Swadhyay: The books showing limitations of the well

Once, we get a ray of light into the well of our fixations, We get interested to read the books that show us the reality of the well, that we have so far considered to be absolute. We set the meaning of our life in terms of good health, career, family, wealth, and social status and at best in terms of the acquisition of certain knowledge. This comprises our well. We do not want to look beyond that. When the ray of light comes to our well, in the form of the books that we discussed in the post "Swadhyay: A ray of light into the well", we for the first time become aware that the well has limitations. We try to measure the dimensions of the well by exploring the books on science.

My first book on psychology was "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman. I read this book after writing my first Civil Services Mains in 2003. I read "My Experiments with Truth" by Mahatma Gandhi also at the same time. These books made me realize the narrowness of my well for the first time. How the emotional brain manipulates reality and does not allow reason to take over. Emotional Intelligence is a good piece by Daniel Goleman and he has demonstrated how we can use emotions intelligently. I am a great admirer of Daniel and read one more of the books written by him much later "The Science of Meditation". In that book, he discussed many experiments conducted with Mingyur Rinpoche, a Buddhist monk. I had the good fortune of having personal meetings with Mingyur Rinpoche on 3 different occasions and found him to be quite scientific. 

I read many books on neurology such as "Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are" by Sebastian Seung sometime in 2013 after completing my first vipassana retreat. It was a wonderful book and quite close to a neurological explanation of vipassana. I tried to read many other books on neurology such as "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. That's a wonderful book that discusses the interplay of rational and emotional minds. I read many more books on the functioning of the brain in my quest to understand the nature of self through neurology. I read the book titled "The Tell-tale Brain" by V S Ramachandran wherein he tried to search for the seat of consciousness in the brain. He discussed the concept of mirror neurons in this book. I also read a book titled "Behave" by Robert Sapolsky. That's a wonderful book giving the perspective from quantum to cosmos with a good discussion on neurology. I navigated through many more books on psychology and presently reading "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk. 

The reading of these books has made at least one thing clear to me our well is very shallow. We know very limited things about the functioning of the brain. With such a limited understanding of the subject matter, being definite and conclusive about any of our views looks quite stupid. I decided not to act stupid at least and understand the relativity of all our opinions and logic. That is one of the greatest contributions of these books in my life that I learned the limitations of the well. 

I tried to explore the depth of the well through books on quantum physics. I read some of the books written by Richard P Feynman such as "Surely You Are Joking Mr. Feynman". He makes the subject like quantum physics so easy to understand. I also read some books by Stephen Hawkins about the cosmos. I watched a lot of videos on the subject. The experiments at CERN really excited me. 

In sum and summary, these books help us understand the limitations of logic and our present-day understanding. If someone has even a basic level of intelligence, one would quickly realize the limitations of thoughts and logic. We realize quickly that if we want to understand the true nature of reality, that is not at all possible with the limited science of the day. We have very limited awareness and the brain is too deceptive to allow us to explore reality if we follow its command. We have to take the command in our hands and proceed to explore reality. Logic and reason are to be used merely as a tool and not the master to guide us.