A book is much more than a book: it is the story of a passion, an encounter with life, a fascinating adventure, an open door to mystery and magic, a true friend who never fails, the hope for something better, a medicine unique to save the soul.
I don’t understand my life without books; Despite having been completely condemned in the name of false progress and supposedly superior technology, I need them like food, they constitute a decisive part of my spiritual reserve. I can go without eating a bite but not without reading, even if they are just a few words. Every time I perform that sort of magical rite, whatever its content, I feel better, it is as if I had been injected with a ration of saving energy, the essential diet that my spirit needs to be able to continue fighting day by day against a world that He drifts absorbed in his problems, trances and unstimulating circumstances.
They have helped me a lot to be happy, to know incredible things, to enjoy exalting moments of impossible description, to expect the best from myself, to continue believing in man, to grow inside and to give me moments of fulfillment and enthusiasm that not even the drugs, vices or other false joys of universal consensus are capable of offering.
Only a sick mind can declare war on books; Although it is true that new devices offer other reading alternatives, it is not the same, it is something totally different, the same as seeing a painting live or in a photograph.
There are books that have incalculable value to me; Not only have they accompanied me throughout my entire life, they are there to give me exact and concrete answers, they are like an authentic infallible oracle, a true magician, something similar to the I Ching when consulted with purity of intention and good influences.
They are my weakness, my favorite hobby, a profession without a salary, I could talk about them for days and days without ceasing with a joy worth highlighting. Those of us who know that we know nothing always carry one in our hands, with an extraordinary moral pride, as if we were carrying the elixir of immortality, the Holy Grail or the Philosopher’s Stone.
In a society dominated by consumerism and hedonism, they are not well regarded, they are rare birds, regarded as if they belonged to an outdated and decadent generation.
I read out of pleasure and necessity, as a categorical imperative, knowing that they will not disappoint me in anything. I need them as much as the presence of a loved one, contact with Nature, a fervent prayer, an intense and healthy emotion or a melody that pierces the soul and elevates it to unknown regions of the being.
There are two kinds of people: those who love books and those who despise or ignore them. When I enter a house without them I feel enormous sadness for its inhabitants, an intense feeling of disappointment. Those who deny its importance for the sake of the internet and the digital reality of the new times do not know what they are saying, they only say what they know.
For a beloved book that I am looking for, I am able to go around the world until I find it, experiencing infinite joy when it falls into my hands to increase the strength of my higher self.
As long as there is only one person who continues reading pages of paper with the same enthusiasm that a child has when asking and waiting for his favorite toy, the world has a chance of recovering the common sense that it lost years ago. In my hands they become an unconditional ally, a superb entertainment, a unique school of learning, an intellectual game that only offers the calm and joyful reading of hundreds and hundreds of indisputable masterpieces.
The more I read, the more I want to read and the more I read, the more aware I am of my profound ignorance and of my gratitude to life for continuing to read despite the daily dramas, the onerous daily sorrows and the follies of those who do not love peace and only love. war and its consequent consequences.
A book is an opportunity open to eternity, a haven of light in the midst of darkness, an oasis of hope in the desert, a first-class intellectual exercise, a subtle and intelligent way of knowing truths that they want to hide from us, a way masterful to be happy. Real alchemists gave us the formula for the elixir of longevity hundreds of years ago: read, read, read and reread. All the great sages in history were great readers and meditators, some also excellent thinkers and inscrutable devotees.
Dying with a book in hand is the greatest reward for an experienced reader, a grace that few achieve, as happened to Hermann Hesse, while reading the “Confessions of Saint Augustine”, after having heard a sonata on the radio for Mozart piano, another great reader.
