My Current Favorites – [June 2026]: Claude Code, Philippe Guillemant, The Four Chinese Classics
We still live in paradise, so I invite you to read about our weekend outings here and there. The rest of the time, I’m in front of my screen, writing prompts. All day long.
The law of attraction
I’m a fan of the law of attraction, but this is the first time I’ve applied someone else’s practical methods to the letter. Last month, I gave you a long review of this book “Get Rich, lucky bitch” here and since then, I do two things every day: the money tracking, and writing my goals. I’m super surprised but extremely excited to tell you that this method works!!! Honestly, if you don’t believe it, try it for at least a month.
Claude Code
Recently, the model Fable 5, the most advanced on the market, came out (thanks A. for the heads up). It’s marketed as THE model to use for complex tasks. I immediately put it to work by throwing 1200 pages of an old Vietnamese book at it.
5 years ago, 4 other people and I manually proofread it over 2-3 weeks looking for typos, but many remained. Fable 5 found 200 mistakes in a few hours. Plus, it pointed out character name inconsistencies from one chapter to another, and flagged historical errors, encoding errors, and gave me a clean, neat .docx. In a few hours, it did a better job than 5 people in 3 weeks !
Vietnamese being a very difficult language with lots of diacritics, verbs that can be placed anywhere in the sentence for a “literary effect”, double words that change meaning if you change one of them, etc., it needed a huge amount of context to recognize a real mistake. And it managed to do it. I consumed the equivalent of $223 worth of tokens for this project (ouch). Good thing it was included in my Pro subscription!! ($20)
I barely had time to finish proofreading the book when this model was BANNED by the US government for “national security reasons”, it’s only valid on US territory. My friends tell me not to worry because within 6 months, there will be models twice as powerful and 4 times cheaper.
I’m really glad that technology now lets me move fast on projects I’ve been dragging for years. My friend O. is taking full advantage; he’s a freelancer; he has an AI subscription at $200/month and lets AI do 80% of his work, he sells his time to 3 companies at once, making 5 times his previous salary. At this rate, he’ll retire in just a few years.
I don’t think people realize the tsunami that AI represents. I worry about those who will lose their jobs, the juniors who won’t find positions because AI will be more efficient than them.
How to protect yourself against the AI tsunami? The solution is right there in the visionary series Dune : after the war against thinking machines (AI), they decided to develop mental abilities (mentat, prescience). And I think that’s THE solution. We all have a higher self inside each of us. We’ve forgotten who we really were, so AI will push us to the extreme; and in the extreme, we’ll be forced to reconnect with our higher self.
I’ll talk about it right after.
Philippe Guillemant and the multiverse of potentialities
My friend J. (thank you so much!) recommended Philippe Guillemant’s videos to me—a French physicist and engineer who recently retired from CNRS. He has developed several innovative technologies (artificial vision, artificial intelligence), and conducted research in neuroscience, AI, and then theoretical physics. I’ll summarize the video below:
Humanity is going through a deep crisis today because it has confused language with thought, and believes that consciousness is produced by the brain. This confusion, which he calls physicalism or materialism, has led us into a dead end, because it prevents us from understanding the true nature of intelligence and that of reality itself. According to him, it’s this confusion that explains the excessive hype and the risk that artificial intelligence poses today.
Intelligence is linked to the ability to adapt. With the ability to adapt comes the capacity to make the best choices, but no artificial intelligence is capable of making choices. […] It seems like AI makes choices, but these choices are actually made by the rules dictated at the level of the algorithms. […] If we start using AI to make decisions, that’s where it goes wrong, because a decision is necessarily based on something that calls upon the right brain, an emotional aspect, a vibrational aspect. And AI isn’t able to make that kind of choice. An AI cannot make a choice. A choice is something that requires consciousness. AIs don’t have consciousness; they don’t have a vibrational structure.
===> There!! There!!! lies AI’s weakness!!
For him, the future isn’t set in stone but already exists as a multiverse of potentialities, in another time he calls the divine clock, where the reality we’re about to live is prepared. Among all these potentialities, only one will eventually materialize in the present, and the question is who makes that selection.
