What is the best book on spirituality you have read? Perhaps a book that changed your life?
What is the best book on spirituality you have read? Perhaps a book that changed your life?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Agreed.Originally Posted by Desolation
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
As a teenager, Jonathon Livingston Seagull inspired me to do what I wanted to do, instead of what other people told me to do.
Hamlet
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. This is a must-read, non-fiction.
Look, you con man, make a living out of your death.
-E. Hemingway
A bunch for me -- the top of the list is Walden, which has influenced me more than any other book. Another one is the complete poems of Robert Lowell; I know he's not the greatest poet or anything, but his poems always strike a spiritual chord with me.
“Oh crap”
-- Hellboy
Robert Lowell is one of the major American poets of the late 20th century. He may not be "the greatest poet" but he's very significant, and possibly the most important American poet since Wallace Stevens.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
For me, it's Swamp Thing. You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not.
I KNOW I would love Walden. I'll read that one next.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
William Blake's poetry. The poetry and prose of Thomas Traherne. Also Rilke.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Most recently, Rumi. He is one of the greatest mystic poets I have ever read, comparable to even great religious scripture.
The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite — to tell —
-Emily Dickinson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGIvr6WVw4
The Brothers Karamazov
CHAPTER IX
The devil. Ivan´s Nightmare
"You'll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with eagerness for life! 'There are new men,' you decided last spring, when you were meaning to come here, 'they propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they didn't ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that's how we have to set to work. It's that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon as men have all of them denied God -- and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will come to pass -- the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what's more, the old morality, and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven. Everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it's useless for him to repine at life's being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave'... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!"
Need I say more.....
I'm always home, I'm uncool.
Fifth Business - Robertson Davies.
Alan Watts' The Book.
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
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