Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment by HH Dalai Lama

Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment was published in 2002 by Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet. The free ebook is essentially a commentary on Atishas Dipamkara Shrijnana’s A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment and Lama Je Tsong Khapa’s Lines of Experience. Buddhism originated from its founding teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha , who gave 84,000 [...]

Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle wrote this short book, Stillness Speaks, (43 pages) in what he himself calls sutra-like style. He writes: Just like the ancient sutras, the writings contained within this book are sacred and have come out of a state of consciousness we may call stillness. Unlike those sutras, however, they don’t belong to any one [...]

Native American Spirituality: Path of Heart Don Juan Matus, Eagle, and Others

Native American Spirituality: Path of Heart Don Juan Matus, Eagle, and Others is an overview by Russian author Vladimir Antonov of native american spirituality as described in primary sources from brujos, shamans and medicine men like Silvio Manuel, Juanito, Eagle, Eaglestform, Don Genaro and Don Juan Matus from the Toltec traditions. Most importantly Vladimir Antonov [...]

Conscience by Ouspensky

Conscience with the subtitle The Search for Truth, is a collection of shorter works by P. D. Ouspensky the author of Tertium Organum and In Search of the Miraculous, and also the man known as “O” in the circles around G. I. Gurdjieff in the early days in Russia. The book starts by introducing Ouspensky [...]

Views from the Real World by G. I. Gurdjieff

Views from the Real World is a collection of early talks by G. I. Gurdjieff. The book has been compiled from meeting notes during sessions in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis, Berlin, London, Paris, New York and Chicago by his pupils. The first part of the book is the text: Glimpses of Truth – an account written [...]

Easy access to the library from your phone

I have just installed a script her on Holybooks.com that will automatically direct you to a mobile version of the site – if you use a smartphone. This will make mobile browsing easier and faster since only parts of the sites functions are available on the mobile site. Give it a try and let me [...]

Clarity by Nathan Gill

This short autobiography by Nathan Gill describes his spiritual search and non-dramatic awakening. From the book: “There does not need to be any kind of ‘event’ associated with the recognition of our true nature. Well, as it happened, in September 1998 an event arose. I was gardening and the rain was drizzling down. I looked [...]

Thought is your Enemy – Mind-shattering Conversations with a Man called U.G

Thought is your Enemy – Mind-shattering Conversations with a Man called U.G. This quote caught my interest: “Is there any such thing as happiness? I would say, no. So, the quest for happiness is a cultural input, and that is the common desire that we know exists everywhere, in every part of the world. That [...]

New improvements on the site

The newsletter is now up and running every friday, for those of you who are not signed up, please do so here: http://www.holybooks.com/newsletter/ Another thing I am experimenting with is Google Friend Connect, please see the third column where it is possible to “Join this site”. Please try it out if you have a google-account.  

Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright – 50.000 words without the letter “e”

This bizarre book, Gadsby, is a lipogram written in 1939 by the american Ernest Vincent Wright. The concept is the total absence of the letter “e” from all sentences on all pages. An article in the Oshkosh Daily in 1937 wrote that the manuscript was “amazingly smooth. No halting parts. A continuity of plot and almost classic clarity obtains.”  Wright [...]

Brutal Beginnings

The rebels of enlightenment over at the forum/blog RuthlessTruth.com have for some months worked with some new and radical approaches to free people from the veil of Samsara. Their work are truly impressive and fresh. Their main idea is to get people in a large scale to understand that there is no “I”, and seeing this fact is [...]

A Burden Off the Mind – A Study Guide on the Five Aggregates

Buddha’s awakening gave him a new perspective on the limitations of words. He had discovered a reality—the Deathless—that no words could describe. At the same time, he discoveredthat the path to Awakening could be described, although it involved a new wayof seeing and conceptualizing the problem of suffering and stress. Because ordinary concepts were often [...]

Walking with Awareness – A Guide to Walking Meditation

Walking with Awareness A Guide to Walking Meditation Written by Luang Por Liem Áhitadhammo –  a Buddhist monk in the Thai Forest Tradition, was born in 1941. After higher ordination at twenty years of age, he first practised in several village monasteries until he joined Wat Nong PahPong, Ajahn Chah’s famous forest monastery in UbonProvince, in [...]

The Ultimate Medicine by Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Ultimate Medicine by Nisargadatta Maharaj was compiled during the last year of Nisargadatta’s life. The Ultimate Medicine gives detailed, advanced and precise instruction for spiritual aspirants seeking powerful antidotes to unawareness. Nisargadatta Maharaj is an extraordinary teacher from the Tantra Nath lineage. His style is abrupt and provocative, he cuts to the core and [...]

The Complete Pythagoras

The Complete Pythagoras is a compilation of two books. The first is entitled The Life Of Pythagoras and contains the four biographies of Pythagoras that have survived from antiquity: that of Iamblichus (280-333 A.D.), Porphry (233-306 A.D.), Photius (ca 820- ca 891 A.D.) and Diogenes Laertius (180 A.D.). The second is entitled Pythagorean Library and [...]