Philippe Guillemant explains that consciousness, in the present, can only be modeled by invoking a certain thickness of time, a kind of window through which the future enters the present. This thickness can be increased in meditative states, which he claims to be able to demonstrate through calculation. The broader it is, the more leeway consciousness has to access a wide range of future potentialities and to make a choice that isn’t mechanical. However, this choice isn’t analytical but vibrational and emotional, linked to the right brain. The same situation experienced in fear or in trust won’t lead to the same choice.
Our thoughts + emotions
↓
configure the quantum vacuum
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The vacuum contains a multiverse of potentialities
↓
Decoherence transforms these potentials into possible realities
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Observation selects THE reality experienced
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What we’ve nourished (consciously or not) EMERGES
I see two consequences arising from this.
- On one hand, we need to reconnect with what we might call our higher self, that is, what Guillemant calls the soul. This reconnection allows us to break free from the usual conditioning, made up of beliefs, judgments, and ego, and it’s this that expands the thickness of time of consciousness. Once this thickness is expanded, consciousness will naturally lead us to a better choice, that is, a choice that opens onto the most favorable timeline among the available potentialities. There are several methods to get there; personally, I’ve chosen art.
- On the other hand, the law of attraction works because certain people know how to both recognize and nurture information through faith. The process happens in two stages: information picked up in this reconnected state must first be validated by the joy it brings, because according to Guillemant, the brain alone cannot produce this joy or this unconditional love, making it the sign that the information truly comes from the soul and not from mere mental projection. It’s then nurturing this information as faith that potentiates this new future, increasing the likelihood that this timeline emerges in the present. That’s why in The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho talks about a “personal legend,” i.e., a project aligned with a person’s soul. And if someone discovers their personal legend and decides to pursue it, the whole universe will conspire to put them on the most favorable timeline for their personal legend.
When you choose to switch to a new future, you gradually abandon the old timeline, the one you were conditioned to. However, there’s a gap: you’re not yet vibrationally aligned with this new future your consciousness has chosen. During this transition period, obstacles and difficulties arise, especially annoying little things that might steer you away from your new goal. These obstacles are a sign that the old future is resisting energetically. The major risk is interpreting them as signs that you were wrong and should give up your goal, whereas they’re actually proof that the transformation is underway. That’s precisely when keeping the faith becomes crucial—you need to maintain the vibrational alignment with the new future until it fully manifests in present reality.
It’s worth mentioning the book “The Great Turning of Humanity: Illustrated and Expanded” by the same author (Philippe Guillemant), because while I agree with what he says in the podcast, I disagree with the premise of his book. He considers that Covid, less deadly than expected, was a sign of the arrival of a “new luminous future.” Unfortunately, he didn’t take into account (except for two sentences somewhere in the book) that this new luminous future was probably part of the cyclical timeline. I think you can’t avoid the “foutur” (the author’s term), because the “foutur” wasn’t planned in the first place; Covid was the Tao’s instrument to lead to a stage of the cycle, not a “new” future. Free will exists, but changing the future of all humanity is no small feat.
Asians consider that a project’s success depends on three elements: Heaven, Earth, and Man—i.e., the right time, the right place, and the right person. To gauge the quality of the current moment, just look at who’s being promoted nowadays: people with dignity, or dishonest people? And you’ll know where we stand in the cycle of time, and what the future holds.
The Three Kingdoms
To enrich the “determinism” vs. “free will” debate, I read a book commentary that analyzes the “invisible hand” in the epic of the Three Kingdoms. I’ve summarized a few key points of the analysis here, so you don’t necessarily need to have read the novel to understand the commentary.
