The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy
Austin Osman Spare
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Others believe in prayer . . . . have not all yet learnt, that to ask it to be denied? Let it be the root of your Gospel. Oh, ye who are living other peoples lives! Unless desire is subconscious, it is not fulfilled, no, not in this life. Then verily sleep is better than prayer. Quiescence is hidden desire, a form of "not asking"; by it the female obtains much from man.”
“The nature of belief equals all possibilities ultimately true by identification through culture to an idea of time, so what is not timely is not true, and what is not true, prognostication. Thought of one thing, implies the possibility of another idea as contradicting but not dissociated, belief is to make “one” more convincing. The condition of belief is the denial or limit imposed on the capability of the vitality. To believe at all as such is a concentration and schooling to exclude the implied by adopting a a hypothesis or faith that reflects non-worryingly or deceitfully rationalizes the rejected. Truth is not the truth of formula.”
“The law of Kia is its own arbiter, beyond necessitation, who can grasp the nameless Kia? Obvious but unintelligible, without form, its design most excellent. Its wish for superabundance, who can assert its mysterious purpose? By our knowledge it becomes more obscure, more remote, and our faith-opacity. Without attribute, I know not its name. How free it is, it has no need of sovereignty! (Kingdoms are their own despoilers.) Without lineage, who dare claim relationship? Without virtue, how pleasing in its moral self-love! How mighty is it, in its assertion of "Need not be-Does not matter!”
“The law of Kia is its ever original purpose, undetermined, without change the emanations, through our conception they materialize and are of that duality, man takes this law from his refraction, his ideas-reality. With what does he balance his ecstasy? Measure for measure by intense pain, sorrow, and miseries. With what his rebellion? Of necessity slavery! Duality is the law, realization by suffering, relates and opposes by units of time. Ecstasy of any length of time is difficult to obtain, and laboured heavily for. Various degrees of misery alternating with gusts of pleasure and emotions less anxious, would seem the condition of consciousness and existence.”
“The dual principle is the quintessence of all experience, no ramification has enlarged its early simplicity, but is only its repetition, modification or complexity, never is its evolution complete. It cannot go further than the experience of self-so returns and unites again and again, ever an anti-climax. Forever retrogressing to its original simplicity by infinite complication is its evolution. No man shall understand "Why" by its workings. Know it as the illusion that embraces the learning of all existence. The most aged one who grows no wiser, it may be regarded as the mother of all things. Therefore believe all experience to be illusion, and the law of duality.”
“Self-love in complete perspective, serves its own invincible purpose of ecstasy. Supreme bliss simulating opposition is its balance. It suffers no hurt, neither does it labour. Is it not self-attracting and independent? Assuredly we cannot call it balance.”
“Kia transcending conception, is unchanging and inexhaustible, there is no need of illumination to see it. If we open our mouths to speak of it, it is not of it but our duality, mighty though it be in its early simplicity! Kia without conceiving, produces its rendezvous as the fulness of creation. Without assertion the mightiest energy, without smallness it may appear as the least among things. Its possession is ours without asking, its being free, the only thing that is free.”
“Ideas of Self in conflict cannot be slain, by resistance they are a reality- no Death or cunning has overcome them but is there reinforcement of energy. The dead are born again and again lie in the womb of conscience. By allowing maturity is to predicate decay when by non-resistance is retrogression to early simplicity and the passage to the original and unity without idea. From that idea is the formula of non-resistance germinating "Does not matter- please yourself.”
“He that entirely loves himself induces self-love only. He is akin to the great purpose, his actions explained for him, good seen of his evil, without knowing, everyone satisfied with his will. Do not Heaven and Earth unite daily in spontaneous homage to this will of self-love? No man can show greater self-love, than by giving up all he believes. Why do I value this self-love before all else? Is it not because I may be free to believe in evil, but have no thought that anything can do me injury? All is self-love, the people of the world, if they only knew, are its devotees. My new law is the great clue to life. If the world could understand this, the rotten fabric discarded, they would diligently follow the way in their own hearts, there would be no further desire for unity . . . . Try and imagine what this implies.”
“But the "Neither-neither" principle of those two, is the state where the mind has passed beyond conception, it cannot be balanced, since it implies only itself. The "I" principle has reached the "Does not matter- need not be" state, and is not related to form. Save and beyond it, there is no other, therefore it alone is complete and eternal. Indestructible, it has power to destroy-therefore it alone is true freedom and existence. Through it comes immunity from all sorrow, therefore the spirit is ecstasy.”
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