This site welcomes any reader looking to make sense of this rather ambiguous existence, agitated by apparently impredictable currents of elation and despair.

The "Tales" mentioned in the title refer to thought experiments.

Since all stories are thought experiments, they are not used as proofs, but as tools, in order to explore  our consciousness.

Here, we are replacing the saying Reality is a sleight of consciousness with 

Constant satisfaction is a sleight of consciousness

As for the term "paradoxical," it applies to anything we cannot explain, yet. However, we can always  marvel. How/why something is a wave and a particle at the same time illustrates well what a contemporary paradoxical tale could be!

 

 

"Within" is our main guide in the aquisition of a contemporary Philosopher’s Stone: a technique that transmutes a difficult existence, weighed down by loneliness, doubts, fear, etc. into a fluid odyssey, hopefully leading to

an inalterable peace of mind!

.

 

WITHIN

allows the Reader to acquire a contemporary Philosopher’s Stone

The reader should also have a look at The Boof of Aprorisms, a work in progress.

It provides food for thoughts, curiously harvested in all scientific and literary fields.

 

 

 

The rest of the site shows some variations on the same topic:

How to transmute a mortal existence often filled with some ups and sometimes too many downs... into an astounding life?

Below are some books of uneven quality, but they mean well.

Betty's Bad Times Stories

Please note that

THE PHYSICS OF PARTICULARS

is available in a Kindle Version at Amazon.com

The main narrator of The Physics of Particulars is sent to exile in a strange Village, built around a mysterious character who seemed to be deeply revered by all the other inhabitants.

Quite disoriented at first, our essentially skeptical hero is confronted to misunderstanding, solitude, sickness, jealousy and others common vagaries we must all encounter sooner or later, anywhere on this Earth.

Little by little, he meets a few remarkable personalities who are going to transform him radically into… not a zombie, not an extremist, but into a philosopher!

Now, it is true that in this 21st Century, zombies and extremists have a better reputation than philosophers.

However, and to paraphrase the poet Novalis, it is unfortunate that "philosophy bears a specific name and that philosophers are considered members of a special circle, while it is not something separated from life, and absolutely not a specialty, but the very path of the human mind, its very own way of behaving."

(“Aren't all men dreaming and inventing their existence, every minute of their days?”)

The Physics of Particulars dives with unadulterated delight in all aspects of knowledge accessible to us, from Lao-tzu, Master Eckhart, Ibn Arabi, the Pre-Socratics to the very popular neurosciences and… the Physics of Particles, of course!

Do not be fooled by the title, a mere consequence of the author not being able to resist an easy pun, and unaware the title could be read as some horror story, or a compilation of awkward complains composed by some forlorn Betty.
On the contrary, "Betty's Bad Times Stories" is actually a rather optimistic book, dabbing in ancient and contemporary tales, and classical philosophy.
Its subtitle is a more positive sounding

"Forgotten Healing Tales".

Just POEMS

In the South of France, during the early 14th Century, a monk named Bérot claimed he had discovered “the divine truth.”

Actually, those were not his exact words, but the suspicion that he may have pronounced them was enough for the Catholic Church to initiate a heresy trial against him.

A history professor, the narrator of The Man Who Knew the Truth, happened to be routinely studying this particular heresy case, a rather common occurrence in the Middle Ages, when he notices that the cardinal who was supposed to compose the monk’s condemnation, suddenly disappears from the Papal Palace. He recognizes him, disguised as a simple traveling friar, infiltrated in the monastery where Bérot is hiding.

 The fact that an eminent cardinal had renounced his powerful position to meet the obscure heretic, piques the professor’s curiosity., so much so that he too decides, some six hundred years later, to investigate Bérot’s secret.

 

During his research, the narrator encounters some noticeable characters: a fighting monk, some hidden prophets, a few very despicable villains, a couple of witches seen riding devil-shaped clouds, etc.

For his readers, he paints the historical background of a Europe inhabited by legends, great mysteries, superstitions, appalling social injustices…

Also, in the monastery where Bérot and his ex-prosecutor met, the history professor observes an open-mindedness certainly rare for the time, and maybe even for our very enlightened, modern days.