0:00:00 - 0:00:23 So I need to apologize for my voice. I was um traipsing about the woods yesterday for about five hours looking for a lost dog. And so I was shouting the whole time. Um So here's an email that I'd like to just make a video response. I think it would go better. The email says and hopefully I could do this 0:00:22 - 0:00:44 . I overestimated my, the state of my vocal chords. Hi, Rob. Do you have a top list of must have book recommendations, books you found immense value in, you've spoken highly of Thomas soul. For example, my motivation for asking is two layers. One because I would see great value in your recommendations 0:00:43 - 0:01:04 in the best of times or under normal societal circumstances. Two, I believe there may be great value in having a physical collection of the best books when access to such knowledge becomes increasingly limited. Do you have a list or see the value in creating one to share with your audience? Thanks so 0:01:04 - 0:01:38 much. Um All right. So I will say that I, I have a storage shed and in that storage shed, I have a tote and in that tote, I have as many copies of the scriptures as will fit in that tote, that being said, um If I were to recommend books to other people in a general fashion, I think there would be several 0:01:37 - 0:02:16 downsides to that. For one. I see the books that I've found value in kind of like, I see ex-girlfriends. Um There is a time and a place where those were part of my life and they certainly affected me. But would they have the same effect today? And would I go back to that? We have to understand that when 0:02:16 - 0:02:41 we read books, the book isn't the thing philosophers of old seem to have discussed as they seem to because this is not my field. I have not spent time looking into what ancient philosophers had to say um except in the most superficial ways, but it, it seems like there's a theme that comes up with some 0:02:41 - 0:03:09 of these folks about, I guess at least one person called it collective consciousness, but whatever people think about it and whatever they call it, there have been many that have referred to this existence of knowledge that's out there information and it's out there. I'm also sick by the way. So I spent 0:03:08 - 0:03:29 like six hours walking through 10 inches of snow and freezing cold yesterday, shouting at the top of my lungs and I'm also sick so that, that probably made it worse. So I apologize anyway. So there's this, this information that's out there. And then I would just call the spirit or light and truth. And 0:03:29 - 0:03:59 it's out there and it all comes from God and it is all maximized in him. And then when books are written, it's just one of many ways to tap into that and produce something and I would use the word instantiate. And so you take spirit and you instantiate it into matter, you capture these ideas in ways 0:03:58 - 0:04:30 that can be shared with others. Now, it can be shared through the spirit. But that's a very narrow channel in transmission, in content. It can capture the greatest amount of information in transmission, all those who can access it already have. So let's break this down to a practical example. If you 0:04:30 - 0:05:00 have an idea for some invention, it could be valid, it could end up being exactly what you think it's going to be and provide all the value that you imagine. But anyone else who could think of that already has or, or they will later. But the point is that nothing you do will change that. So how can you 0:05:00 - 0:05:28 transmit it to others? Well, you can take it and you can formulate words to describe it. But now what you're transmitting is a set of words. It's not the same form that you received it in. Do you understand? So with a book, it's the same idea accessing you're accessing spirit and you're instantiating 0:05:27 - 0:06:04 it into text, you can do this physically. It's not always with words if you're a painter or sculptor and so on. Right. Well, this gets really complicated because one of the, one of the the medium media, one of 11 medium you can do this in is through having kids or building a business. And so you part 0:06:04 - 0:06:26 of your creation because that's what it is. When you're instantiating spirit, it's creation at some level. 11 of the forms of creation is you can have Children, but that's actually the easiest part because most of the work has been done for you. And it's been set up in such a way that it's not too hard 0:06:26 - 0:00:00 to, to convince people to participate in that creative act. Although I guess some people have more struggles with that than others. I'm not talking about fertility problems. Um So, uh you know, the best part of humor. So say what you will about charity, right? And that's all about benefiting others. 