The Power of NOW - by Eckhart Tolle

One heck of a book I have ever read! It covers most of the things like enlightenment, pain, fear, time, death, happiness, relationships, root cause of problems and most importantly how you can work towards enlightenment while you live in the Now, not one fine day, but right NOW!

He begins by reminding us that Enlightenment cannot be expressed by explaining what it is. It can only be expressed by ruling out what it is not! And as to enlightenment what it is.. You have to arrive at it. To quote Eckhart Enlightenment is “The knowing of which the mind knows nothing”.

The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. The mind can never find a solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solutions, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the ‘problem’. Pain is something that you create in the Now and that lives on in the mind and body! As for Ego- to be wrong is to die!

Death is stripping away, of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ and find that there is no death. 

Similar to this is what I learned about death from J Krishnamurthy.

I have re-told a few wonderful lines from the book. My intention was to show how deep this book can reach you. Even if enlightenment is not what you seek, this book can tell you things that make your everyday beautiful and filled with happiness. 

If not enlightened, we will at least be aware!

The book gets 5/5.

Death An inside story - by Sadhguru

 A book for all those who shall die!

I can't even dare to review this book. All this time death was an unknown territory for humanity in general. But if you are willing to, even death can happen consciously! 

I'm in awe after reading it. So many of my questions answered and many new ones popped up. Beginning with what death is to the riddle of incarnations, as always Sadhguru blew my mind.

Surprisingly death is not something that happens in a few moments only, it is a whole process in itself and doesn't happen within a minute. He addresses the qualities/types of death like natural, suicide, samadhi etc with great depth also if there is a way to hack death.

If you don't shy away from it, you will learn how to prepare for death, how you can assist someone who is dying, how you can assist someone who is already dead, life of a ghost and mainly grief and mourning. You will know most of the things that actually happens when death happens. 

Most importantly, while learning about death, you will know how to live better and take care of birth and life. What I'm saying seems vague but he speaks in great detail and about an unexplored dimension. You can choose to not believe him but same thing. We do not know it and also not know about it, so believing and not believing fall under same court. 

But if you consider and work towards it, because anyway death is certain, there is a chance you will be prepared when the time comes. Anyway you haven't got anything to loose, by not trying you are not living forever! 

The book gets 5/5.

Thinking Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman

 

Daniel introduces you to 2 most important people in your mind. He calls them System 1 and System 2. After reading this book, I can’t help but always recognize my thoughts and categorize them into the above two. It’s wonderful how you can stand aside and look at how your mind is working or thinking, even better, influence your own mind. 

Out of the 2 agents, System 1 is responsible for quick thinking, immediate response and involuntary thinking like day dreaming, it doesn’t require much effort does it? Whereas System 2 is responsible for thinking slow, giving out thought over response and voluntarily thinking like we do in exam hall.

Think like this, you have an invisible friend hanging around you always, who is a powerhouse of knowledge and various other talents but because of the heavy capacity he is always tired, lazy and drowsy. So in day to day activities, when you come across simple jobs, you do it on your own without consulting your friend. But when things get serious or say some important issues come up, then you will wake your friend up, ask him what to do. What your friend does is dig up all the relevant information and does all the hard work for you and presents you with the solution. 

For not very vague and not very important issues, you do your work and come up with a solution but, you ask your friend if it is the right thing to do. If not then you continuously suggest alternatives. Your friend who is lazy wants to get it over with, takes your suggestions and declares one as a solution. If none of your suggestions seem to be feasible then he starts working hard and deep.

Daniel says, System 1 runs automatically System 2 comes slow. S1 generates suggestions for S2 continuously. If endorsed by S2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs and impulses into voluntary actions. S1 has more influence on Behavior while S2 is busy and mind you it has a sweet tooth.

These two systems are constantly in conflict with each other which messes up our decision making and behavior. To quote Daniel, “Conflict between an automatic reaction and an intention to control it is common in our lives”. 

Daniel in detail explains in what scenarios how these systems work with interactive exercises, which makes you go ‘Ohhh… that’s how’. I can talk about this book for a whole day and still not feel I have said enough. 

I was introduced to this book by Sushanth Singh Rajput from his instagram posts and stories around 2017-2018. And I am ever so grateful for him and dedicate this review to him for inspiring the reader in me. Thank you Sushanth. 

Well the book gets 5/5.

Lost Connections - by Johann Hari

 

My goodness! I don't know where to start. I can say it changes your perspective but I'm sure most of them will not agree with me. There's this thing about humans, there are two ways we judge something we do not know about - 1. We think it is too Good because it is beyond our apprehension. 2. Or it is too Bad because it doesn't make any sense to us because we either do not 'know it' or 'know about it'. And there are some who actually know it and understand it but do not usually go around explaining or judging.

One such thing is Depression. So when someone says something about it, there are people who understand it, and people who just agree with it and those who disagree with it. When coming to review this book about depression, it’s causes and solutions you can only fall into the above categories. 

