Topic: My Classics

[Michael]

Here is my list of classics:

The Idiot - Dostoyevsky [I love Dostoyevsky’s stuff, read everything of his that was translated - the Double was also interesting]

Seven Pillars of Wisdom - T E Lawrence (ie Lawrence of Arabia - he was a very unusual man, who’s life post this event is also very interesting]

The Master & Margarita

Zanoni

Poor Fellow My Country - Xavier Herbert

Aboriginal Men of High Degree - AP Elkin [I know his son quite well]

Beelzebubs tales to his grandson - Gurdjieff

Meetings with Remarkable Men - Gurdjieff

The Last Barrier - Reshad Field

The White Goddess - Robert Graves

If This is a Man - Primo Levi

Zen Flesh Zen Bones - Paul Reps [this was seminal book, and still is - Paul Reps is a very interesting man, and I think this was his only book, though I know he is a teacher in US - if anyone has info on him I would like to know]

The Blue Cliff Record

The Bhagavad Gita [with this and the next, avoid the Hari Krishna’s versions]

The Ramayana

The Way of the White Clouds - Lama Anagarika Govinda

The World’s Religions - Huston Smith [this is a must read book - it is still the primary text book in universities across the world, and it is simply fabulous - just get it and study it]

Dreams - Carl Jung [this will shift your dreamer - an wonderful transition to the ‘self’ and it’s meaning, via dreams, perhaps a difficult book to find]

Memories, Dreams, Reflections - Carl Jung [his autobiography - really good stuff]

Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse [I love Hermann Hesse, will write a whole series on him sometime - he was one of the most influential people of our new age times, and here I mean new age in its positive sense. I read everything I could find, and all his books and poetry are simply fabulous - I can just relax in his mind, and his thoughts flow over me in complete peace - a truly beautiful saint he was. Steppenwolf was probably his more difficult work, but I really want to recommend everything he wrote.]

The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hess

Scarne on Cards [I used to be a card sharp in my youth - just for those who love to know how to cheat at card games by an indisputable master]

Poems of Wang Wei [I’m sure this was a previous incarnation of me - this man’s poems and paintings are so beautiful - I’ll post some now I’ve dug it out, but he is very famous in the Chinese poetry and painting world]

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam - Edward Fitzgerald [he wrote a few versions, not all good, but his best version is far superior to the direct translations - to be sure you have the right version, it starts like this, refuse those that don’t:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.]

Man: Whence, How and Whither - Annie Besant and C. W, Leadbeater [for those who want to dig deeper into the mystery of our situation, this is a classic text]

The Penguin: John Lennon [has John Lennon in His Own Write, and Spaniard in the Works - just get it, just get it - drawings and poems and short stories, i’ll post a few]

Lord of the Rings, & The Silmarillian [loved the second one, but was really sorry Tom Bombadil was left out of the film, as he was the most mysterious, and the one I really associated with]

Boldness be my Friend - Richard Pape [people of action!! this will set your imagination aquiver, and he said much more happened in his life after these events - remarkable stuff... into the heart of Hitler’s empire by a guy with quick responses and guts]

The Divine Madman - Drukpa Kunley

A Treatise on White Magic - Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul [only for the really serious, who want to know how all of this works - a very detailed and essential reading for those who want to understand deeply with mind as well as body - their other works are equally good]

The Conference of the Birds - Farid ud-Din Artar

The Prophet - Kahlil Gribran

The Revolt of the Masses - Ortega y Gasset [you won’t find this one, except at a uni library - but here he explains what is happening today - first published in 1930]

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach [I can also recommend his other one on the Reluctant Messiah, can’t recall the exact name]

The Jungle is Neutral - Spencer Chapman [survival in the Malayan jungle after the Japanese invaded - good stuff]

Beautiful Losers - Leonard Cohen

Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche

Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda

Grow Rich with Peace of Mind - Napoleon Hill

Mishima on Hagakure

Quest for the Lost City: A True Life Adventure - the Lambs (truth or fiction? I don't know, but this is riviting stuff, esp for those into the old Mayans)


to be continued ... I’ll keep adding as I think of them ...

[TIOTIT]

Found the White Goddess this past Sunday at a car boot sale for 20 cents (bargain)an
obscure little title....

[TIOTIT]

This one is a great read

[Michael]

How strange about you and The White Goddess.

Very dense in extraordinary information about old europe. tracing the journeys of gods through the peoples of pre christian times. always remains as a reference source, and The Golden Bough likewise, though it didn't have the finesse of Graves ... a finer vibe, The White Goddess, or the tripple godess ...

[nichi]

The hair standing up on the back of the head!!
It's a great resource book -- one of the few I didn't give away.

[TIOTIT]

I found this book of all places,at a church book sale.It's a good read esp Jungs relationship with Freud...it's full of beautiful pictures of Jungs art and life...

[Jennifer-]

Spaniard in the Works - just get it, just get it - drawings and poems and short stories, i’ll post a few]

Ive always loved this one and hadnt thought about it in a long time.. thank you! One of my favorites was about a bird, The Budgee.. Ill have to poke around a post a few as well.  Aging myself lots I was quite young and used to lay in my mom's bed reading her copy of this...

<searching>

Found it...

The Fat Budgie

I have a little budgie
He is my very pal
I take him walks in Britain
I hope I always shall.