0:00:00 - 0:07:18 But in my opinion, humor is a gift that's primarily for yourself, the best kinds. Anyway. Uh My wife's always like, no one gets your humor and it's a nice way of saying you think you're way funnier than you are to others. And, and I say, well, that's what makes it funny anyway, you gotta, you gotta take 0:07:17 - 0:00:00 the, the giggles where you get them. That's, that's a, that's a tender mercy that God sprinkles on life. Um What the heck was I saying? So, the creative act. That's the easy part. And the, the decades that follow as a parent and as a grandparent, you're shaping your progeny, like you, you could say, 0:00:00 - 0:08:21 like a sculptor shapes a piece of marble, but it's actually much harder than that because marble just takes it. But a person, you have to dance with a person, you have to dance with them. And in many cases that person will actually have more to, to shape you with than you shape him or her with. And so 0:08:21 - 0:08:59 it's, it's a flow back and forth a dance. OK. What what the heck does this have to do with books? We are created in the image of God. And what that means among other things is that human beings alone have the highest capacity to become like Him. Every other creation is a category that is highly limited 0:08:58 - 0:09:36 in how much like God it can become. We don't have a limit and we're unique in that. And the next next thing from us is very, very far. So if if what is valuable is God and everything else is just a a noisy estimate of that. What you can squeeze into a book is going to be highly limited. This is why John 0:09:35 - 0:10:05 the disciple he said at the end of his gospel, that books could not contain a sufficient account of what Jesus is like because you actually have to meet Him to get that. You actually have to spend time with him and you actually have to live like him to understand, to know him. And so what's the purest 0:10:04 - 0:10:29 vehicle for getting closer to that? What's not reading a book? It's not reading a book. It's knowing someone who's like him. And even if they're pretty far from him, if they're closer to you in every way, they're more valuable to you than any book could ever be. And you say, well, what about the scriptures 0:10:28 - 0:11:02 ? Your ability to derive what is possible from the scriptures is independent from what you actually get from them. I'll say that again because I, I think I could say it more clearly what you get out of the scriptures. It's not the same as what someone much better than you can get out of the scriptures 0:11:01 - 0:11:39 . I'm sure that's highly offensive to many people. But let me put it a different way. Do you think that you fully replicate the thoughts, feelings, understanding and actions of the writers of the scriptures as you read them, as you read what they wrote? What would be the test of that? Let's talk about 0:11:39 - 0:12:07 The Beatles for a second. If I played you the Beatles Greatest Hits and we spent an hour or whatever that would take. Could you then write the next Beatles song? Could you, could you create a new song? That's exactly what they would write if they were here today. Of course, you couldn't, there's no question 0:12:07 - 0:12:34 that you couldn't. Right. It would be ridiculous to assume that in listening to 12 songs or something, you now become equal to the creators of that music and you could accurately predict what they would do in your position. Do you get it? So you can read, let's say you read through all the letters of 0:12:34 - 0:13:05 Paul once. Could you even reproduce the letters you just read? I'm not talking about word for word. That's one thing I'm saying. Could you write what Paul would write if he were here today? And you asked him to go over his letters and rewrite them in modern English and with modern arguments maybe, but 0:13:05 - 0:13:31 produce the same letters, you know, Titus for today. Do you think that reading through the letters of Paul once would, would make you capable of that? Of course not, that would be an absurd thing to believe. But most Christians have never actually read the Bible even once and yet they believe that that's 0:13:31 - 0:13:57 how much understanding they have that what they think when they read the hand picked, cherry picked one verse, they hear every time at Christmas or something that they understand all there is to know about it and they will, will, will defiantly fight someone who comes along if Paul himself came and popped 0:13:56 - 0:14:24 out from wherever he was and said, hey, I'm Paul. Ok. That's just funny to imagine, you know, hey, I'm Paul. Um, open up to Titus chapter one verse five and let's talk about that. I have no idea what that says off the top of my head. Don't look it up and say, oh, it's a hidden message. No, but open up 0:14:23 - 0:14:54 to whatever. And let's talk about it. Most Christians would say you must be from the devil because you're telling me things that are different than what I believe. Different. Yes. Better open question. Open question. This is really important stuff. And so, and I made a video related to this and I don't 0:14:54 - 0:15:19 remember what it's called, but it had the pictures of the books and the people, everyone has a different model. And when you write a book, it's a snapshot of a part of that model. Now, for, for most authors, it's everything they know. It's their whole model, but it's still a snapshot. And for most people 0:15:18 - 0:15:42 , what they understand doesn't actually improve very much over their life. And so, you know, they wrote a book 20 years ago. If they were to rewrite it today, it would be the same book. But those of us who are in the stream of light, what we understand improves all the time. It's constantly changing 0:15:41 - 0:16:16 and upgrading. It's always up, up, up. And so when I read a book, it's never a stand alone thing. I'm weaving that into my model. I'm extracting things that have value. I'm aggregating things onto what is said, like the book will talk about. Let's see. So the