Great novels list (cont.)

Novels are interesting if you've developed in life (in the vertical, level of being, real understanding way), because you can revisit a novel you'd read when you were less awake and had less understanding of things and see the contrast where you are now; and also you can get more from the novel now (if it is one that does have more to give).

As an example the first time I read Pride and Prejudice was in high school when it was assigned in a class. I remember starting it, and maybe even reading it all (I don't remember), but I was so asleep at the time...so lost in the nebula of Imaginary I, so not awake to my surroundings in a worldly way, nor to my myself; so not awake to human nature in the way where you can 'see' it playing out and see it's types and patterns and so on. (I should state that I was more awake than most in an intuitive/understanding way, but...it was totally detached from worldly understanding, so I was the ultimate rube. I was like raw, exposed essence. Somewhere along the line in childhood I developed differently and didn't take on a strong personality shell (or had one and, due to the stage I was, speaking in terms of recurrence, didn't have it anymore). So that when I began to turn to higher influences in a serious, growingly systematic (which also includes inspired) way those influences penetrated directly into essence. So I tended to make these quantum jumps in understanding and awareness as the process played out, and it left me very, increasingly, disconnected and unconnected with people around me. One thing about that is: when you are raw essence you're kind of 'nice' (or I should say at least I was) and 'not a threat'. When you start to awaken and develop real understanding from that unique foundation of being raw essence rather than some shell of common personality you tend to go through revolutions of resentment and anger and things as you see how you've been a punching bag in life, and you also become a strange presence and threat because you have a kind of understanding and awareness of yourself and the the world and other people that makes other people feel you instinctively as an annoyance and a threat. So your disconnectedness with others and society grows, but it's all for the good if by 'good' is meant real inner development and awakening. Vertical development is vertical development and it goes against the current of the General Law, no getting around it. So anyway I read Pride and Prejudice against a couple of summers ago and followed it as if I was Jane Austen herself (or her muse even).

But, where was I... Oh, revisiting great novels... There is something to the activity. I read many great novels when I was in the initial stages of awakening, and it's those particularly that would be interesting for me to revisit. Novels I read at the later stages when I'd already awakened for the most part would be less interesting (War and Peace falls into this category...I see that novel as a capstone of that part of my development with that level of influence...it was the last great novel I'd read prior to connecting in a real way with the Bible and the Work). But a novel like Madame Bovary would be good for me to revisit. I read that, and I literally have zero memory of it. There are several like that. I can read it now and follow every spark and turn of Flaubert's mind and understanding as he penned each word. That's actually kind of fun...

As for a list of 40 Great Novels... Maybe I could define the choices as 40 'iconic' great novels. That way, if each choice is truly iconic then the list can't be wrong, it can only be incomplete. But with 40 places to fill you can pretty much get to a degree of complete that qualifies as complete...