The Law of the Sublime

“You have seduction, another one. Control. Mastery, another one about control. And it seems like Sublime is saying almost the exact opposite. It's about letting go and being small rather than being larger than life. Can you explain what the book is and how it relates to the other books?”

“very troubling. The other thing is, and I talk about this in my Sublime book, we're gifted with this brain that is one of the most incredible, amazing things in the universe, this insane product of evolution, the human brain.”

“will connect you in some way to the sublime. You had this amazing line in your book where you're talking about how why chasing things, why we, you know, adults feel flat inside and there's something about us that feels flat.”

“There must be a reason, a purpose behind it. And the purpose was for me to write one more large book, The Sublime, despite all the physical limitations that I had. And that I was staying, I was kept alive for a reason to write this particular book.”

“I have felt that with 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, Art of Seduction, maybe Art of War, but for sure, it sounds like Sublime and 48 Laws of Power as well, where I was like, man, I wish I would have dedicated two years to mastering these like four texts because like human nature, I'm like, this is applicable to everyone.”

“How does that apply to people who are trying to like promote shit? Well, I'm out there now a lot because of the Sublime book, but I disappear for quite a long time. And I never ever post about what I had for breakfast or photographs from, you know, where I've traveled to or, you know, my cats in the house.”

“That's going to be great. I had to write in notebooks for the Sublime book, and I had two notebooks. I'd write in one, and then I would rewrite it in another notebook, literally rewrite word for word and edit as I'm rewriting it, right?”

“What do you find? I have the last chapter of the Sublime book is about the Death Sublime. And I go into near-death experiences and I describe four of them because the literature, literally, since the 1960s and advances in medicine, millions of people have had near-death experiences.”

“And so a lot of people are rebelling against that. And I think that kind of sense of, and I talk a lot about it actually in my new book, The Sublime, is going back to things of the past and going back to who we actually are, what our spirit is, is to me a way to kind of connect to what I consider that American myth.”

“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.”

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“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?”

“I thought, this is really interesting, but I knew there was no market for it. It was kind of a weird book, and I intended after the war book, this was going to be my next book, The Sublime. I was going to shock my readers with something totally unexpected. I hired a researcher. I started doing it, and then 50 Cent trotted along and said, let's do a book together. And so I pushed Sublime aside.”

“And so I pushed Sublime aside. I made the 10th chapter of the 50 Cent book about the Sublime, about how he nearly died from the gunshot wounds and, you know, his near-death experience. And then from 50 Cent book, there was a chapter about mastery.”

“And then, you know, I had my quote-unquote near-death experience. And suddenly, you know, God was telling me this is the time you need to write a book on the sublime. No more putting it off because it was a sublime experience to come that close to dying.”

“Why get interested in writing about the sublime at all? Well, a lot of what happens with humans and what goes wrong with them is on a deep psychological level and level of consciousness.”