email mentioned, Thomas soul. One of his 0:16:16 - 0:16:42 big ideas is he says there are no solutions only tradeoffs. I really don't like that quote. And so when I read it, I understand what I think he was trying to say specifically. And now I'm sending out shoots all over my model to see if it connects to other things. And I'm applying that idea and then revising 0:16:41 - 0:17:07 it in real time. And so that idea, I take his version of it and I say, well, but there are solutions, they just have constraints and you have to weigh the cost and benefit of things. And what he's really saying is there's no solution that doesn't have a cost. And I like that a lot better because it seems 0:17:07 - 0:17:35 cleaner to me there, it, it, it doesn't require people to suspend aspects of what it means in order for it to remain true. So to me saying there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. It's kind of like an analogy. This is to that as this is to that where there's some mismatch and it's not exactly right. And 0:17:35 - 0:18:05 something about it is just a little off now that being said, I think it's very hard to criticize Thomas soul because the man is an absolute genius and the rate of what he says to how well he says it, he has a tremendous amount of valuable information in his books. And it is said so well that reading 0:18:04 - 0:18:26 it, most people will upgrade almost everyone will upgrade from how they would have said it to something better by reading how he said it. So I just have to say that because I, I have all kinds of respect for the man. But this is one specific example since it was mentioned in the email. So what I recommend 0:18:25 - 0:18:47 that someone read a book where that quote is if that quote were the only valuable thing in the book, which is not the case for Thomas Soul. But for most authors, it is, most authors have like one idea. And the reason they wrote a book is because you can't sell a sentence with youtube. The number of books 0:18:47 - 0:19:05 worth reading actually goes down because so many authors will give a talk where they give away everything in their book and then they say it even better than they said it in the book because they've been on a speaking circuit. And so every time you go through the ideas, usually you come away being able 0:19:04 - 0:19:26 to explain them better. You know, if I taught a class for five semesters, the fifth version of the class was always the best. I, unfortunately, most professors are lazy bums and they won't revise their content each semester. But I did, I worked, I reworked the class every time. Um and, and because I'm 0:19:26 - 0:19:53 in efficiency oriented person, I did that in the most effective way, which was right after I taught a session, I would go to the, the lecture notes or if, if I was grading, grading an exam, the very next thing I did was revise what that was. So, if I taught, um, and, and then I did it at the end of the 0:19:53 - 0:20:19 semester as well, so I'd go over, I'd build the slides for the next semester after each class. And so it just keep getting better. In my opinion. The students may have disagreed. I don't know, I don't think any of them took it a second time to be able to say. But anyway, um so maybe to summarize, there 0:20:19 - 0:20:40 were a lot of nuggets in there that, that this just gives us an excuse to talk about. But getting back to the email specifically, I don't think I'm the best person to suggest the best books. I think that there are other people. In fact, in my network of people, I know I would point to other people and 0:20:40 - 0:21:03 say this is the guy you want to talk to about that. So if people have suggestions for the, for the best books, I, I'm happy to collate those, maybe I can put it on a blog post and keep a running list um or something that, that would be an interesting thing to put on the new website. We could have a poll 0:21:02 - 0:21:23 and people could vote for books and then we could just have them sort of cascade to the top and value, make a little value hierarchy. Of books. But I have a feeling that this is something that's actually really personal to individuals and that the most valuable thing would be to know someone. And then 0:21:23 - 0:21:46 that person says, hey, given what kind of a human recommendation system, which is what we had before computers took that over. But in Amazon of people who like this also like this and this cracks open another very important topic. So I kind of made the argument that the written word is not the best format 0:21:46 - 0:22:10 . It's not the ideal format. And this is a shocker to people because for most people, their religion, for most Christians, their religion, they will say is the Bible, they'll say I go to a Bible based church. It's not true that that's a meaningless statement, but it always means something much worse 0:22:09 - 0:22:35 than the person who says it intends. Wouldn't it be nice to go to a Christ centered church? Why don't they just say that? Because they know that what they're saying is different. They're saying Christ is inside that book and he's not, he's not, it's possible to know Jesus better than Paul. But you won't 0:22:35 - 0:22:57 come to know Jesus like Paul did by reading what Paul wrote in the Bible. You can only come to that by living what he wrote in the Bible that will draw you closer to how he lived and that will get you on a