STRANGE LIFE OF IVAN OSOKIN review excerpt entitled "Life as a Trap"
from TIME magazine, 1947:

... "But this is simply turning round on a wheel!"
says Osokin. "It is a trap!"

The old man smiles.

"My dear friend," he says, "this trap is called
life. ... You must realize that you yourself can
change nothing and that you must seek help. ...
And to live with this realization means to
sacrifice something big for it. ... A man can be
given only what he can use; and he can use only
that for which he has sacrificed something. ...
This is the law of human nature."

The view of life repeating itself on an endless
"wheel" is a fundamental of Hindu belief.
Westerners are apt to find it a hypothesis out
of all proportion to the evidence: the occasional
human sensation that "I have been here before."
A more common and much stronger sensation is that
of free will, which the "wheel" denies. In Osokin's
tale, the magician's demands resemble the Christian
requisites for salvation. ...

(excerpt)

<https://time.com/archive/6823911/books-life-as-a-trap/>

STRANGE LIFE was published in Russia some time around 1915. TIME's
review appeared shortly after the novel's translation to English in
1947. STRANGE LIFE lends itself to waxing philosophic about such
esoteric notions as: Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence and George Gurdjieff's "Fourth Way."

A tale of two timeless themes:

DEVIL IN CRYSTAL by Marlow (1944) carries its protagonist along on a
historic event stream. It's history writ large.

STRANGE LIFE intimates on its protagonist's emotional feelings for
females frequenting his life: from his mother to his friends. In the
end, it's a cautionary tale about frittering your life away on
daydreams. Both the story and its message are recommended by me.

# # #

My next audiobook is MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS by Jung.

Danke,

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tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.

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STRANGE LIFE OF IVAN OSOKIN by Ouspensky is a cautionary tale about
frittering your life away on daydreams. MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS is non-
fiction and mentions the hazards of daydreams in passing. This
thread's tenuous daydream linkage motivates me to followup here,
instead of starting anew.
Non-fiction tends to work as an audio book only in the absence
of symbols, tables, formulas, and such. Philosophical books are
acceptable as audio books, while physiological and practical physics
textbooks fail, for instance.
SYMBOLS is full of illustrations. Initially, its suitability as
an audio book was an open question. Unintuitively, a lack of distracting illustrations allows better absorption of textual content.
After explaining my experience to a member of my church who happens
to be a clinical psychologist, she mentioned the left and right brain
sides. Off the record, she speculated on side-to-side dithering where
the right brain starts to process text only to be abruptly interrupted
by the left brain as it interprets intervening images. Til the text in
the next paragraph flips the brain back right to restart rotation anew.
The above dialog occurred shortly after the Deacon opened floodgates
with a sermon about the implications of René Girard's societal
scapegoating theory in the wake of the Crucifixion of a man proclaimed
innocent by several Biblical sources: Pilate, Herod, a crucified
criminal, a Centurian, ... Caiaphas communicates the collective feeling
with words along the lines of: better one of us die than all of us.
Such scapegoaters stay put in THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS by Le
Guin.

Jung wrote the first section of the book and approved the four
following sections, written by: von Franz, Hederson, Jacobi, and Jaffé.
Last year, Free Mason symbology seemed superabundant to me. [1] This
year SYMBOLS ?subconsciously? champions Catholicism as a cornucopia of
many more symbols.
So there you have it - Catholics win again. By the way, are all of
you Groyper/Pepe the frog Trump toadies tired of winning yet? (Just
kidding.)

Readers may find this book a valuable resource to interpret artistic
symbolism. It is recommended by both me and my psychologist.

# # #

NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE by Ouspensky is my next attempt at an
audio book hearing. NEW MODEL remains only a prospect owing to its
provocative Table of Contents. It will be scuttled mid-hearing
if need be.

James raises an interesting issue in a recent thread [2]:

There don’t seem to be branching timelines, but rather
many universes, some of which resemble each other
closely, perhaps because adjacent universes can affect
each other.

Although much of the plot focuses on an attempt to
alter history, evidence points strongly against being
able to make meaningful changes. The sticking point
is the same phenomenon that caused the home line to
suffer the effects of the War without having had a War.
If universes diverge too much from the adjacent lines,
the history they should have had overwrites the history
that they did have.

My hunch is Ouspensky coupled with Bohmian mechanics may provide a
plausible premise to play with.

Note.

[1] <https://crcomp.net/arts/forbidden/>
[2] <https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/banquo-at-your-banquet>

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. veritas liberabit vos
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.

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