods rule and the gods are very angry with humans .

So Zeus says there is no more fire available to humans , there is no more fire , we take all the fire away .

And prometheus who's a friend of God's , even though he's a titan , he steals fire and gives it to humans .

And the idea is that stealing fire is an act of finding something that is Godly and giving it to humans .

And that is the exact feeling I got after reading like the 1st 67 pages because what I understood is that consciousness , which is how we experience life is not a linear phenomenon .

This entire book stealing fire explores the reality of alternate consciousness and then the reality of peak performance in alternate consciousness , right ?

When we speak of meditation and spirituality , it is somewhat guiding your consciousness into an alternate state .

When we speak of psychedelics , it is pretty much guiding your consciousness into an alternative state .

But then there is flow states and there is some commentary around the subject that flow states in Hindi translate into chat and but some people disagree .

The general point is flow states is a particular kind of state of consciousness where you are optimized for performance .

And there is a way to get there and the way to get there is what this book is about .

And the book does not just stop that the book is in fact , so interesting , it talks about how like really outcome based situations like navy seals , like the CEO S of big companies like Google , right ?

Jason Silva , who's a TV presenter , who I remember drawing so much inspiration from after reading the book , they all have figured out different ways to optimize for flow .

I think at its core flow states is the secret for some of the most obvious successes we see in life .

There is a reason why people can perform at the level they do and they cannot probably articulate it .

But Stephen Cotler for sure can if you want to figure out how to do that , if you want to figure out how to integrate that in your life .

This is a deeply practical everyday level information plus practice primer .

I would recommend 10 on 10 when I read it in 2015 , which is now eight years ago , things changed forever , like forever .

I was just like now I get something that was like , I wish my parents would tell me that I wish they knew the third book frankly , the greatest book to listen to in the history of books is see the meta concept here is that spiritual truths are not so easily tell in logic , Jahi came very close to like really using logic and intellect to explain spiritual truths .

But people are particularly bad at spreading intellectual ways of telling spiritual truths and very bad at absorbing intellectual spiritual truths .

It's just very complicated to say in words one way to explain it is that words are the finger that point towards the truth , but itself is never the truth .

And so words do poorly at expressing the true meaning of life , the spiritual meaning of life .

But was a man of words , if he was a man of anything and does a very good job at putting spiritual truths in narratives and dialogues , which is how we understand them best .

There were so many ideas of spiritual well being , we could not tell to people because they won't absorb and it was very difficult to tell and put them in words and people would always get confused .

So we invented stories around it .

And Maha Gita is a story about many stories , let's say the broad theme of this is about a boy and that boy is bent and distorted in his physical shape in eight places .

Hence the name a right .

And this boy telling Jana who we know from Raman to be Sita's father , all the spiritual truths he knows .

And this book is so so well done and you should only like , forget about reading this book only , only , only , only please get this in audio book .

I'm not kidding .

Right .

Let Osho whisper into you .

If Jordan Peterson's one person had let whisper into your ear .

Osho is definitely another because the 1st 45 minutes of this audio book is just Osho breaking down some of the deepest metaphors accessible to the human mind .

Like there is a 10 minute segment where he compares a seed to a tree and what that means for our life .

And by God , is it genius by God ?

Is it straight ?

Beautiful ?

Right ?

And in these three books , you will travel between , what do I do every day using my psychology and my understanding of the world .

What is the map of my immediate reality and what should I do to , what is the process to get to peak performance to what is the foundation of my spiritual being ?

And if you manage to read all these three books by the end of this year , trust me , you will open 2024 in a fantastically new way .

You will enter 2024 as being somebody completely different from who you've been up until .

And I can tell you this because I read a in 20 20 I think it was 2020 or 2020 21 .

I was in the forest in the Himalayas , traveling by myself , walking around letting Osho whisper into my ear .

And when I came back from that trip .

My mother said , there's something different about you .

And I said , I agree .

And that's because goddamn goddamn .

There is a very interesting line that um also begins with , he says , listen , it's a , it's a , it's poetic .

And so everybody finds meaning in it .

Everybody extracts their meaning from it .

That is why there is so many iterations of that is why there is , well , they , everybody finds a way to interpret it .

But with a there is no interpretation .

It's just straight and simple , the truth , but that is why it was so life changing for me .

Best part is you can listen to all of these books on audible .

There is a limited time offer where you get audible for free for the first two months .

You can let these teachers talk to you in your ear as you walk around doing your stuff , which is how I enjoy reading books .

Honestly , if you go to my audible account , there's just lines of books , I've finished on flights while I'm traveling , while I'm in the metro , while I'm going to work all of those things .

And I think , I think that's where the worlds move to the world prefers convenience over sitting down and turning pages .

And I think it's a fantastic idea .

You can absorb information in your passive time .

Why not ?

Right with that .

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We are right here as always waiting for you , see you next time .