What Is Robert Greene's Law of the Sublime?

Robert Greene says the Law of the Sublime is about how a day feels, not about success, power, or dealing with other people. He pictures consciousness as a circle. Thoughts, emotions, and a sense of reality move inside it, and ordinary life can shrink into sameness. A vacation or a climb fades, and the routine returns. He wants the shock Abraham Maslow called a peak experience, the kind that pushes a person out of that circle.

Outside the circle is what he calls the sublime. He compares the openings to doorways. He says the Latin word means up to the threshold of a door, sublumen, with lumen as the threshold. Looking through is a mix of pain and pleasure. The pain is leaving what is familiar. The pleasure is the novelty and the excitement. Each doorway is a chapter.

He says the circle is large in childhood, when the world is new and imagination animates it, and it goes flat with age. Unlike his other books, each chapter ends with exercises for bringing the idea into a normal day. He does not want an academic book about the brain. He wants the practice used.