“The vain.—We are like storefront windows in which we ourselves constantly arrange, cover up, or light up the supposed qualities that others ascribe to us—in order to deceive ourselves.”
― Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
― Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God. But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?”
― The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy of Personal Transformation
― The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy of Personal Transformation
“Psychologically, if we do not reject old habits and beliefs when confronted with the possibility of a better way of being, we end up imprisoned by a tyrannical ego complex that will perpetuate any illusion just to keep control.”
― The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation
― The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation
“A man in a boat is crossing a river when he sees an empty boat on course to collide with him.
This doesn’t make him angry even though he’s an angry person.
But then he sees someone is in the boat — he calls out, telling them to change direction.
When his first call gets no response, he calls out again.
And when the second is also met with silence, he calls out a third time, throwing in some insults for good measure.
Before, he wasn't angry — now he is.
Before, the other boat was empty — now there's someone in it.
When you imagine the boats empty you won’t be so angry.”
―
This doesn’t make him angry even though he’s an angry person.
But then he sees someone is in the boat — he calls out, telling them to change direction.
When his first call gets no response, he calls out again.
And when the second is also met with silence, he calls out a third time, throwing in some insults for good measure.
Before, he wasn't angry — now he is.
Before, the other boat was empty — now there's someone in it.
When you imagine the boats empty you won’t be so angry.”
―
“Certainly this is an animated world, a world of the simplest things. No world of will-be or must-be, it seems to me, rather a world of maybe with entirely undetermined possibilities, a world of colorful twilight. It seems as if there are only modest waysides here, close at hand, no distant targets, no broad straight military roads. No heaven above, no hell below. A strange world in between--everything merges in soft shades--a colorful painting, harmonically fused in itself.”
― The Black Books
― The Black Books
Dylanists
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— last activity Jul 18, 2019 04:25PM
For Bob Dylan fans interested in understanding and discussing the literary merits of his work.
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