When Robert Greene woke from his stroke, he looked out the hospital window and everything had an intensity he had never experienced before.
The sky seemed to glow. The leaves and the crows outside his window seemed newly alive. The word he uses is “incandescence.” He took the experience as a signal that it was time to write the book he had been thinking about for twenty years.
Robert Greene is the bestselling author of The Laws of Human Nature, Mastery, and The 48 Laws of Power. His new book, The Law of the Sublime, took seven years to write. Because he could no longer type, he drafted it by hand across more than a hundred notebooks.
Robert and Mike explore what the sublime is, the twelve doorways Greene describes, and how ego and self-absorption can narrow our experience of the world.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
- What the sublime actually is, and how Robert defines the word
- Self-absorption as the thing that shrinks access to the sublime
- What happens when you stop falling in love, and what happens if you don’t
- Happiness compared with fulfillment, and why Robert chose one
- Writing a whole book by hand, and how that changed his thinking
What Robert wants is for you to look at the world the way he had to learn to look at it. We are only alive once, as he puts it, and most of us are not really seeing it.
Enjoy the conversation.
“You need pain and suffering. You need difficulties and adversity in your life to develop yourself, develop those powers that are eminently human.” — Robert Greene
Links & Resources
Robert Greene’s Website: powerseductionandwar.com
Robert Greene’s Books: The Law of the Sublime, The Laws of Human Nature, Mastery, The 48 Laws of Power
Robert Greene’s Newsletter: Weekly email at powerseductionandwar.com
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