/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14687993]

I want to believe in something transcendent but I just don't and pretending is tiresome. Recommend me something to read that confirms or questions this feeling.

[Anonymous No.14688008]

>>14687993

https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf

[Anonymous No.14688081]

>>14687993
I believe the Enlightenment thinking has become so deeply embedded in us that we can't really just believe in something as people used to do. We need proof for it. When I look at the people today who only "believe" in the Transcendent, I mainly see two groups: first, the normal religious people who are too scared to let go of it, and cling to it only out of weakness and fear; second, the crackpots like guenonfag (I don't believe I need to explain more on this group). Only people like this can believe in something so significant without a proper proof.

But then there is the internal drive towards to the transcendent. It cannot just be as it is. It can't be so bland and simple. So I can't merely take the words of prophets, but also I can't just let go of the desire.

The only viable alternative I could find was the metaphysics of Schopenhauer. He is a Kantian so he makes sure every one of his metaphysical claims are properly justified, but he also identifies something, as you say, transcendent, that properly relieves that desire, as if I finally found truth. So he fulfills both of these requirements very well, and it was probably because of this that he was so popular with figures like Einstein and Jung.

[Anonymous No.14688118]

>>14688081
Good post. I should add that I actually do believe in one thing, I believe that there is a "God" in an abstract sense, I believe this totally, I don't even doubt it at all. (Thanks, Descartes) However, I don't believe anything *about* God, just that God exists. So there you have it. Not really much to stand on as far as grounding one's life although I would love to build on that if I knew how.

[Anonymous No.14688188]

>>14688118
Schopenhauer, based on his idea of the transcendent, advocates moderate asceticism and contentment along with devotion to the arts and intellectual endeavors like philosophy. I would recommend reading his works, maybe his philosophy would resonate with you.

[Anonymous No.14688273]

>>14688081
Your assessment strike me as quite sensible but I feel you fail to account for the people who are naturally inclined to feeling the divine, to experiecing reverence toward it, while also having been raised in an environment that foster this feature of their character. Those people definitely exist, they might not be that rare, and they do feel that God is in their life in some sense.

I remember my aunt, who's religious more out of habit than anything, note that all her children were not more religious than her except one, who was always very intense, very focused during religious service, and who ended moving to a more religious community. For having met her a few times after her wedding, I do feel like religion is part of her life very much in a traditional sense, belief included.

That's not even touching the third world which in no small part still has maintained entire chunks of its old religious beliefs. You should really ask someone from rural Maghreb if they ever witnessed an exorcism or even witness one yourself if you can. It's still not unheard of in the more far-off town and I've been told it's extremely impressive, I'm talking horror-movie level of impressive, people shrieking, beating their relatives, having violent convulsions because they are intimately convinced that they're possessed by a demon.

It seems unthinkable to us, we think it's playacting. But it's not. It happened in the family of one of my best friends, his sister-in-law would wake up at night and shriek like a animal and hit her husband, the husband lost his job over this, their mother lost 20 pounds. The cause ? Someone had left on their door a jar of oil and a piece of paper with some malevolent writing in it. The family immediately identified it as dark magic, and as the "offering" kept happening every day the sister-in-law stated acting like a possessed. And it happened in France (though in Algerian family). My friend had to go back there, put some cameras and investigate back in the homeland to see what was up. After the camera the offerings stopped, and he suspect some resentful neighbor back home is trying to avenge a perceived slight.

The point of this overly long story is, never underestimate the power of spirits, because people believe in them. You wouldn't imagine how much. And even in your post-Enlightenment lands, we still hold tight to our spirits, only we call them different names, and summon them with shinier rituals.

[Anonymous No.14688383]

>>14688273
I agree with your points. I do believe that most of the accounts regarding the supernatural are false and superstitious, but some of them, I believe, are genuine. They are even acknowledged in Schopenhauer's system as the manifestations of the Will.

I also didn't want to disregard those people with such strong intuitive inclinations that their own internal feelings suffice for their beliefs, though I very much suspect such people are very rare.

I have actually had direct experiences with cultures unaffected by the Enlightenment. Though I acknowledge there are important truths in their beliefs, more so there are annoyingly superstitions and gullible. This was for a long time a question of mine that whether this mindset, that allows for some truths but along with many falsehoods, is preferable to our own, that disregards all such superstitions but at the cost of important truths.

Regardless of which is better, both of them seem to be severely lacking. I believe (or at least hope) that in the future more attention would be brought to the works of Schopenhauer and Jung who were working to overcome exactly this problem.