Johann starts with antidepressants and how it does not work for everyone. He himself has been on the pills for 13 years. He says in the beginning it feels great but gradually the sadness sets in again and you are supposed to increase the dose to match. And it’s a never ending cycle. After sometime when you look back, you realize it is not solving anything but just being postponed until you pop that next pill. Instead of solving the problem, if you just mask the symptoms, you will end up nowhere or even worse. 

So he talks about various reasons you might be depressed and why antidepressants might not work for you. Some disconnections from like, meaningful work, people, meaningful values, childhood trauma, status and respect, natural world and hopeful or secure future. And also the real role of genes and brain changes. Which is excellent research done by him.

He says the solution is in connecting back with those disconnections which are causing us to go hay-wire in ignorance, and not popping pills. He also says for certain conditions and specific cases pills are helpful but not just about anybody. 

But interestingly these solutions are not just for depression but human life as it is. These solutions are for any illness of the mind and body unless it is caused by external organisms. Also for those who have no disconnections mentioned above, but still are sad and depressed, you might need to strengthen your already established connections. 

When Johann talks about meditation as a solution, he limits it to the science of depression because that is the scope of this book. But there are various types of meditations and various benefits not just towards depression but for life in general. 

I say the things he has pointed out do not just cause depression but also other illnesses like addiction, obsession, insecurity and more. I can go on and say this book is not just for sick people but also to those feeling-on-top-of-the-world people. Because Life is not limited to just as we know it, there is a vast unknown territory which we either consciously or unconsciously choose to ignore.   

Oops it’s quite a bit long, but thanks for reading. The book gets 5/5.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - by Mitch Albom

 

This is one of those books that made me forget who I am and also question who I am, what I am doing with my life. Though this is a small simple story of a man, Eddie who dies at 83 from an accident at Ruby Pier and encounters 5 people on reaching heaven, who played a significant role in his life when alive, it reached me at untouched corners of myself. 

This book offended me, I wanted to scream at the author for pointing certain aspects I had chosen to ignore than facing. It offends you for a good reason and after you complete reading it, you will come out lighter and more alive. 

Eddie meets 5 people in heaven, in each of their own particular heaven and untold story of his own life unfolds before him.

Eddie first meets Blue Man. Where he learns he is dead and is in heaven and this man was a part of his life for a very short period in childhood but left a major impact on his whole life thereafter. The second person Eddie meets is his Captain from the army, they talk about their time spent together as prisoners of war and how they escaped. Here he learns about the death of captain which he was oblivious to when he was alive, and how it is connected to him.

The third person Eddie meets is Ruby after whose name Ruby Pier was named. He learns how the pier almost destroyed her life and her encounter with Eddie's father. She tells him how his father spent his final moments and what events led to that fateful moment. The fourth person is his beloved wife Marguerite, who had died years before him. They spend wandering from one wedding to another and talking about how he had spent the remaining years without her. He asks her forgiveness for giving her a better life. She tells him she had a wonderful life with him at the pier and her only regret is her inability to have children. 

The fifth person is a little girl who had died because of Eddie unknowingly. He had sensed a shadow movement inside the fire he had lit up while escaping from the enemy ground, but he was unable to save as he was shot in the leg which made him limp all his life. He always had nightmares about the fire and shadow throughout his life. The little girl asks him wash her burns as she heals, reveals answer for one question Eddie had from the time he came to heaven and vanishes. 

Eddie learns all lives do have a purpose to serve in this bigger life that connects everyone, and his simple life at the pier was not inconsequential. 

It touches people's hearts in many ways. Just the story might not be intriguing but if you look closer and understand the depth , it leaves you in pieces and helps you rebuild yourself from the beginning without the mistakes you made earlier. I loved this book and highly recommend it. Gets 5/5.

The Forty Rules of Love - by Elif Shafak

I must say this is one of the most beautiful books. So our Ella has a mid-life crisis at 40 with 3 teenager children and an unfaithful husband. After being a housewife all along, she takes up a reader job for a literary agency. Her first book happens to be Sweet Blasphemy by a new author Aziz who happens to stumble upon Sufism after a series of disasters in his life.  

Sweet Blasphemy is a story stitched around the encounter between two people, the most renowned Sufi poet Rumi and a Sufi Dervish Shams of Tabriz. A genius poet and an enlightened mystic, and how the genius became a poet. 

With surprises thrown at her during family lunch, she realises she doesn’t love her husband anymore. During her quest for love Sweet Blasphemy talks to her in an unimaginable way, where she learns about the forty rules of love as told by Shams. So she decides to email the author and conversations happen. 

Ella’s life takes a drastic turn when she meets the author and learns about his life. As she walks out of her marriage, she finds love but loses the person she loved.

All in all it was an amazing read which fills all hearts with love and its forty rules. It imparts a few raw spiritual knowledge which could have been elaborated and simplified. One of my personal favourites is - “In order to be reborn, one should die before death”.

