Although sometimes the morbid is also the transcendent, the transcendent cannot be reduced to the morbid.
Interpretation
The transcendent aspects of life cannot be diminished by darker, morbid experiences, even if there exists a connection between them.
This quote by Siri Hustvedt suggests that while there are moments in life that may seem bleak or morbid, these experiences can also lead to elevated, transcendent states of being. However, it emphasizes that the profound and uplifting aspects of existence are distinct and cannot be entirely defined or limited by the darker, more somber experiences we encounter. It invites reflection on the complexity of human experience where suffering can coexist with beauty, but they are not one and the same.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion on existential philosophy at a seminar.
Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed.
Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.
All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.
I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to be covered by an envelope that you have to rip open in order to get at. I want there to be a waiting time -a pause between the writing and the reading. I want us to be careful about what we say to each other. I want the miles between us to be real and long. This will be our law -that we write our dailiness and our suffering very, very carefully.
under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed
People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.
Prana, according to the Vedanta, is the principle of life. It is like ether, an omnipresent principle; and all motion, either in the body or anywhere else, is the work of this Prana. It is greater than Akasha, and through it everything lives. Prana is in the mother, in the father, in the sister, in the teacher, Prana is the knower.
There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.β (August 9, 1955)
Humanity needs justice, peace and love and we can have this only by returning with our hearts towards God who is the source of all this.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
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