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