Renewal The Non-Ordinary Reference Pages

Abraham-Hicks (Jerry and Esther Hicks) (1986?-to present). The science of deliberate creation. www.abraham-hicks.com

All right, it’s about channeling and that’ll put a lot of people off. And I’ll admit that it’s mostly known information re-packaged. But so what? Is there really anything new under the sun, including what I’ve written? Sometimes it takes old information in new clothes to be heard. The basic principles contained in 3 of their tapes or CDs are good stuff: The law of attraction, the law of deliberate creation, and the law of allowing.

Adler, Alfred. Most any text about personality will have him in it. Perhaps he is the father of volitional evolution in the sense that he believed in the individual creative power to shape our personalities and our futures. He also was influential in pointing out that our individual stories or “fictions” directed the daily behaviors of humankind.

Alighieri, Dante (1995). The divine comedy (A. Mandelbaum, (Translator). New York: Alfred Knopf. (Original work published 1313.)

A difficult read for me, but well worth it nonetheless.

Arp, H. (1998). Seeing red: Redshifts, cosmology and academic science. Montreal, Quebec: Apeiron.

Good luck reading most of it, I couldn’t get through it as it was much too technical. But I thought he brought up some interesting points about the Big Bang theory as well as the politics of science.

Bandura, Albert. Another influential psychologist mentioned in almost any text about personality. He believes that humans are cognitive animals and that language, along with observational learning, shapes human behavior. Better be careful how we talk to ourselves, since we serve as models.

Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

While I didn’t specifically refer to this in the text, they have the same four elements as the quadrinary theory, just ensconced in a very slow evolutionary process emphasizing mostly Darwinian processes.

Bohr, Niels. It’s difficult to read any book on physics and not see his name mentioned. Famous for his theory, circa the 1930s, that waves and particles are not separate, but complementary (see Heisenberg).

Breathnach, Sarah Ban (1998). Something more: Excavating your authentic self. New York: Warner Books.

The title of my last chapter, “First the Gesture, Then the Grace,” came from her book. I haven’t read the book, and I know I’ve heard this concept somewhere before, but I didn’t make up the wording or the concept, so somebody else gets the nod.

Castaneda, Carlos. This is a pick-one-of-his-many-books deal. In the late 1960s his first book about a Yaqui shaman named don Juan Mateus began the series (also called in some circles, a “Yucky Way of Knowledge”). Lots of controversy about the efficacy and veracity of his claims, but I wasn’t on his dissertation committee or in his discipline (yeah, we do need academic integrity though). Still, lots of good stuff.

Chopra, Deepak. Pick something, he’s everywhere.

Dass, Baba Ram (Richard Alpert). (1971). Be here now. New York: Crown Publishing.

Any discussion about being in the present moment needs to include this guy. His story is a fascinating venture.

Davies, P. (1995). About time: Einstein’s unfinished revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Davies, P., & Gribbin, J. (1992). The matter myth. New York: Touchstone.

Both of these books are good sources about physics, explanation, and the paradox of “reality.”

Erikson, Eric. There are a number of publications detailing his ideas of eight psychosocial stages (developmental conflicts centering on relationships) from birth until death. Lots of good stuff from trust versus mistrust at birth to integrity versus despair in old age.

Fromm. E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Rinehart.

Human anxiety arises from a fear of freedom, though it can be helped by “positive freedom,” which is knowing that we live in a paradox.

Gibran, Kahlil (1971). The prophet. New York: Alfred Knopf. (Original work published 1923.)

Goleman, Daniel (2003). Destructive emotions: How can we overcome them? A scientific dialogue with the Dalai Lama. New York: Bantam Books.

Okay, I didn’t read this until after I wrote Renewal, but hey, the book was about afflictive minds and I was doing some editing. It’s all right–after all, this is a non-ordinary reference section. Besides, the book is a good look at how we become emotionally entangled and how we stop it.

Gottman, J.M. & Krokoff, L.J. (1989). Marital interaction and satisfaction: A longitudinal view. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57, 47-52.

Interesting research about the four riders of the relationship apocalypse.

Gómez-Peña, Guillermo (1996). The new world border. San Francisco: City Lights.

I couldn’t help but laugh and think. He’s an assault all right, but a wake-up call I think.

Hebb, D. O. (1949). The organization of behavior. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

Experience changes neural structure…

Heisenberg, Werner. Along with Bohr, hard to read a physics book and not find out about this guy. He and Bohr were friends for a while, but apparently had a falling out in early 1941, maybe over the development of the atomic bomb. In any case, Heisenberg came up with the uncertainty principle, that one cannot consistently measure both the speed and position of an electron at the same time without changing one or the other. The observer affects the observed.

Hesse, Hermann (1971). Siddhartha. New York: Bantam. (Original work published in 1951.)

Jantsch, E., & Waddington, C. H. (1976). Evolution and consciousness: Human systems in transition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

The same four elements in the quadrinary system, plus more about evolution and consciousness, though still leaning on Darwin. But hey, it was 1976…

Klemperer, Victor (1999). Tagebücher, 1933-1944: Ich will zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten (2nd ed.). (I want to be a witness to the end). Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH.

