The Red Book: A Reader's Edition
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That was the stuff and material for more than only one life.
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bloody laughter
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The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.
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If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing.
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The wealth of the soul exists in images.
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hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.44
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Dreams are the guiding words of the soul.
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A maiden is the pregnant future. A boy is the engendering future. A woman is: having given birth. A man is: having engendered.
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What is better, that man has life ahead of him, or that God does?
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You should all become Christs.62
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If you take a step toward your soul, you will at first miss the meaning. You will believe that you have sunk into meaninglessness, into eternal disorder. You will be right! Nothing will deliver you from disorder and meaninglessness, since this is the other half of the world.
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Order and meaning are things that have become and are no longer becoming.
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You open the gates of the soul to let the dark flood of chaos flow into your order and meaning. If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.
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Christ totally overcomes the temptation of the devil, but not the temptation of God to good and reason.67 Christ thus succumbs to cursing.68 You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do everything of your own will; then you will be free and beyond Christianity. I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I fear; yes, even more, that I must even love what horrifies me.
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Solitude is true only when the self is a desert.
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Think diligently about the images that the ancients have left behind. They show the way of what is to come.
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—Do you still not know that the way to truth stands open only to those without intentions?”
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We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law.
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intention is the limitation,
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Keep it far from me, science that clever knower,86 that bad prison master who binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless cell.
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Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine.
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Because I was caught up in the spirit of this time, precisely what happened to me on this night had to happen to me, namely that the spirit of the depths erupted with force, and swept away the spirit of this time with a powerful wave. But the spirit of the depths had gained this power, because I had spoken to my soul during 25 nights in the desert and I had given her all my love and submission. But during the 25 days, I gave all my love and submission to things, to men, and to the thoughts of this time. I went into the desert only at night. Thus can you differentiate sick and divine delusion. ...more
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Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new. The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.