/lit/ - Literature

how do i know if i've fallen out of love with my girlfriend or am just depressed?

>>13664728
Currently it's all about Phil's Exegesis for me. So this paragraph might serve as an interesting starting point:

> ...the Creator is a joiner; not of organizations but of sections assembled separately in different places and then somehow brought together; the places are our category “space,” then, when brought together, “time.” If the Other is not bound by the categories of perception time and space, then he is here now, was here, will be, and since not phenomenalistically, then he is not outside but within us. Like Plotinus’ concept of concentric rings of emanation, we encounter our Others in gradually increasing intensity and clarity; they become clearer to us continually. It is as if the will which drives animals and bugs, in the form of blind instinct, begins one day in us to actually speak. This is the Logos [Tao]... [4:103].

Also, here's another (good) one from Simone Weil's book: On the Abolition of all Political Parties, she writes:
> When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is the truth?,’ Jesus did not reply. He had already answered when he said, ‘I came to bear witness to the truth.’ There is only one answer. Truth is all the thoughts that surge in the mind of a thinking creature whose unique, total, exclusive desire is for the truth. Mendacity, error (the two words are synonymous), are the thoughts of those who do not desire truth, or those who desire truth plus something else. For instance, they desire truth, but they also desire conformity with such or such received ideas.
Yet how can we desire truth if we have no prior knowledge of it? This is the mystery of all
mysteries. Words that express a perfection which no mind can conceive of – God, truth, justice – silently evoked with desire, but without any preconception, have the power to lift up the soul and flood it with light. It is when we desire truth with an empty soul and without attempting to guess its content that we receive the light. Therein resides the entire mechanism of attention.

I would certainly recommend both authors.

>>13647968
I've recently started reading the unabridged version of St. Augustine's City of God. It's incredibly interesting on so many different levels, and his numerous rants about Romans are, maybe, at certain places unfair, but surprisingly entertaining:

> All the spoiling, then, which Rome was exposed to in the recent calamity—all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and misery—was the result of the custom of war. But what was novel, was that savage barbarians showed themselves in so gentle a guise, that the largest churches were chosen and set apart for the purpose of being filled with the people to whom quarter was given, and that in them none were slain, from them none forcibly dragged; that into them many were led by their relenting enemies to be set at liberty, and that from them none were led into slavery by merciless foes. Whoever does not see that this is to be attributed to the name of Christ, and to the Christian temper, is blind; whoever sees this, and gives no praise, is ungrateful; whoever hinders any one from praising it, is mad. Far be it from any prudent man to impute this clemency to the barbarians. Their fierce and bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and marvellously tempered by Him who so long before said by His prophet, “I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes; nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from them.

>>13647148
Alice in Wonderland

>>13644654
J.K. Lavater's writing on alchemy: https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/readbook/AlchemyItsScienceandRomance_10000108#31

Paracelsus's writing on alchemy: https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/readbook/TheHermeticandAlchemicalWritingsofAureolusPhilippusTheophrastusBombastofHohenhei_10574317

John Dee's writing on (enochian) magic:
http://www.timysteries.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/John-Dees-Five-Books-of-Myster-Joseph-H.-Peterson.pdf

All of them are known to people who are in the field (especially John Dee, who might be known even in popular culture), however, when it comes to knowing their work (as in: actually reading), I'm not sure that there are people who are familiar with it.

>>13644652
Religious and mystical texts.

>>13645375
Anything that is worth achieving, is worth struggling.