Access the Sublime & Live Your Best Life | Robert Greene

“I have a signed copy, thanks to you, on my shelf. I return to it often. And I'm thrilled you've written this new book, The Law of the Sublime. I'm so excited. I haven't read it yet because I just got it from you today. But my question is pretty straightforward.”

“context of general principles. The law of the sublime is about... It's about experience. It's about how you experience your day-to-day life, not in terms of success or power or dealing with other people, but just your sense of how you experience being alive and how you kind of open yourself up to the strangeness of this world that we inhabit.”

“each chapter ends with exercises that you can use to kind of bring these ideas that I've introduced to you in this specific chapter into your daily experience. Because I don't want this to be an academic book about the sublime and the brain and all these other things. I want it to be something that you incorporate into your daily life.”

“And I don't want to give this feeling like the sublime is some elite experience that only rich people can have. The point of the book is that the need for a transcendent experience, which is what the sublime is about in many ways, is as important a need to humans as clothing, as shelter, as companionship, as anything else.”

“a long time. And this is really woo, what I'm about to ask. But in researching this and writing The Law of the Sublime, did you ever think about like what was the experience of some of the people that you had written about earlier?”

“I can't really find anything sublime in their experience. I try to write about the dark side of human nature in the sublime book and how we can see something sublime in it, but kind of the dark side of the sublime. There's something sublimely evil in the world, right?”

“Is there any way to access the sublime through human-human interaction? Yes, most definitely. So I have a chapter called The Love Sublime. And it's not the art of seduction. And people are going, Robert, have you changed? And I go, well, no, seduction is a book in itself, but love is something different.”

Our IdentificationDescribed, not named. We believe this refers to The Law of the Sublime.

“of your own ego. And the chapter is called Escape the Prison of the Ego, the Love Sublime. And the idea is the human being is two sides to us. We're physical, we have an animal side, but we have something else.”

Our IdentificationDescribed, not named. We believe this refers to The Law of the Sublime.

“I really appreciate those thoughts and insights. I was just thinking about your book, The Law of the Sublime, as a portal into richer experience. I wasn't thinking about the macro there. Were you thinking about the sort of macro offering and hope for the book to have that impact as you wrote it?”

“Art of Seduction. Another one of his books, entitled Mastery, remains one of my all-time favorite books and is one that I have recommended to the students I've taught in classes in my laboratory and to my friends and family and acquaintances for years.”

“The Robert Green. Welcome back. Andrew Huberman. Well, thank you. I'm not shy about my adoration of your book, Mastery. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Long before I had a podcast, I recommended it to students in my courses related to biology and neuroscience when they would ask for book recommendations.”

“But my question is pretty straightforward. So if 48 Laws of Power was about how the world is constructed and how to navigate it, and Mastery was about mentorship and how to realize our unique gifts and potential, and laws of human nature, you've written a lot of books, my friend, is how we understand ourselves and others in the context of general principles.”

“and think independently. So there's that danger. And then on the level of mastery, in which I'm talking about how the human brain functions and what it wants and what it needs as nourishment, is it needs slowness.”

“I'd like to talk a little bit more about childhood. And I know I've asked you this in a previous meeting, but long ago when I read Mastery, I was just, you know, like clubbed over the head in the best possible sense of the phrase with the statement that you made that some event early in life for each of us kind of portends what we should or ought to explore later in life.”

“themselves. Not just what they meant, but the sounds of them, right? Obsessed me. But after writing mastery, a lot of people would come to me because I talk about your life's task. And I also have a chapter in the new book about this concept.”

“You're a real role model to me and have been for a long time. Oh, thank you. You really are. I mean, ever since I read Mastery, I was like, oh, shit, man, this book, this guy, like, you know, and you're a few years older than me, not terribly much older. And so that's always been a goal of mine is to, you know, identify people for whom I could really model some”

“My guest today is Robert Green. Robert Green is a renowned author of books such as The Laws of Human Nature, The 48 Laws of Power, and The Art of Seduction. Another one of his books, entitled Mastery, remains one of my all-time favorite books and is one that I have recommended to the students I've taught in classes in my laboratory and to my friends and family and acquaintances for years.”

“some of the people that you had written about earlier? Like the intense life of somebody like 50 cent, the intense life of some of the people you wrote about in, um, the laws of seduction, who are these extreme examples of life energy funneled through a particular personality and style and many of whom, I mean, 50 is still around, but many of whom are, they die early.”

Our IdentificationSaid as “the laws of seduction”. We believe this refers to The Art of Seduction.

“One of the reasons I love Aquaria and I have so many fish tanks is that whether there's one fish or octopus or many, when you look at a fish tank or an ocean scene of any kind, the mind enters this weird state because you can't control nor can you predict what's going to happen next.”

“because handwriting is a very sensual experience where this isn't. And so I got all these fountain pens and I buy all these different colored inks from this company in Italy. And the different, the inks have this beautiful kind of flow to it and a feel to it to actually see ink on the page.”

“it comes from. I was raised Jewish, but when you read the New Testament, it's beautiful. And the ideas in it are beautiful. So I went back and I reread the book of Matthew.”

“But he has this memory of this magical childhood. And so his experiment, he wrote a book called Speak Memory, in which he tries to recreate the experience of his childhood in the adult mind, remembering it, not remembering facts, but remembering the experience.”

“My guest today is Robert Green. Robert Green is a renowned author of books such as The Laws of Human Nature, The 48 Laws of Power, and The Art of Seduction. Another one of his books, entitled Mastery, remains one of my all-time favorite books and is one that I have recommended to the students I've taught in classes in my laboratory and to my friends and family and acquaintances for years.”

“through the, you know, Aldous Huxley in Doors of Perception was calling the mind at large, That if you didn't have this filtering, all you would be seeing all of these incredible things.”

“My guest today is Robert Green. Robert Green is a renowned author of books such as The Laws of Human Nature, The 48 Laws of Power, and The Art of Seduction. Another one of his books, entitled Mastery, remains one of my all-time favorite books and is one that I have recommended to the students I've taught in classes in my laboratory and to my friends and family and acquaintances for years.”

“So there's this company called Visconti, Italian company. They make wonderful fountain pens. And they have this one fountain called Homo sapiens, which is my favorite. And they have these beautiful bottles of ink. And I have sepia, which I love, is a beautiful color. Sepia is this weird brown, yellow-brown. For an ink, it's magnificent. I have black. I have turquoise.”

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