Jan F. Brouwer - Essays on Spirituality

What is Enlightenment Like? p. 214 24. What Remains When All is Lost? p. 220 Appendix: Practicing Meditation p. 228

Can you remember the days at school when this undefinable thrill for the first time got hold of you? There you were, all of a sudden you had fallen in love with a girl that was in your eyes the favorite of the gods. She was so touched by divine grace that the picture of her could not leave your mind for a second. How smooth her skin en how beautiful her hair! What a gorgeous face! How delicate the rounding of her forearms! Her beautiful girlish hands, with the tender and fragile fingers, kept coming back to your mind all day. And if this mental picture, which you had chained to your soul with all the Gordian knots in the world, left your memory and the image of her went blank, then you felt a great loss, a tremendous pain of being bereft by something so precious that you would give up everything you owned to get it back. You remembered everything she said, what she did, the way she walked, the charm of her conversation. Especially on moments when you were alone this feeling was cherished.

You wanted to be by yourself with this feeling and you locked yourself up in your room to think about her. It made your favorite music sound like it was played on Mount Parnassus by Apollo himself. Or if you are a woman and you have given birth to a child, can you remember what it was like when you for the first time took your new born baby in your hands and caressed it? The soft skin of this little creature, the tender little sounds it made. The deep rest in which it slept. The guiltless look in the eyes. There it was, freshly made by the gods, sent with love from the smithy of Vulcan.

Can you remember the deep love you felt for it? Was it not a love that made all things in the world look pale in comparison? Wouldn't you have given up all your wealth and prosperity to have this love all your life in your heart? I think you must agree that there was nothing like it in the whole world. If someone had told you at the start of Essays on Spirituality your life that one day you would feel a love like this, you would have considered this man a very unscientific loony. Or, to give a more muscular example, have you ever won in sports a competition that offered at the start no possibilities of ever winning the game? You had trained for months and you had done everything you could to prepare yourself for the games. But the first rounds were a total failure. You thought already of going home. It was a total mess up.

All competitors were better, faster and stronger. But as you already had given up all idea of winning, suddenly your muscles began to feel as if they would do everything you wanted them to do. Suddenly running became so natural and easy. The last rounds were totally yours. The victory was the more breathtaking as it was unexpected. You have never felt a victory like that in your whole life.

It was as if you were lifted up by something far more stronger than yourself. As if something took over control. The euphoria was indescribable Tears were rolling down your cheeks out of sheer joy. Your knees trembled as you climbed upon the platform. These are three examples of moments in life that will always be remembered. Somehow these moments are the milestones of your life, because you will always relate to them.

In times of crisis you will always recall these moments. They will give you the strength to go on. For everyone knows in his heart that feelings like these are the real content of life. There is even in the deepest crisis always a small corner in everyone's heart were this content is cherished. This content gives cause for hope. This hope is very substantial because it is not only a remembrance of former happiness but also a foresight on good times to come.

You can deduce from the fact that hope is the deepest feeling of the soul, that happiness is the true state of a human being. However miserable the heart and however wretched the state of the soul, everybody knows what hope is. Mysticism is about these feelings. Mystics are people who have (all in different times and all in different degrees) experienced one way or another these feelings and were very sensitive to them. Most people have these moments only rarely in their lives, some people never even seem to have them. But mystics are striving for the maximum: they want these feelings all the time.

They make a deep and thorough study of the human soul, by turning inwards. They close their eyes (the word mysticism comes from a Greek verb that means 'to close your eyes') and meditate and pray. In the depth of their soul they find a stillness that generates these peak experiences, the very feelings you experienced when you fell in love or when you won your victory. This stillness is for them a source of great bliss. Everyone knows what mysticism is like, because everyone has had peak experiences. But most people never seem to be able to turn these experiences into a permanent state of being, for the reason that they are easily distracted by what comes into their senses from the outside world and so arouses their will.

They remain chained to the outside world. For these peak experiences come from the inside and to find them you have to trace them inwardly. But most people don't have the time or the energy (the most common pretext) to devote them to this search. And, when you come to think of it, this is rather absurd because all men want to be happy all of their lives and want to be as often as possible in a state of ecstatic joy. That's why they work so hard. So the only reason why not everyone becomes a mystic lies in ignorance.

Most people don't know how to become happy. But you can't blame them for it. Because it sometimes is a hard road to travel, if you want to become a mystic. It does not happen in a fortnight. So most people easily give up if they don't get the results right away. It takes patience and discipline.

You'll sometimes even have to give the things up that you value highly at the moment. Only later will you shrug. Your whole soul will undergo a transformation. You'll become another person. Sometimes that's not easy because you are used to your old ways of life. Essays on Spirituality Is mysticism about religion? Yes and no.