Other books put things into your head. Finnegans Wake takes them all out.
646 pages of non-stop stimulus loads so much into our brains that we have to stop thinking. That's when our real minds can kick in.
All the teachings, all the philosophies, all the belief systems are reduced to a jumble of words and ideas, kicked out of our heads, to be replaced by...your original blank slate that you now can begin to write on from what you know from your own experience.
Not Mine, not Socrates', not Joyce's.
Your's.
It is a totally different experience for each of us, for our unconscious chooses from the pallet of words, ideas, even music that Finnegans Wake brings up, and reassembles them from our own unique being.
That is why when I read it out loud I navigate "between Scylla and Charybdis," keeping an even reading, avoiding mental interpretation or emotional intonation. (My voice only betraying my immense, constant enjoyment of it!)
I believe this is what James Joyce intended.
He did not write Finnegans Wake to be analyzed, dissected. To me that is killing the goose that lays the golden egg. In fact, analyzing Finnegans Wake defeats its purpose. It is the "smart" part of the mind that Joyce meant to free us from, in order to think again for ourself.
The purpose of reading or listening to Finnegans Wake is not to understand it, but to experience it. As has now been verified, Finnegans Wake is a fractal. Each part is the pattern of the whole book, and the whole book is a pattern of... Everything! (Here Comes Everything)
And now, to be able to really let go, by listening rather than reading, is a whole new level of taking in Finnegans Wake.
Whether you have never read it, or are a Finnegans Wake scholar, letting go and letting Finnegans Wake in for the 30 hours of Finnegans Wake Read By Candle will be very worthwhile, and maybe consciousness changing...