Written in the 14th century by Luo Guanzhong, The Three Kingdoms it’s to China what the Iliad is to the West: a foundational work blending history, strategy, and philosophy. The Three Kingdoms is one of the “Four Great Classical Novels” of Chinese literature. I’ve read two of them, but I’ve watched TV adaptations for all four:
- The Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
- Water Margin by Shi Nai’an (Pléiade collection)
- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en (Pléiade collection)
- Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (which I’ve already mentioned here , and here)
These four novels are very long, with hundreds of characters, which is why the “bible paper” edition from the Pléiade collection is particularly suitable. Unfortunately, the Three Kingdoms isn’t part of that collection yet. You have The Epic of the Three Kingdoms, translation by Chaoying Durand-Sun, published in 5 volumes by You Feng editions (2006–2015 and The Three Kingdoms (Amazon link), translation by Jean Lévi et al., published in 3 volumes by Flammarion editions (2009 reissue).
Dream of the Red Chamber
If you only read translations (like you and me), you only grasp a tiny fraction of these novels. To fully appreciate them, you’d need to be a Chinese scholar, as there are many wordplays and cultural references. Generally, for each book (of 1000 pages), there are 1000-page books in Chinese just to analyze them. It’s a bit like the annotations ofIn Search of Lost Time, almost as long as the novel itself.
For Dream of the Red Chamber, a subcategory of literary analysis has opened for this novel, called “redology.” I found an edition that annotates nearly every sentence of the novel—it’s like following a “live tweet” but for a novel, allowing you to appreciate all the wordplay and the author’s style.
A cultured and witty commentator makes the work 10 times more interesting:
In the third chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber, when Lin Daiyu first arrives at the Yongguo residence, she notices that the customs here do not match the rules of her own family and gradually adapts. After the meal, she takes the offered cup of tea but notices that someone brings a cup for rinsing her mouth, and Daiyu imitates this gesture as well. After washing her hands, she takes the tea again, this time only, it is the tea to drink. The commentator Zhiyanzhai adds an annotation: Reading up to this point, I suddenly remembered a story I had once skimmed: ‘Wang Dun, newly married to the princess, went to the latrine and, not knowing that the apples were placed there to perfume the air and block the nose, simply took them and ate them, and the court ladies laughed at him for a long time.’ So, if Daiyu had not rinsed her mouth with this tea, or had simply raised the cup to her lips to drink it, how would she not have been ridiculed by the maids of the Yong residence? Seeing this, one understands that Daiyu’s sensitivity, throughout her life, was of a finesse above the common run of mortals.
I think annotations in books should be encouraged, and book lovers must learn to annotate their own well. After reading a few annotations by literary critics, I noticed they paid great attention to the novel’s structure, the symmetry of scenes, and the characters’ names.
In the past, to pass the exams and hope for a mandarin post in Vietnam (since the 11th century), one had to know: The Five Classics and the Four Books :
The Five Classics: 1) I Ching or ‘Book of Changes’ ; 2) the Shi Jing, ‘Book of Odes’, an anthology of ancient poetry compiled by Confucius; 3) the Shu Jing, ‘Book of Documents’, a collection of historical documents; 4) the Chun Qiu, or ‘Spring and Autumn Annals’, chronicles of the State of Lu; 5) the Li Ji, ‘Book of Rites’, which sets the etiquette for civil and religious ceremonies.
To these five canonical books, we must add the four great classics: 1) the Lun Yu, a collection of Confucius’s conversations with his disciples; 2) the Da Xue, the ‘Great Learning’, a discourse on moral questions; 3) the Zhong Yong, the ‘Doctrine of the Mean’; 4) the works of Mencius.
I have only read 2 of them and I highly recommend them (the I Ching and Spring and Autumn Annals). The I Ching allows you to decode the entire universe (including humans), and Spring and Autumn Annals, to understand man, there are quite a few military strategies.
Even though these books have not been part of the school curriculum for centuries, scholars of my grandfather’s generation still read some of them. One day, I decided to cultivate myself a bit, I easily found several classics in my grandfather’s library, which is very convenient because they are expensive and I would never have had the courage to save my pocket money to buy them. That’s why I strongly encourage parents to have a well-thought-out library, so that their children, one day, dying of boredom, open one of the masterpieces and find a treasure there.
