Anyway, my friend was nice enough to laugh at my face for only a few minutes before recommending me a few books that could help me to shape an opinion regarding topics along the lines of free will and consciousness and all that other related jazz.
At that time, I had just started reading books sincerely, and I was hooked on biographies and autobiographies of 'successful' people - Steve Jobs, Sam Walton, Jeff Bezos, Kishore Biyani and Tony Hseih are some names that come to mind. The books that he recommended to me were quite different than these and if I remember correctly, he'd told me at that time that the three books that changed his entire perspective on life were The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, Thinking: Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann and Cosmos by Carl Sagan. He also mentioned The Brain: The story of you by David Eagleman as a must-read and in addition, he also introduced me to Alan Watts.
Little did I know at the time, I had been handed the red pill.
These were among the first books I read apart from the biographies and autobiographies I was used to reading at the time. I've since then revisited almost all of them again as well. Anyway, what I do remember from the time I started reading these books was the realization that there was so much more to life than I was aware of. I had been taking 'important' life decisions under the assumption that I had figured everything out - I was a staunch atheist, I thought having a 'successful' career is of the utmost importance, I had a definition of 'success' that I considered unshakeable, I had decided that starting my own business was the only way to have a satisfactory professional life, I had very concrete ideas as to what 'others' should be doing to make this a better world, etc. - but little did I know what I had left out.
There's this really beautiful and precise quote from Thinking, fast and slow where the author says, "You do not know what you do not know." And I cannot describe in words the impact this quote has had on me. Also around this time, like I hinted before, I was deeply unsatisfied with my professional career and was exploring different options like starting my own business or at least switching jobs or domains, etc. But all of that automatically took a step back, because I had realized that I was taking decisions from a very incomplete standpoint.
God only knew what I was missing, but guess what - I wanted to be in the 'know' too. And since books had helped me realize this much, I figured the 'right' books would help me in this direction further.
In addition to these books, I had started to listen to a bit of Alan Watts on Youtube and naturally loved it, though I'm not sure how much of what he said made real sense to me at that time. I remember other recommended videos on Youtube having someone like Osho or Sadhguru in them, and as an atheist there was a natural aversion I had towards these 'spiritual' Gurus. Even if I listened to some of their videos, I could nitpick something that I found to be 'voodoo' nonsense that I didn't agree with and then make the entire video about that rather than the actual content.
But one thing that struck me about Osho especially was that he used to talk a lot about books - how he always loved reading a ton of books during his adolescent years and how they actually helped shape his understanding of life. Now that was fascinating to me. Here's a guy who's talking not just about what he has realized, but also how he got to realize it; not just about what to think, but how to think. That's one kind of teacher everyone needs.
So that was a major turning point for me. I took a lot of books from Osho's personal favourites and devoured them, some of them multiple times. They weren't all easy reads, at least initially when I had started out. I remember the first time I picked up The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Osho had described it to be one of his favourite books and I remember he'd said something along the lines of a few passages in this book being absolute poetry. I was intimidated by the sheer size of the book at first and ended up taking more than a complete month to finish it, and absolutely loved it. I've since then read it cover to cover multiple times, and am still thrilled by the idea of reading it again.
Osho introduced me to a number of other titles too, some of which ended up becoming my all time favourite books as well. I have written about some of them in my blog under the section Books I love and on Instagram under this guide but if you feel like, you should go through Osho's list of books (Osho - Books I have loved) and find out for yourself which ones strike a chord with you.
I keep my Goodreads (Goodreads - Chetan Narang) up to date too with all books I have read and want to read going forward. Do give it a peak as well.
I guess that's pretty much how I got hooked to reading. It's become a habit now, and I'm always reading one book or the other these days - sometimes new ones and sometimes old ones I feel like revisiting. If you have some books that you've found to be absolute must-reads, please share them with me too. One thing I love to see in my Goodreads profile is the size of the to-read list, so trust me that your contributions will be greatly appreciated.
Until next time. Happy reading.
Books listed in this blog:
<More book recommendations - Books I love>
In all honesty, I prefer having personal chats rather than back and forth in the comments' section. If you feel like you want to have discussion with me regarding the content on my blog or anything else, please connect with me on my Instagram here: Chetan Narang - Instagram
Bhai, ye friend kaafi smart sound kar rha hai
ReplyDeleteHaha yeah. I made him sound real smart, didn't I? :P
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