Why even read books?

[Leo Gura]

@OBEler Spirituality cannot be learned through a book. That's the bottom line.

Stop reading spiritual books and invest that time into your own serious philosophical inquiry, from scratch. You need to transition to generating your own insight. The insight in books is dead to you. It's like buying dead fish to stock your aquarium. You need live fish that you catch yourself.

Selling dead fish by the ocean.

Edited March 31 by Leo Gura

[AION]

7 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

Look. I'm extremely careful with how I spend the little money I have! To me is common sense to buy a book recommended by someone like you who I look up to, than to buy a book which was marketed the hell out of. Example Jordan Peterson's books which all have flashy covers. And until I finish every book from your book list, why care about buying books I know nothing about?

Wrestling with God, his newest book, is actually worth reading. One of the best books I read in a long time. 
 

There is no best book list. Most of the best books can’t be digested by regular people. They need that fluff. 
 

The best meta skill one can have is to know what to focus on and what is digestible for your mind at a particular time. It requires a lot of intuition. 

[HelluvaGuy]

31 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

If those books would have been good enough they'd all be on your booklist. Checkmate.  

It's not like he has read every single book ever written. 

[OBEler]

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@OBEler Spirituality cannot be learned through a book. That's the bottom line.

Stop reading spiritual books and invest that time into your own serious philosophical inquiry, from scratch. You need to transition to generating your own insight. The insight in books is dead to you. It's like buying dead fish to stock your aquarium. You need live fish that you catch yourself.

Selling dead fish by the ocean.

It was just an example that your ratings of the books might be outdated.

I have no plans to read spiritual books. But you had some other good ones on the list but I don't know if you would rate them that high now.

 

[Vibes]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

What you can learn from the books about mastering yourself is quite limited. The real work is outside the books.

Most new books published today are marketing gimmicks. But occassionally you find a gem.

Peter Ralston's new book is very good. Nothing totally new for us following your work, but the way he writes it gives me different ways of understanding and seeing things. 

[Davino]

Reading and consuming media is like food for your mind. Enhance the mind input in the most meaningful way to you and then your mind will generate nice output and genuine insights.

 

Sometimes books aren't just about acquiring knowledge but about learning new thought currents / ways of thinking.

[AION]

2 hours ago, HelluvaGuy said:

It's not like he has read every single book ever written. 

why not? you are infinity

Edited Monday at 04:02 PM by AION

[Yimpa]

 

[Davino]

 

[LordFall]

9 hours ago, AION said:

There is no best book list. Most of the best books can’t be digested by regular people. They need that fluff. 
 

The best meta skill one can have is to know what to focus on and what is digestible for your mind at a particular time. It requires a lot of intuition. 

I agree with your 2nd statement but what makes you so sure of the first one? Plenty of great books that give you insights some of the top humans spent decades figuring out and it cuts your learning curve. What epistemology have you used to come to that statement? 

I've read many books on dating for example and if I hadn't I probably would've turned into an antagonistic incel not understand how that system works but now it's relatively simple for me. 

[Brandon Nankivell]

I read 550+ books over the last 12 years, 97% various topics in non-fiction, many business, self-help, mind, and spirituality -  In my experience, it's true that most self-help and business books are rehash of the same old principles.

I don't read self-help anymore. I only pickup a business book and read a specific segment to remind myself of a solution to a very specific problem that I'm currently encountering in business.

Health, fitness, and diet books are all over the shop in terms of quality and credibility. I've stopped reading most of those apart from the occasional book, the most recent being Mitochondriac Manifesto by R.D. Lee and soon to look at Astanga Samgraha of Vagbhata (Ayurvedic study).

Philosophy I've decided it's not worth the time reading each and every philosopher's main works, only to pick the nuggets. Still yet to finish an entire summary of western philosophy such as one by Bertrand Russell or other authors. Using Leo's philosophy video as a rough guide to how I approach the field.

All time currently is being spent researching and combing through source texts on Kabbalah, Hasidism, Sufism, Advaita Vedanta, Samkhya, After death state. Alot aren't fully translated into English yet so I'm finding a partial translations or summaries by scholars will have to suffice for now. I don't intend to read everything in full, I just follow my curiosity and if I have gaps in my understanding, I refer to specific books and parts of books accordingly. And contemplate what I read.

I haven't been doing alot of insight from scratch as Leo has suggested above, mainly because using existing insights recorded by others, as a springboard, has lead to embodying the same insight myself through contemplation after reading them, or it has lead to alternative insights that have been very impactful.

The from-scratch approach is definitely on my mind to pursue though. Years ago I remember intentionally sitting down at a public bus station, closing my eyes, and just exploring how sounds of the bus, space, and time are related and it was amazing.

[TheEnigma]

On 3/30/2025 at 2:53 PM, Spiritual Warrior said:

That's fair. 

Honestly for me, I just read every book on Leo's book list. I rarely read anything else. Maybe that's cause Im a fan boy. But I also realize that finding the most powerful, life altering books is challenging and I think Leo has done the dirty work already in finding the books that line up with Truth the most. 

Actually I agree. I find learning from watching videos or someone speak (assuming they are a quality source) is actually better than reading.

[LordFall]

@Brandon Nankivell Curious what you would say are your top 5 favorite books out of those 550 and why? 

[EternalForest]

5 hours ago, Davino said:

 

This would be good advice if the US and the publishing industry in general wasn't so capitalistic. Many of the best books were indeed written to make money.

[Yimpa]

Book I wrote today:

Truth Is Right Around The Corner

Edited Tuesday at 04:35 AM by Yimpa

[Lyubov]

Reading is very helpful and incredibly useful. I don’t think it’s ever a time waste for most people if you are sticking to self help classics and spiritual texts. The thing is most people will benefit from reading more because they may lack a bit of information needed to answer their own question or set themselves up to move forward and discover something else. Do you want the guy operating on you to say he doesn’t read and learned everything on the job? If you’re so caught up in reading and literally doing nothing then it could be a waste of time but most people can barely finish one book a month so I would say it’s not something to worry about. Just choose the right books. 

[AION]

8 hours ago, LordFall said:

I agree with your 2nd statement but what makes you so sure of the first one? Plenty of great books that give you insights some of the top humans spent decades figuring out and it cuts your learning curve. What epistemology have you used to come to that statement? 

I've read many books on dating for example and if I hadn't I probably would've turned into an antagonistic incel not understand how that system works but now it's relatively simple for me. 

If you give Tolle or Ralston books to a deep SD orange person it will go above their head. Same way Wilber will be gibberish to most people on this forum.  

Edited Tuesday at 08:32 AM by AION

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, AION said:

Same way Wilber will be gibberish to most people on this forum.  

Lol, what?

[gettoefl]

To read is to realize I am an ant. People who don't read think they're god.

The problem is, you don't know what to read.

That's the problem to solve rather the arrogance that there is nothing worth reading.

[gettoefl]

12 hours ago, Davino said:

 

Yea I give away all my books for free.