/lit/ - Literature

>>10728453

r u for real man lol

>>10728453
(you)

>>10728462
oh shit is that guy still around, man 2017 was a crazy year

>>10728453

Start with the Greeks

>>10728468
start with the mesopotamians fags who skip gilgamesh aint gonna make it

>>10728453
lol

>>10728473
that guys like a 100 millionaire cant he afford to hire a personal trainer, im sure the building his luxury condo is in has a gym, i mean wtf

>>10728468
This, or

>>10728453
kill nigs lmao

This?

>>10728453

>>10728453
>pic related

>>10728453
>I thought it was Don DeLillo's Underworld, but 80% of the way through I Googled one of the characters and discovered I was actually reading Jennie Fields' Crossing Brooklyn Bridge, a romance novel.

>>10728453
k

Death of forever by Darryl reaney and the secret oral teachings of the Tibetan Buddhist sects. Highly recommend those two books

>>10728453
I remember when i was early 20's too, and I even quit my job. Seriously regret that now that I am working myself up the career ladder.

I wonder if this is how the older peeps look at us when we pose these stupid questions to them, going on a spiritual conquest and wanting to change the world.

To anon: do what you want to do, but you seriously won't gain anything except the experience of having spend time of your life chasing an empty goal and maybe (that's a big maybe) finding a art ho which shares your beliefs which will dump you later when she figures out that she needs more status and money in her life.

>>10728524
It sounds like you are personally repressing the same desire that OP is expressing

>>10728453

Plotinus - Enneads

Take the Platopill, friend, you'll never be the same

>>10728453
just do drugs lmao

>>10728453
Ashtavakra Gita
Advaita bodha Deepika
Vivekacudamani
Atma bodha
Kaivalya navaneeta
Baghavad Gita
Yoga Sutras of patanjali
Samkhya karika
Guadapada karika
Drgdrsyaviveka
Brahmasutra
Aparoksanubudhi

>>10728524
You seem like you misunderstood

Spirituality isn't supposed to change the world, just yourself.

>>10728462
>>10728464
>>10728465
>>10728473
>>10728482
>>10728488
>>10728492
>>10728500
>>10728524
>>10728608
Ignore these cynics, OP. They've long since given up.

>>10728453
>I recently quit my job. I have enough savings to life off for one year. I would like to read a book that is going to change the course of my life. I am 23, male, no mental illness
>quit my job
>want a book to change my life
>no mental illness
When you're that stupid, it may as well be a mental illness.

>>10728453
Try just going insane. How much do you have and did you calculate for your spending now? Build a diet of the bare essentials and live in destitute poverty for a while. Your soul will not change without being tested through hardships of the body.

>>10728453
>relying on a book to change your life. You're doing it absolutely wrong. A book can only take you so far, you need to get out and do things. travel a bit, do some charity work, build something, learn a new skill.

Most recent thing that came at least close was Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising. It teaches you about Timothy Leary's (legendary psychologist) model of the mind, and gives you some excellent references (most important of all: The Indian practice of Pranayama)

Honestly, as others have hinted at, going "on some kind of spiritual conquest" is going to be a lot more work, and a lot more complicated than just reading the right book, but there you go.

This is an online graphic novel about someone in your position. I read it ages ago and it changed my life. I think it's a great way to kill 30 minutes and I hope you enjoy it, OP.

http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

>>10729278
>That comic
It must be done.

>>10729278

They did bring to light how autistic my post sounds. It's part of 4chan's charm, and I know better than to take it seriously, but it did make me think of the place my post was coming from. It's like I thought there is a pre-packaged pilgrimage, just for me, waiting in a book. Which is absurd. This guy here >>10729636 knows, even if he doesn't understand greentext.

>>10729312

Flannery O'Connor said something like: most people don't have any kind of spiritual revelation unless something violent has happened to them. I understand that, but perhaps given that I have all this time I can at least prepare myself for the worst.

The decision to do this wasn't spur-of-the-moment. All of 2017 was about saving all my money and decreasing all my expenses. Food costs me about $25 a week (not american), and it could be free if I chose to dumpster dive (that's still an option for me, but I've only been jobless for four days now).
Thanks for all the serious suggestions. I've started with the Ashtavakra Gita.

>>10732000
Just finished reading. Thank you. Reminds me I have options other than being a vagabond.

Read, in this order:

Plato, The last days of of Socrates
Plato, The Republic
Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy
Laozi, Tao Te Ching
Borges, History of Eternity
Borges, Fervor de Buenos Aires
Muhammad, The Holy Koran
Ma'mar ibn Rashid, The Expeditions
The Bhagavad Gita
Shah, The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin
The Ramayana
Calasso, Ka
Ibn al-Farid, Poem of the Sufi way
Bataille, Inner Experience
Bataille, Erotocism
Mishima, Patriotism

If you don't end up going mad, and actually practice what you're learning rather than passively studying it, you should come out the other side on a different level than where you started.

>>10733645
Those are just things you read and mostly garbage.

>>10728467
yeah hes our leader now

>>10728453
>you only have one revolution to fight
>and it's in your head
has anything more obnoxious and rage inducing ever been said? Tell that to all the people dying under dictatorships.

