God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4)
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“There is no outward spiritual freedom in such a landscape. Do you not see it? You have no open universe here with which to share. Everything is closures—doors, latches, locks!” Sister Chenoeh asked, “Has mankind no longer any need for privacy and protection?” The Lord Leto said, “When you return, tell your Sisters that I will restore the outward view. Such a landscape as this one turns you inward in search for whatever freedom your spirits can find within. Most humans are not strong enough to find freedom within.”
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Much depends on what people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of my journals is the struggle with humankind’s view of itself—a
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system-feedback at its most primitive level. Your cells remember.
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It is not a retreat from the raw exposure of the senses (as are many trance-states) but an immersion in a multitude of new movements. Things move. It is an ultimate pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you come at last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it changes, that its rules change, that nothing remains permanent or absolute throughout all such movement, that mechanical explanations for anything can work only within precise confinements and, once the walls are broken down, the old explanations shatter and dissolve, blown ...more
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“Did you build high walls around you only to sit within them and indulge in self-pity?”
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a memory lost to consciousness but always present, shading responses from this moment onward.
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Have I not wandered intoxicated through the universe of shapes? Yes! I have seen you outlined in light. That universe which you say you see and feel, that universe is my dream.
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wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”
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“We will be Worm and wife.
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“As long as there is life, every ending is a beginning,” he said. “And I would save humankind, even from itself.” Again, she nodded. The tracks still led onward. “This is why no death in the perpetuation of humankind can be a complete failure,” he said. “This is why a birth touches us so deeply. This is why the most tragic death is the death of a youth.”
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The thing stands out against a background which defines it,
Muhammad
Obscenity, tyranny, evil. Leto drags humanity through their own survival in all the horrible ways necessary, leaving them with the contrasting backdrop to lead themselves morally
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The primate thinks and, by thinking, survives. Beneath his thinking is a thing which came with his cells. It is the current of human concerns for the species. Sometimes, they cover it up, wall it off and hide it behind thick barriers, but I have deliberately sensitized Moneo to these workings of his innermost self. He follows me because he believes I hold the best course for human survival. He knows there is a cellular awareness. It is what I find when I scan the Golden Path.
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And he thought: Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.
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Yet, the meaning is there within those memories. We carry all of our ancestry forward like a living wave, all of the hopes and joys and griefs, the agonies and the exultations of our past. Nothing within those memories remains completely without meaning or influence, not as long as there is a humankind somewhere. We have that bright Infinity all around us, that Golden Path of forever
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“The insect has no more freedom from its hive than we have freedom from our past,” he said. “The caves are there and all of the messages written in the sprays of the torrents.”
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you must pass through agony without losing your sense of self.”
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“You hate the predator’s necessary cruelty.”
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Given enough time for the generations to evolve, the predator produces particular survival adaptations in its prey
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The sunset exists in itself.
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“When you see a spectrum, do you desire one color there above all the others?”
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memory unlocks no meanings. Without anguish of the spirit, which is a wordless experience, there are no meanings anywhere.”
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“You live where the fear of being and the love of being are combined, all in one person,”
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the terrible danger of a gliding, passionless mediocrity, a movement without ambitions or aims. I show you that entire civilizations can do this thing. I give you eons of life which slips gently toward death without fuss or stirring, without even asking “Why?” I show you the false happiness and the shadow-catastrophe called Leto, the God Emperor. Now, will you learn the real happiness?
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“You dread the imperialism of consciousness,” Leto said, “and you are right to fear it.