I can’t read German, but my friend who can, read all of Klemperer’s diaries and told me some about them. Tough going to be a Jewish professor in Germany during that time frame.

Kohlberg, Lawrence. His doctoral dissertation (1958) was about morality and cognitive development (using Jean Piaget’s ideas as a base). He later had a number of publications about the subject and has been cited extensively as well as having his ideas carefully examined. Though he came under a lot of flack for a male bias (e.g., from Carol Gilligan), he had some good ideas.

Kundera, Milan (1978). The book of laughter and forgetting (Michael Henry Heim,Translator). New York: Harper Perennial.

Clever stuff, no question about it.

Laszlo, E. (1995). The interconnected universe: Conceptual foundations of transdisciplinary unified theory. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific.

More good stuff about physics–including a good stab at unifying the disparate facets of the cosmos under the heading of zero-point energies (everything is energy) and a quasi-steady state theory of the universe.

Lipton, B. (Lecturer), & Porter, C. (Director and Producer) (1999). The science of innate intelligence [Video]. (Available from Life Enhancement Services, Reno, Nevada.)

I also heard this character speak at a conference. Lots of good stuff about molecular biology, cellular membranes, genetics, proteins, and how behavior can trigger it all.

Magueijo, João (2002). Faster than the speed of light: The story of a scientific speculation. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.

I found this book rather interesting even beyond the idea of a variable speed of light, which seemed reasonable to my mind. Of course, layman that I am, I was not aware of all the scientific pitfalls in adopting such a position. Beyond the theory, the story is also about the politics of ideas, science, publishing, and egos.

McClelland, D. C. (1976). Power is the great motivation. Harvard Business Review, 54, 100-110.

One of David McClelland’s looks (as well as others) at the discrepancy of personal versus institutional power in an organizational setting. The quest for personal power just doesn’t cut it, but good luck telling Draculas. Plus those people are hard to spot in today’s contemporary CEO uniforms and using today’s linguistic tomfoolery.

Messerly, J. G. (1996). Piaget’s conception of evolution: Beyond Darwin and Lamarck. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

More good stuff about a different look at evolution outside of the standard presentations.

Nasar, Sylvia (1998). A beautiful mind. New York: Touchstone.

Okay, I didn’t read the book, I only saw the movie. But what I referred to in the text was in the movie and I saw an interview with John Forbes Nash Jr. in which he affirmed those events. So there.

Pagels, H. R. (1982). The cosmic code: Quantum physics as the language of nature. New York: Bantam Books.

Thought now an older book, it is still a classic. Very readable, very understandable.

Piaget, Jean. Widely cited and written about. Plus he was a prolific writer himself. I think his first publication was about 1918 and his last was in the 1980s. His ideas about evolution (see John G. Messerly listed above) emphasized the impact of cognition upon biology. With the advent of scientific knowledge about how few genes make up human beings, the breaking of the Weissmann barrier and the germline to soma linearity, and with the importance of the cellular membrane and behaviors affecting proteins as well as triggering genetic predispositions, his work assumes a kind of prescience.

Steele, E. J., Lindley, R. A., & Blanden, R.V. (1998). Lamarck’s signature: How retrogenes are changing Darwin’s natural selection paradigm. Reading, MA: Perseus Books.

Definitely a must see book if you are interested in a new view about evolution. More about behavior and experience changing genetics.

Stocking, Jerry (2000). Illusion conclusion. www.illusionconclusion.org (I think he has other websites as well).

This guy is quite a character. I bought a set of tapes from a seminar he had (one of many different kinds he holds apparently). I liked it, though I had some trouble with the re-packaging of terminology (for instance, he tries to make a distinction between awareness and consciousness which just didn’t work for me at least. I prefer the older terms of sensation and perception, with which the dictionary agrees). But, again, sometimes the linguistic transductions (going from the particular to the particular) will work (more people are likely to hear his use of “stuff and holes” than they will if they hear “matter and space”). The bottom line, it’s definitely worth a look.

Tolle, Eckhart (1999). The power of now. Novato, CA: New World Publishing.

Even though I have some trouble with Tolle’s definitions and some of his assertions, I consider them minor in the overall context of the discussion in the book. Besides, it could be an encoding problem on my part–I’m guessing in a Q & A, Tolle would provide sufficient clarification. That’s the trouble with books sometimes, the reader cannot ask certain clarifying questions.

White, S. E. (1940). The unobstructed universe. New York: Dell.

All right, more about channeling, but if you can stand it, the basic universal principles are holding up to the new science.

Wilber, Ken (2000). A brief history of everything (2nd ed.). Boston: Shambhala.

He’s got a lot of stuff going on in this book, including four quadrants of human interaction. I liked the book, though it was slow going.

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  1. […] elephant) and after enlightenment, they had no choice at all (see the Jerry Stocking reference in: The Non-Ordinary Reference Pages of […]

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