Tao te ching.

>>10734022
>>you only have one revolution to fight
>>and it's in your head

it's not that obnoxious

Of Human Bondage by Maugham
I promise you

>>10734250
It's the most first world problem bullshit I've ever heard. It's like going up to a starving person and going "oh, wow, how do you stay so thin? I keep trying to diet but I just love pizza too much!"

Oh, the motherland is burning your farms to manufacture a famine and your friends and family are dying? The revolution is in your head! You're the only one holding you back!

That's called justifiable murder in the court of law.

>>10734325
yes hedonists believe they deserve safe spaces and comfort just because they were born from their moms spreading their lags before their dads

>>10728453
Don Quixote faggot. Learn what it means to be a man. Well, at least in a "do what I say not what I do" type of way.

>>10734373
Being a hypocrite is part of being a man?

>>10734379
You have quotation mark-blinders, kid? The glorious Don SAYS exactly what it is to be a man.

Start doing magic.

>>10728453
Be Here Now - Ram Dass

>>10732189
If you want western stuff read Meister Eckhart and the Cloud of Unknowing. Very good, don't forget spirituality isn't just eastern stuff.

>>10733645
>bataille inner experience
My nigger

read this anon
http://losfidante.marenectaris.net/testo/down.php?id=2

>>10728453
Read "The Ego and His Own," then "Stirner's Critics," then "The False Principle of Our Education." You will not regret it.

>>10728453

Underworld would melt your eyes and you wouldn't understand a page of what you read. The prose is dense and there is no plot.

Avoid.

>>10728453
If it must be just one book, it must be this

I mean this OP if your post isnt bait. Fiction will not be constructive enough, and self-help books may not grab you

This is the only way

Every individual possesses a limited realm of curiosity. Walk into a library and know that no one person has a purpose that will intimately acquaint them with the infinity of ideas potentially offered; what you have just done here is that very thing, asking for recommendations from a website of blank faces with as much a diversity of purposes and proclivities as there are creative possibilities in a library. It's folly.

Walk your own path. Read the humanities, read some classic literature, read some British romanticism, read some philosophy; follow your instincts and make sure you eradicate all boundaries.

The Joyce novel I threw aside last month your life might've depended on. The whatever tome you threw aside last year I might've read 16 times because my life depended on it. The idea is to not give a fuck just go til you die

>>10728754
I only managed the Bhagavad Gita out of all of those and that did enough for me desu

What is this world of hatred and strife and war and hatred and strife and war. Is it, perchance, a world of hatred and strife and war and of hatred and strife and war. The answer is YES it fucking well is and I want out. I want the underground of life where I am now, the underground of life. But where is this you may ask and how can I get there. Well, if you are working then walk Out straight away, get on a bus and go home and say fuck you employer and be quick with my last pay cheque. Say fuck to giving notice, if you can’t walk out just like that then you won’t be able to hack the underground. Then get yourself a garret to starve in and sign on the dole. Be prepared for being fucked around for weeks and months before you see any money, especially if you walked out on your job. Now say to yourself I’m finished with all that shit. So that’s about the equivalent of dipping your big toe into the waters of the underground before wading in. Now stuff your central nervous system with hallucinogens listening to Beethoven’s Ninth/The Cure/just about anything at full blast for months. Buy a second-hand aquarium and set it up in your garret, it doesn’t matter if the glass is cracked you’re going to use it for growing psilocybin cubensis mushrooms. When the weather gets warmer start sowing the marijuana seeds. Think of yourself as being on the run from the law, or forever one step ahead of the posse, or the landlord of a brothel. You’re not “living” any more, you’re “holding out”. Then find an artform in which to work, start drawing in pen and ink, buy a battered typewriter. Become reclusive, don’t shave, grow a beard, keep your hair unkempt, throw things on the floor, keep chickens in your room. Recite “Property is theft” ten times a day or until it seems obvious. Read books like Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground”, Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London”, Raoul Vaneigem’s “The Revolution of Everyday Life” and Miyamoto Musashi’s “A Book of Five Rings. Swot up on your Burroughs, Beckett, Celine, Kerousc, Coctesu, Rimbaud, Hesse, Poe, Baudelaire, Lautreamont, Nietzsche, Joyce, Stein. That’s a decent start, now the water’s up to your waist and the tide seems to be taking you further away from the shore and “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin” seems strangely subversive. Now read “Desert Island BIFF” just to make absolutely sure you don’t turn into a jerk. At this stage there are two directions you can go in – back to your parents’ home and beg to be taken back in because you’ve found the big wide world too harsh, or onward. Or the former followed by the latter if you need a breathing space. Now get stuck into Crowley, read “Magick” and “The Magical Record of the Beast 666”. Read the works of Austin Osman Spare and start casting sigils. Spend more on incense than clothes. Give money to bums though you can't afford to...

>>10736750
>keep chickens in your room
Gold, I wanna meet the guy who does this
post sounds like it was written by the protagonist of Bukowski's Barfly

>>10728453
just one book?

seconding this anon: >>10736723