How to Read a Book.
Even the most simple things can benefit from a healthy dose of critical thinking. Reading non-fiction books often is counted among such simple things. How hard can it be? We open the cover of a book and begin to encounter the author’s voice. They present us with facts and stories, page upon page, and while we continue to read, slowly, we begin to push out the walls of our own storehouse of knowledge. Through the act of reading, we begin to expand the boundaries of our minds.
Unfortunately, as we all know, that is a highly idealized idea of what happens when we read. The reality is much more messy and chaotic: Our consciousness drifts in and out, we stop, check our phones, and pick up the book again days later; most importantly though, the ties around our mind of what we already know (or believe to know) are incredibly tight and not at all easily loosened. And as we encounter the author’s voice in the isolation of our intellect, we often don’t hesitate to judge quickly. Reading in such partisan style ceases to be an exploration into new and unknown territories; instead, it degrades into the repetitious act of ‘mind-sorting’ new information against mental compartments we created long ago, quickly dismissing anything that doesn’t easily fit or gel well with boxes we established and labeled once when our mind was still open.
Holding a firm opinion is not at all the sign of an educated mind. In fact, mostly it is the reverse: Only once we have delved deep enough into a subject we begin to see its paradoxes, entanglements, and inconsistencies. But there is no way to ‘delve deep’ into any subject unless we proactively loosen our mind’s ties to what we think we know already.
When we sit down and open a book, magical books especially, we should be prepared to be assaulted in the present moment, and possibly come out of it forever changed. Such change, however, will rarely ever happen if we keep up the drawbridge of our convictions and send the archers to the battlements of our established worldview. Reading a book, reading any magical book indeed, is the art of inviting in the poison that might dissolve the foundations of our faith. As adepts of the magical art this should not at all pose as a threat, but ultimately an aspiration. For faith — here not in its Paracelsian sense, but in its ordinary definition as ideas we’d like to be real, but have little evidence for — is the game we go on the hunt for when opening the covers of a book.
Truly engaging with a book, truly reading it, turns out to require much more courage than it initially seems. The courage to overcome, in this case though, is no longer directed at the outside world, but against ourselves. Just like we should only engage in practical magic if we are open to being changed in the process, the same logic applies to reading a book. If we are on the lookout for cognitive flattery and intellectual affirmation let’s scroll through our social media feeds. In stark contrast, a good book is a tool for revolution against oneself. Reading in this essential sense of the word means being prepared to putting the torch to our established ways of ‘sense-making’. Turning another page becomes the act of swimming upstream against the current of our established mind. It is in this manner that all good books we’ll ever encounter are deeply heretical to the things we thought we knew.
More than 230 years ago the German lawyer, philosopher and Rosicrucian mystic Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803), author of The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, provided us with wonderful inspiration on how to read a book. By following his instructions we begin to see how much effort it can take to absorb a single sentence, let alone a chapter. Whether we have read a book in this sense is no longer a function of how quickly we made it from front to back cover, but how deeply we have engaged with what lies in-between.
Thus if I assess the writings of the proponents of Enlightenment in our own time, I initially search for whether there is truth in the book that I am reading; for where there is no truth, there is no enlightenment, and where there is passion, there is rarely ever truth. I do not immediately imagine the author as a philosopher, but first I want to see if they deserve the title which they claim. So I place the author back amongst the natural man [Naturmenschen], I hand them back their passions, and I observe how much their self-love and self-interest have influenced their writing. From there onwards I carefully watch how much their education, their temperament reveals themselves in their writing; for writing is physiognomy of the soul, and a sharp eye can distinguish indeed true emotion from artificial expression.
There is a language of the intellect, a language of the wit and a language of the heart. In the language of the intellect the heart often times holds no part; but to the language of the heart the intellect often times is united. The language of wit many a time is the interpreter of the evil heart.
Once I have looked at the author from all these angles, I subtract from their work what is education and temperament, and what was affected by the situation of their writing and the general circumstances of their time. Whatever remains I weigh with the plumb level of truth: What stands this test is good, what does not is evil.
— Karl von Eckartshausen, Über Religion, Freydenkerey und Aufklärung, München: Johann Baptist Strobl, 1786, p. 20/21, translation by Frater Acher
Whenever we put a book down, the essential question is not whether we recall what is printed on its pages, but the horizon of exploration expands far beyond that: What is it that we just learned about the time of the book’s emergence, about the culture and intellectual milieu it was born from, about the circumstances its author was in when writing it; and, maybe most importantly, what have we learned about the author’s voice itself? Have we already killed its unique timbre and assimilated it into the museum of our dead knowledge? Or will we be able to channel it when we engage on the same topic in the future? Have we learned to speak to the author in our own mind, beyond the pages of this book? From here onwards, can we distinguish their voice in the intellectual spirit choir that is the hive of our open mind? — If we answer with yes, we genuinely have read a book, and probably expanded our mind irreversibly.
Now, should you be reading these lines as an author yourself, allow me one last quote from Eckartshausen’s wonderful work.
He not only advises us on how to get the best of any nonfiction books as recipients of their contents, he also offers perspective on how to approach our readers as authors. While his words were directed at himself as well as his peers writing during the time of Enlightenment, they remain real and true long beyond the time from which they stemmed.
Here is to more of us opening their notebooks, picking up their pens in the spirit of this great Rosicrucian mystic:
The true proponent of Enlightenment is mostly kind, he has gentleness against everyone; he attacks vices and protects the human. He observes his own heart, is always alert towards his own mind, does not force his opinion on anyone, has no addiction to proselytism, but allows truth to hold its own victories. He is not proud of his opinion and neither passionate in his critique. His purpose is to lead people to their happiness, and his proof is in his own experience […].
— Karl von Eckartshausen, Über Religion, Freydenkerey und Aufklärung, München: Johann Baptist Strobl, 1786, p. 18, (image of custom bound 1st edition below)