path that leads closer to God. What would be much better than reading what Paul wrote is to know 0:22:57 - 0:23:26 Paul. That would be orders of magnitude, at least two better than reading what he wrote. Why? And I'm condensing so much here just giving you little flicks of it. Why? Like many scholars, you can not only know, you cannot just be familiar with what Paul wrote, but actually have it memorized and just 0:23:25 - 0:23:46 like walk through, hey, Romans chapter two, this is what it's about and I have these verses memorized and I wrote my master's thesis on this chapter. Well, what did he do? Do you live like Jesus in all the ways Paul touched on. Could you write the next chapter? Like Paul could, could you rewrite the 0:23:46 - 0:24:10 chapter for today like Paul? And if you can't, you'd be way better off meeting Paul. You know, the phrase goes, if you could look into heaven for five minutes, you'd know more than any book could ever tell you about heaven. If you could talk to Paul for five minutes, you would grow more. You would, you 0:24:10 - 0:24:38 would to talk to Paul for five minutes, you'd have the ability to change much more to become like him than you would spending a lifetime reading what he wrote. Why? Because when you're talking to someone face to face and see now we're getting into, what's the value of physical gathering? What can you 0:24:37 - 0:24:57 do in proximity that you can't do at a distance? These are not interchangeable things if you had a conversation with Paul, he'd cut right through. Oh, you have this verse memorized. Oh, you give me a summary of this chapter, which by the way wouldn't be how he would summarize it. He cut right through 0:24:57 - 0:25:24 all that garbage and he'd say, hey, this, this and this about you could be better. And here's why do you see the difference? He would take you in the one side of the balance and he'd take his familiarity with Jesus in the other and then he'd do a comparison and then he would show you the next increment 0:25:24 - 0:25:56 of improvement. And that would draw you closer to God than spending the rest of your life reading what he wrote. Does this still seem like an absurd claim? Well, let me, let me make the point that honesty is a razor's edge and it, it's an extremely state to, uh it's an extremely difficult state to achieve 0:25:55 - 0:26:19 . It's an extremely easy, difficult, I'm sorry. It's an extremely easy state to fall out of. And it's one of these things where it has to be that way all the time for you to remain like that, right? It's not like staying in shape. You can have a chocolate every once in a while. No big deal. Honesty is 0:26:19 - 0:26:41 all or nothing all the time or nothing. Now, the problem is that when you read the scriptures, you're not reading them with honest eyes, you're not reading them with beginners eyes, you're glossing over things that you think you understand. You're skipping over things that, you know, you don't understand 0:26:41 - 0:27:02 . You're skipping over things that, you know, you don't agree with and you're glossing over a bunch of things that you don't know that you don't agree with. What, what do you mean by that? Well, you read the story of Abraham and Isaac and you say, or job and you say, yeah, I believe that. Sure, I believe 0:27:01 - 0:27:29 that. And then you say, well, or someone says to you, well, what would you do in that situation? You'd say I'd do the same thing that these guys did. Ok? But if God actually told you to sacrifice your kid right now, it, let's say an angel popped out of heaven and said, hi, I'm Paul and said, you need 0:27:29 - 0:27:47 to sacrifice your kid. You'd say you're the devil. Get away from me. You devil. It'd be like that key and peele sketch where there are these Christians in a prayer meeting in a house and they're praying and they're like, God just tell us what to do. We, you know, we love you, we wanna do what you say 0:27:46 - 0:28:03 and then you hear this, but you can tell they're not expecting anything to happen as most Christians don't when they're praying. And then this booming voice out of heaven says, sell everything you have and give it to the poor and they're like, they're freaking out because one, they didn't expect a voice 0:28:03 - 0:28:21 but two, they didn't expect the voice to say exactly what Jesus did in the New Testament because they think they're different. Right? And then you see the one guy is, like, really thinking about it. He's like, uh, it's, it's a ghost, it's a ghost and they all freak out and run out of the room and then 0:28:21 - 0:28:49 you hear the voice of God say not again. And I find this hilarious because obviously those guys are not believers, right? And yet they nailed it. They, they absolutely called out what's everything wrong with Christianity? So if an angel came to you and said, no, you need to climb up this mountain and 0:28:49 - 0:29:14 build an altar and uh put your son on it, you wouldn't do it, would you, you'd say no, God doesn't ask us to do things like that. Sorry. That's not something. Obviously this is the devil or job. You read job and you say, yeah, I believe that happened. Well, could it ever happen to you? No, no, God doesn't 0:29:14 - 0:29:38 do that. No. Or you go the route. A lot of Christians do and say no, this is just an allegory. God would never do this to someone. Well, that's a really funny position to have, isn't it? It's