People/art/non-fiction that helped build your philosophy/religion

[psychedelicsoul]

Anthem by Ayn Rand
What I learned from reading Ayn Rand was the danger of rejecting individualism in favor of some so called "collective good". It is probably the reason why I take that value to such an extreme

Sigmund Freud
To me, I admire Frued more from a philosophical point of view. Some of the stuff he said specifically about the mind have been proven false, however, his belief in the Id, Ego and Super Ego inspired some of the basic tenants of my belief. I combine his psychological views on that subject with my spiritual views of enlightenment.

Timothy Leary
I'll always have tremendous respect for Tim Leary. That dude pushed the boundaries of what acid was supposingly able to do. I understood and learned a lot through acid trips, and thanks to the "psychedelic experiance". I have felt ego death, and I wouldn't understand it if it weren't for Timothy Leary. Even in non-psychedelic drugs like Diphenhydramine, a lot of his concepts like "set and setting" helped me explore my spirit better.

The DXM faq
https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/faq/
I've had more access to DXM than psychedelics and I've had more experiances that I would say border on spiritual with it. This stuff helped keep me safe and helped me understand the drug better

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I read the book and saw the movie. I'll tell you right now, this book, and more so the movie, isn't totally acurate to real psychedelic trips. However, some of the stuff said about drugs do resonate with me. It also helped expose the flaws with relying only on psychedelics and not using your own mind to achieve a state of higher thinking. This is all in it's reflection of the hippie counterculture and it's failures.

Ghost in the Shell
This show helped me rationalize the belief in Cartesian Dualism and the soul. And, while most likely unintentionally, it addressed the criticisms towards the belief. In Ghost in the Shell, all humans have a soul (ghost), but to inhabite a cybernetic body, you needed a cyberbrain. Throughout the show, cyber-brain hacking is a big part of the story. There's also viruses that affect ones cyber brain. This means that while the persons individual self comes from their soul, thier ability to think and function in the real world comes from their brain. The #1 argument against dualism is the fact that brain structure affects ones thoughts.

Neon Genesis Evangelion
This show taught me a lot about inner peace and dealing with ones self. The final two episodes of this show end up becoming an abstact look into the characters mind. It's message was able to lovingly display the need for others, as well as the need for individuality. It showed me the importance of friends and the need that we have for others. However, it also showed how those things build up ones individuality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUnSGRosNBQ
This helped me define the views on morality and individuality that I always had. I always undestood this, but it took me this show to help me put my beliefs into words. It's also one of the shows that inspired me to continue trying to change my sexuality.

Gurren Lagann
At ones point I was in a real bad depression. I was struggling with the pain of being bisexual. As you all know, I tortured myself. My goal has been to keep my mood as down as possible. But what was that doing? As a result, I subconciously gave up on trying to change. I was just torturing myself to feel miserable all the time. I even cried, and that's super rare for me. But after seeing Gurren Lagann, grand master badass Kamina showed me what I was doing wrong...
All I was giving myself was pain and negative emotions. However, I was missing one key ingrediant... Hope... You see, I needed the positive emotion of hope in order to change... huh... hope and change... You need hope in order to change, and at that moment I was just sad and hopeless. After I realized that, then the torture become a more positive experiance because I had hope. And this is all because Gurren Lagann inspired me.

"Reject common sense and make the impossible possible"... You have know idea how those words made me believe in myself.

 

[DimeBagJohnny]

It's interesting that television shows have inspired your spiritual path. I'll have to check them out. Anyway, my main inspirations are:

1. Alan Watts
Check out his lectures on YouTube. He makes so much sense. Helped me view life and death in a different light.

2. Adyashanti
His lectures are very peaceful and calming. Like Mr. Watts he makes certain spiritual concepts easier to understand.

3. The Power of Now by Eckharte Tolle
Excellent book on mindfulness. By far the most simple and effective book I've read on living in the now.

 

[tantric]

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses

these books pretty much replaced marxism in my understanding of human social history.