 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - By Mark Manson

 

 The subtle art of not giving a fuck, A counterintuitive approach to living a good life, by Mark Manson

The book attracts readers by it's title ofcourse. At first I thought it would be a funny story with some self help lessons. But turns out to be a serious approach. 

It seems Mark is trying to dig deep into everything and find an optimal balance which doesn't really work and requires continuous reframing and improvising.

It's better to see the big picture than to zoom in and struggle to reach to the edges.  Many concepts put very well into the book but are essentially incomplete.

There is this urge to criticize his work in the beginning but as you go on reading you find some serious shit hitting you hard on face.

Things you feel and experience in your day to day life but never really paid attention on their patterns are the things Mark highlights in the book. Few of them are Feedback loop from hell, Values-metric-measuring units, Fault/ Responsibility fallacy, Failure/Success paradox, Do Something Principle and few others.

Chapter 1 is all about accepting yourself and being comfortable with being different

Chapter 2 says you are alive here to solve problems. Choosing your problems or pain and solving them is called Happiness and not the result you get after solving.

Chapter 4 gives you values to measure and metric to compare your success rate and overall life. It defines good and bad values.

Chapter 5 is the major content of this book. It talks about Choice you are making every single moment either consciously or unconsciously. And Mark specifies The Choices in 4 major aspects- Fault and responsibility, Responding to tragedy, Genetics and hand we're dealt and Victim-hood.

Mark explains how you alone are responsible for every situation you face in above circumstances and reasons you should shift your thought process.

Chapter 6 says you're wrong about everything and asks you to question your beliefs every now and then because ofcourse belief system makes sense only if it keeps evolving. Referring to Parkinson's Law and Murphy's Law, Mark is trying to give readers a brand new Manson's Law which doesn't make a sense.

Because he says you avoid things which threatens your identity whereas fact is you can never define your identity unless you are an enlightened being. May be he is talking about the artificial identity that you create around yourself to look presentable (or to hide your shit)

Mark warns you not to believe every cooked up story your mind is trying to tell you and asks you to find clarity in confusion by not being certain about anything. Which I liked because if you are certain and know things before hand what's the point living... makes sense right!

Chapter 7 and 8 gives you some motivation and helps overcome failures and pain, giving and receiving a "NO", freedom which binds you and binding which liberates you, rejection handling, rebuilding trust, freedom from commitment and so on.

In Chapter 9 Mark wants you not to avoid and to acknowledge Death because it's the only certain thing we know about our life that, we all one day Die.

He briefs on his friend's death and how he transformed himself.

But again it's incomplete and shallow.

No, you can not put death into words especially in some vague 25 pages , not untill you have died once!

Yes it's an amazing book for beginners of self help readers, young adults, emotionally frustrated beings! but I personally don't completely agree with some interpretation of concepts.

So we are at the end of my review, I would like to give it a  4/5 for concepts and his experiences & efforts combined.

Ghachar Ghochar By Vivek Shanbhag

 

Reading books is like conversing with the finest minds. It is not everyday that you get to read books that makes you want to read more and more of the same author or genre, some books touch your soul and not just mind. when you find such books, you come out all together as a new person each time.

 

This books begins in a coffee shop and ends in a coffee shop. It has whole world inside arranged in words. Begins with a waiter, Vincent who seems to know his regular customers better than themselves. The books revolves around 6 people of a family, younger brother, wife, daughter, son and daughter-in-law of a man.

Though there is nothing new said or expressed in this book, the very ordinary of the things touched me deep. How well incidents, feelings, emotions and neutrality are put into words and braided into the story is amazing. How a middle class family manage their finances for home, shopping and any unexpected expense, how they make each corner of their tiny house a Home. How wealth and bigger houses effects a middle class happy family and how they drift apart without notice.

 

Author describes childhood,sibling relationships, mom and son, uncle and niece relationships, tiny ant-infested house problems, job loss of Man of the family and how they cope with it, journey from poor to rich, how a family strives to protect and nourish each other, marriage, differences of opinion, a company that runs well. A son on whom greatness is thrust upon for just doing nothing, how he deals with it while he also has to respond to his wife who is pretty straight forward, simple, loyal and believes in hard-working. A sister who is a little violent and harsh, refuses to live in marriage of 2 years. Uncle who isn't married but a women comes home requesting to talk to him once, but is thrown out of the house. A naive father who has 50% share in the company run by his younger brother, lives on his own terms after losing his job and indirectly called insane by his family. How an entry of new member to the family effects every other member and their responses to it is well described.

 

This all in all is a complete package of Indian family, there is drama, comedy, poverty, growth, relationships, family bonding, love, marriage, romance, fantasy, co-incidences, disaster and mystery. Its hard to separate one thing from other in dramas of life like these. One of the best I've read. It took me back to my life in retrospect and made me relive certain moments happened in the past.

 

Whole world beautifully put into this tiny book gets 5/5.