Centuries of Meditations

"The other four choices are all somewhat analytical, and I wanted to have at least one book that was more actively conducive to ecstasy. This book isn’t widely known but it’s a classic. Traherne was a pastor in 17th-century England, barely known in his lifetime, who wrote poetry and prose, including a contemplative guide called Centuries of Meditations —it’s 400 brief passages for meditation, written for a friend of his. The manuscript was lost for 150 years, and then discovered in a bin outside a second-hand bookstore in the Charing Cross Road, in 1896. It was finally published in 1908, and since then, a handful of readers have recognised its genius: C S Lewis called it “almost the most beautiful book in the English language,” Aldous Huxley quoted from it in his Perennial Philosophy, while the theologian David Bentley Hart recently described Centuries as “one of the most compelling and beautiful descriptions of reality as it truly is.” One of the things I was trying to do in my book was engage with my Christian heritage, as a life-long non-Christian. I was interested in whether non-Christians could engage with Christian contemplation, as well as Eastern practices, and whether we could create a new contemplative infrastructure for a multicultural society. So I read a fair amount of Christian contemplative texts, to see what could be accessible to non-Christians. And most of it isn’t really accessible, to be honest, unless you believe Jesus was the only son of God. But there are some books which are more open to non-Christian, and one of these is Traherne’s Centuries. “One of the things I was trying to do was engage with my Christian heritage, as a life-long non-Christian” It’s quite Stoic or Romantic—he says early on that what causes us suffering is not original sin, but our own opinions, particularly our need to win others’ approval. We need to stop trying to impress strangers, and instead look within, and realise how incredibly rich and blessed we are— the kingdom of heaven is within, in our souls or consciousness. And it’s also without, in the richness of the physical world, our bodies, nature. He writes these beautiful descriptions of his childhood in Hereford, how the trees and the fields filled him with ecstasy, how we need to re-find that sense of delight. They’re extremely Wordsworthian, 150 years before The Prelude. And he constantly insists on the wonder of consciousness. He was writing during the rise of materialism, a philosophy which is very useful for descriptions of physical reality, but which can’t really explain or find a place for consciousness. So it tends to downplay the importance of consciousness. But Traherne refuses to do this. He is amazed by consciousness—”Souls are God’s jewels, every one of which is worth many worlds.” “We need to stop trying to impress strangers, and instead look within, and realise how incredibly rich and blessed we are” He is astounded by how this immaterial thing—consciousness—can contemplate all of nature, even the universe, and thereby expand to take them into itself. Consciousness is ecstatic, he realises—it reaches out beyond the self, connects to things, attends to them. We can learn to attend to nature, to ‘enjoy it aright’, and appreciate how blessed we are to be in this world. Traherne sees a connection between consciousness and love—when we love someone or something, and when we feel loved, we move beyond narrow ego-consciousness into a more expanded, interconnected or ecstatic consciousness. He has a vision of a universe of souls connected in love: ‘All are happy in each other. All are like Deities. Every one the end of all things, everyone supreme, every one a treasure, and the joy of all, and every one most infinitely delighted in being so.’ One of the side-missions of my book was to encourage people to read Traherne—that’s why I dedicated the book to him, along with Frederic Myers. They’re two extraordinary English ecstatics, both of them practically out-of-print, both of whom deserve tremendous respect."