[Anonymous No.14688990]

Submission by Houellebecq

[Anonymous No.14689013]

>>14687993
You don't need any books. Just go for a walk and behold with some attention how things implies the need of a creator.

[Anonymous No.14689022]

>>14687993
then stop pretending, and start looking you filthy cunt

[Anonymous No.14689024]

>>14688008
I would recommend starting with the Bhagavad Gita personally. Its a distillation of the Upanishads and I find it a very accessible read.
https://ia803006.us.archive.org/7/items/bhagavadgita_20190701_1146/Bhagavad%20Gita.pdf
Since we are on the subject I also enjoyed the following short work by Evola
http://www.cakravartin.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/Julius-Evola-Meditation-on-the-Peaks-Mountain-Climbing-as-Metaphor-for-the-Spiritual-Quest.pdf
Another read, although maybe it should be read at the beginning, is this work by Guenon. It serves as a great introduction to metaphysics in general.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.280367/page/n2/mode/2up
Finally I think that I should mention that maybe the most important part is not always the reading, and learning that type of knowledge, but joining a tradition and engaging in the rituals. If you don't do that you will always be relegated to the side lines and I don't think you will ever find what you are looking for.

[Anonymous No.14689087]

>>14688383
>most of the accounts regarding the supernatural are false and superstitious, but some of them, I believe, are genuine
My point (but perhaps you undestood it also in that sense) is that the supernatural character of those manifestations is beyond the points, they're very natural manifestation of the human sensitivity to influences, and this sensitivity shapes our lives all the way through. That's why most accounts from those third world areas are genuine, they're genuine in that the minds of people are genuinely impacted, and very deeply at that.

>though I very much suspect such people are very rare
How rare, that is a difficult question to answer. I suspect it's not that rare depending on areas.

>This was for a long time a question of mine that whether this mindset, that allows for some truths but along with many falsehoods, is preferable to our own, that disregards all such superstitions but at the cost of important truths.
Not sure a choice can be made anyway, but we could be more aware about the spiritual (and sometimes superstitional) character of our own mental categories. I remember watching a conference by the french anthropologist Tobie Nathan (unfortunately the conference was also in french, so I doubt people here will want to see it) where he said "When you tell an African you have no god, he knows you're French. The African man knows it's impossible to have no god, and he also knows the French is the man who claims to have no god, the man whose god is named "no god"."

>I believe (or at least hope) that in the future more attention would be brought to the works of Schopenhauer and Jung who were working to overcome exactly this problem.

I feel German idealism (and I include the kantian Schopenhauer in that) is too influenced by the Enlightenment, too wound up in the subject-object distinction to really capture those issues. Maybe Jung would be better. At any rate I find mself increasingly drawn to anthropologist. If there is a primal belief shared by all ancient culture, the one most likely to observe it still must be the anthropologist. And I suspect the answer is animism, we're all instinctive animist starting in childhood.

[Anonymous No.14689090]

>>14687993
Edward Fesers 5 proofs of God is actually pretty solid. He taught college philosophy for years. He thought most of the arguments for God were pretty bad so he went back and studied them more in depth to try and give his students a bit more substance and began to realize the real arguments were a lot better than he thought. Eventually became catholic because he could not refute the best version of theological proofs.
Even if you aren't convinced his argument for Aristotle's first cause will give you a lot to think about.

[Anonymous No.14689114]

>>14689087
>Maybe Jung would be better.
Maybe Jung had slightly different opinions personally then what he published professionally, as I have yet to read the red book, but from what I have seen from his work on Archetypes and his other an Alchemy he psychologizes the divine.
I think there is a great deal that he gets correct but some of these things are metaphysical in nature and exists beyond the mind.
Evola also gave an interesting critique in that he argued since his work had some basis if Freud in accepting Jung you at some level were forced to accept Freud by a process called dilution.
Evola like Yockey held Frued, Marx, and Darwin as saint like figures with respect to modernity and if you are looking for the transcendent I don't think you will find it with them or anything built from their frameworks.

[Anonymous No.14689119]

>>14689087
Good points, and the story about the African made me laugh. I don't doubt the genuineness of third accounts, and in most cases they are certainly valuable sources of information if one were to analyze them, but only that purely as they are, they can hardly be considered knowledge. Regarding Schopenhauer, he explicitly argues against subject-object distinction. Not sure how you hold it against him.

[Anonymous No.14690117]

Believe in belief.

[Anonymous No.14690127]

>>14688081
>Only people like this can believe in something so significant without a proper proof.
I'm not making any epistemological argument when I say this but, okay faggot.