convenient, that's for sure. Do you see my point? So if you got to meet job? And he said, no, I'm real and that 0:29:38 - 0:30:11 really happened to me. And if you do things, right? It's going to happen to you, then you'd probably say ghost get out of my house or you must be from the devil. So, uh so I, I don't think me making a collection of the best books is a good idea, but I do think that as we read the best books, we should 0:30:11 - 0:30:36 take everything we learn and think about the ways we can share that with other people. And this gets back to what I said about the spirit exists. Every person has differential access to it. Now, what do you do with what you have access to? How do you share it with other people? Because if the limit of 0:30:36 - 0:31:08 your sharing is to hand them a, a book, well, you're still actually doing better than most people, but there's more that can be done in today's world. It's possible to come across people who have never read the Bible will say because they've never known someone who was impressive enough to convince them 0:31:08 - 0:31:26 that it was worth reading the Bible. Do you know what I mean by that? So if I were to say, if we knew each other well, and you never read the Bible before? And I said, hey, I find a lot of value in this for all these reasons. You should read this too. You might say, OK, well, I know you, you're credible 0:31:26 - 0:31:47 and I have reasons to believe that maybe this has value for me as well. I've shared the story of, I met a woman who grew up in Algeria on a plane once, a relatively young lady and, and she had never read the Bible before. And I think that's probably the first person I've ever met who had, who had very 0:31:47 - 0:32:12 little even, um, tangential awareness of what was in the Bible. But even then I didn't hand her a Bible one because I didn't have one. What I handed her was a copy of Seek Ye this Jesus because I spent the time to write up some of the things that I believe. And I, I will say um that book was not the 0:32:12 - 0:32:32 best thing to hand to her. It was just the best thing that I had. If I were writing a book specifically for her, it'd be completely different and better and shorter. But I would also just have a conversation with her. If I knew I was gonna see her five times, I don't know why that would happen. But let's 0:32:32 - 0:32:50 say I was in town for business on something and she was in the group that I was working with and we all went to dinner as a group, you know, five times over this two weeks or something. That, that's not the greatest situation. But you see what I'm saying, you could divide what you want to say into five 0:32:50 - 0:33:11 chunks and, and organize it hierarchically so that you could take her through this ladder and that's what you need to do with people. Because the re if you ask yourself, why don't they already know this? You should ask yourself that and then strategize around the answer. If this is what it takes to share 0:33:10 - 0:33:32 with others, what God has shared with you, and it might seem overwhelming. That's actually the opposite way of how you should look at it. You know, what's overwhelming is to think of everything that God has taught you and where someone else is and think that you have to give all of that in one go. That's 0:33:32 - 0:33:58 overwhelming by thinking about this and strategizing. You're chopping this down into what's not too far away from just a natural conversation. It's not, it's not too awkward at all because the smallest increment of additional truth, which I've made videos about. It's usually a tiny thing and you need 0:33:57 - 0:34:25 to do that a whole bunch before God asks you typically to do some big thing. The little things are the big things, but they don't feel big. Well, I'm losing my ability to talk. So I think I'll cut this short, but I hope that that makes sense. So when I read impressive books, I fold that into my own awareness 0:34:24 - 0:34:49 and then odds are that I can think of a way to hand that off in a bite size chunk and then that's better. And then the other thing is this idea that here's, here's a box and we can put stuff in that box. And then this box becomes the thing that we hand to people. We need to get away from that rather 0:34:49 - 0:35:18 than moving towards it and start to understand the unavoidable irreplaceable value of face to face communication. It's not the case. And this is what people think that information is just these, these chunks of discrete objects that you can trade with each other. This is the persistence of the independence 0:35:18 - 0:35:41 myth. We are not independent, we're in a network, a human network that's a hierarchy towards God. And just because it's not super obvious, doesn't mean it's not true. Modern prosperity has given us the illusion that the world is flat, it's not flat, it's a mountain, it's a mountain and gods at the top 0:35:40 - 0:36:03 . And if you don't see that mountain, that's, that's a thing that needs to be get fixed, you need to, you need to be able to, to know that that exists, to believe that exists. But you need to learn who the people are in that mountain. It matters so much of the end times is wrapped up in the things I've 0:36:03 - 0:36:17 told you about in this video, even though it might be hard to see how. So um there you go, I'd say the best books. Great. Find the best people much better.