I call my budgie Jeffrey
My grandads name's the same
I call him after grandad
Who had a feathered brain.

Some people don't like budgies
The little yellow brats
They eat them up for breakfast
Or give them to their cats.

My uncle ate a budgie
It was so fat and fair.
I cried and called him Ronnie
He didn't seem to care

Although his name was Arthur
It didn't mean a thing.
He went into a petshop
And ate up everything.

The doctors looked inside him,
To see what they could do,
But he had been too greedy
And died just like a zoo.

My Jeffrey chirps and twitters
When I walk into the room,
I make him scrambled egg on toast
And feed him with a spoon.

He sings like other budgies
But only when in trim
But most of all on Sunday
Thats when i plug him in.

He flies about the room sometimes
And sits upon my bed
And if he's really happy
He does it on my head.

He's on a diet now you know
From eating ear too much
They say if he gets fatter
He'll have to wear a crutch.

It would be funny wouldn't it
A budgie on a stick
Imagine all the people
Laughing til they're sick.

So that's my budgie Jeffrey
Fat and yellow too
I love him more than daddie
And I'm only thirty-two.

[tommy2]

I don't know what a budgie is but I love em already!  Read this to my granddaughter and she loved it intensely.  t

[Nick]

Oh! glad I saw this. I was trying to remember the name of a book and you had it in your list: The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hess

Never read it but heard it was good. 

[Michael]

SNORE WIFE AND SOME SEVERAL DWARTS

Once upon upon in a dizney far away - say three hundred year
agoal if you like - there lived a sneaky forest some several
dwarts or cretins; all named - Sleezy, Grumpty, Sneezy, Dog,
Smirkey, Alice? Derick - and Wimpey. Anyway they all dug
about in a diamond mind, which was rich beyond compere.
Every day when they came hulme from wirk, they would sing a
song - just like ordinary wirkers - the song went something
like - 'Yo ho! Yo ho! it's off to wirk we go! ' - which is silly
really considerable they were comeing hulme. (Perhaps ther was
slight housework to be do.)
  One day howitzer they (Dwarts) arrived home, at aprodestant,
six o'cloth, and who? - who do they find? - but only Snore
Wife, asleep in Grumpty's bed. He didn't seem to mine. 'Sam-
body's been feeding my porrage! ' screams Wimpey, who was '
wearing a light blue pullover. Meanwife in a grand Carstle, not
so mile away, a womand is looging in her daily mirror, shouting,
'Mirror mirror on the wall, whom is de fairy in the land.' which
doesn't even rhyme. 'Cassandle!' answers the mirror. 'Chrish
O'Malley' studders the womand who appears to be a Queen or a
witch or an acorn.
  'She's talking to that mirror again farther?' says Misst
Cradock, 'I've just seen her talking to that mirror again.' Father
Cradock turns round slowly from the book he is eating and ex-
plains that it is just a face she is going through and they're all
the same at that age. 'Well I don't like it one tit,' continhughs
Misst Cradock. Father Cradock turns round slowly from the
book he is eating, explaining that she doesn't have to like it,
and promptly sets fire to his elephant. 'Sick to death of this
elephant I am,' he growls, 'sick to death of it eating like an
elephant all over the place.'
  Suddenly bark at the Several Dwarts home, Snore Wife has
became a firm favourite, especially with her helping arm,
brushing away the little droppings. 'Good old Snore Wife! ' thee
all sage, 'Good old Snore Wife is our fave rave.' 'And I like you
tooth! ' rejoices Snore Wife, 'I like you all my little dwarts.'
Without warping they hear a soddy voice continuallykhan
shoubing and screeging about apples for sale. 'New apples for
old! ' says the above hearing voice. 'Try these nice apples for
chrissake!' Grumpy turnips quick and answers shooting -
'Why?' and they all look at him.
  A few daisy lately the same voice comes hooting aboon the
apples for sale with a rarther more firm aproach saying 'These
apples are definitely for sale.' Snore Wife, who by this time is
curiously aroused, stick her heads through the window. Any-
way she bought one - which didn't help the trade gap at all.
Little diggerydoo that it was parsened with deathly arsenickers.
The woman (who was the wickered Queen in disgust) cackled
away to her carstle in the hills larfing fit to bust.
  Anyway the handsome Prince who was really Misst Cra-
dock, found out and promptly ate the Wicked Queen and
smashed up the mirror. After he had done this he journeyed to
the house of the Several Dwarts and began to live with them.
He refused to marry Snore Wife on account of his health, what
with her being poissoned and that, but they came to an agree-
ment much to the disgust of Sleepy - Grumpty - Sneeky -
Dog - Smirkey - Alice? - Derick and Wimpy. The Dwarts
clubbed together and didn't buy a new mirror, but always sang
a happy song. They all livered happily ever aretor until they
died - which somebody of them did naturally enough.

check out http://beatlesnumber9.com/spaniard.html (unfortunately without the drawings)

[elliot]

Oh! glad I saw this. I was trying to remember the name of a book and you had it in your list: The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hess

Never read it but heard it was good. 

email me your address and i'll mail it to you.  m recommended this book back in forums before and i bought it, read it.  perhaps we could make a trade? for some of that Gurdiegeff

[Nick]

Absolutely!!! Great idea. Will do in the morning.