Tormented by god. The mystic nihilism of Emil Cioran Quotes

“For Cioran, existence is a «metaphysical exile and Plotinus is right when he writes that in this life we feel like “the soul that has lost its wings”». We cannot love birth when its main purpose is to lead us to our coffin. This is why melancholy is the quintessential metaphysical feeling: «On the Santander mountains, in the midst of a magnificent landscape, some cows had a sad expression, according to my friend Núnez Morante. “Why are they sad?” I say to him. They have everything I dream of: silence, the sky […]. “They are sad because they are, por ser”, he replied».”
― Mirko Integlia, Tormented by god. The mystic nihilism of Emil Cioran

“Cioran experiences having been thrown into the world as a moment of exile and, like all exiled people, he lives in a constant state of melancholy far form his "home" and from the "lost paradise." This homesick feeling of displacement is materialized in tears”
― Mirko Integlia, Tormented by god. The mystic nihilism of Emil Cioran

“Do not forget that my entire life has been a frantic search, heightened by the fear of finding. This anomaly bursts forth in the religious sphere especially. I am certain that I have sought God, but I am even more certain that I have done everything possible not to find Him. One day, a French friend told me I was a kind of Pascal, who would invent any reason not to believe. But you may object, “In that case, why read and discuss the mystics? Why address the religious problem at all?”
I could give you many answers, but I will mention only one, the main one, at least as far as I am concerned: I grapple with God not out of need for certainty, or an inner drive or even metaphysical curiosity; the origin of all my cries are Him, as well as all the sarcasm with which I glorified Him, must be sought in a total and oppressive feeling of solitude, at the end of which God automatically, so to speak, appears. He never would have appeared in my life if my solitude had not been stronger than I am. But as it was beyond my strength, I needed there to be someone to help me overcome it. This has nothing to do with faith. It is the fleeting fruit of one of these almost unbearable movements whose secret I have known and still know. this is why one of the things I understand best, to this day, is prayer–by which I mean the reasons that propel one towards it, the terrible laceration from which it comes.”
― Mirko Integlia, Tormented by god. The mystic nihilism of Emil Cioran

“Heresy is also healthy because it awakens official religion from its slumbers: «it represents the sole responsibility of reinvigorating men’s consciences, that by shaking them up it preserves them from the sluggishness into which conformism plunges them».”
― Mirko Integlia, Tormented by god. The mystic nihilism of Emil Cioran

“The man who has drunk the bitter cup of such wisdom, who has awakened form the illusory reality of himself and the world, is taken over by melancholy because the desires that drove his passions have died; as a result, if he wants to come back to life, to breathe, to act, there is only one route he can take: he must free himself from his science such that he conceives that his salvation lies in «non-knowledge».”
― Mirko Integlia, Tormented by god. The mystic nihilism of Emil Cioran