He found it harder and harder to talk these days about his inner experiences. Partly because the world seems largely to have moved on from the days when most believed in something in addition to that which they could see all around them. Science and the self assurance of the materialistic modern world derides such concepts as gnosis, and puts inner experience down to chemicals and neuronal connections.

Failing thus to admit to the possibility that neuronal activity and its chemistry is a conduit rather than an originator.

A far greater obstacle for him was his embarrassment over the language and attitudes of the conventionally religious. And an absolute determination to distance himself from the saccharine sweet, cloying awfulness of “the religious”. Not for him the hand on the heart talking of “we Christians” with the unsaid implication “you heathens”. Or “we” anything else come to that matter.

For him, it just wasn’t like that.

Why did he need to talk anyway?

Materialists would consider him an outdated and deluded simpleton. And if so convinced, why should he need to shout it from the rooves?

His answer was twofold.

In earlier days he was a mere seeker. A reader of the experiences of others. Desirous of sitting at the feet of some all wise sage who would reveal to him the secrets of the universe and beyond. And as such, writing was a way of self exploration. Or indeed exploration. Trying on different caps to see if they fitted. As it happens, it was the Christian mystics who first sang loudest in his ear. Followed a close second by the Sufis. And once you listened to them, you realised that Buddhists, Hindus and all manner of others were saying exactly the same thing, but in a style and culture you were not accustomed to and hence found less easy to align with. He did not find beauty in the translations of the Buddhist sutras he had read; so much dull repetition. But in Eckhart or Rumi his soul flew.

Simply, it has to be said, because of the beauty and clarity of their thoughts and the language in which they expressed them. “One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books” and thus it has proved for him. Meister Eckhart and so many others pointed in the right direction, but he discovered that the path still had to be trodden. Not just read about.

The other reason for his insistent scribbling was that it reinforced his experiences. Settled them in. Expanded them, amplified them. He wrote for himself therefore but the closer he got to the central mystery, the more he felt a need to distinguish himself from the sebaceous, fulsome pap so often served up by the unctuous and oily.

And the second or third hand nonsense served up by those out to make a quick buck.

How rude that sounds. Arrogant too no doubt. But the fact is that his own experiences were a far, far world away from the Victorian Kitsch so very often regurgitated by the religious establishment.

Self awareness and a retreat deep within has shown him something majestic at work. And it wasn’t wet or weedy or simpering. It just was. Big and overpowering and astounding once you answered its call. Not week and limpid, wringing its hands in a corner pronouncing itself sinful and unworthy. And it certainly makes no call to be “worshipped”.

But why be negative and talk about what it is not? Why not talk of what it is?

It just is. He felt no separation from it and himself. It was him and he was it. Or perhaps he was a part of it, a part of a majestic whole. In terms of qualia and human consciousness, contact brought warmth and certitude and well being. A conviction of eternity, a realisation that human pretension on this small planet in the middle of nowhere could be safely ignored.

Yes, yes, cruelty and horror and greed and vileness. It is everywhere rife on this rocky outcrop. But it has ever been thus and perhaps aways will be. He must teach himself to let it go. Recognise that the actions of the unaware are unlikely to change any time soon. Accept that the belief in reincarnation is of serious intent. How many lifetimes will it take? How many worms and dogs and pigs and snakes must you become before you see through the nonsense of life as it is conventionally led. How often will you be born a serf or emperor, a Titan or a humble crofter. Today Buckingham Palace, tomorrow Grenfell Towers.

Well, perhaps he was being figurative about re-incarnation but it no longer felt quite so far fetched as it once had.

What was it like then? It was like a trip without the drugs. Heroin without the poppies. And all brought about by a simple and prolonged daily retreat into silent contemplation.

But above all it was good and life affirming and reassuring. A safe haven. A realisation of just what “is”. And indeed what is not.

Perhaps, he thought, the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed best where the mystic ends up. Even if the poor fellow himself never made it before crossing the bar.

Illustration: Repentant Mary Magdalene, Gerard Seghers 1591 to 1651

A privileged education and a life of what most would describe as plenty leads me to a single expression.

Which sums up everything I now believe in.

Wouldn’t the Buddha be proud of me.

I could of course have chosen the phrase “Let Go”, or the word “Acceptance”, but neither would have adequately expressed my exasperation and irritation with the thoughts and actions which have dominated my life. Nor my determination to jettison them.

Looking back over the past five years of writing, it seems, perhaps unsurprisingly, that I have returned to the same themes time and again. If I were able to recall all my thoughts over the past 67 odd years, I am sure much the same subjects would dominate.

I imagine many of us have had the same concerns over the course of our lives.

Despite the fact I was born into a comfortably off family in relatively first world England, the trick is always survival. Economically, anyway. Clogs to clogs in three generations is the norm in our society. Assuming your forbears were lucky enough to get out of clogs and into a decent pair of boots in the first place.

“There but for the grace of [insert favourite deity] go I” has always been at the forefront of my mind as I pass a homeless man on the street and throw a copper or two his way. Or don’t.

Even the best healed of my chums have often felt the same. Hardly surprising in a ruthless, dog eat dog world, where life entails brutal competition for everything we need to survive. Vicious battle is not the way our world should be.

Back in the 19th Century a Jewish great grandmother or her family seem to have been kicked out of Imperial Russia and ended up in the East End of London. Her husband, a Huguenot I was told, was brought up in a house of multiple occupation in a nearby neighbourhood. I imagine one set of occupants slept while the other worked, and then places were changed.

I don’t think there were any glamourous relatives on either side of the family. One fellow was apparently a reasonably prosperous builder somewhere in the Midlands, but gambling, drink and women seem to have done for him. At some earlier stage he had returned with winnings from the Ballarat gold rush.

By the time I was born, the Jewish great granny was a very wealthy woman from the rag trade. My mother’s side were cloggies. By comparison anyway.

My father was of the ill fated third generation, and the wealth had evaporated by the time of his death. He was not suited to business.

Money dominated my parents’ lives. The old boy, having been brought up by a very wealthy father, felt it his right to spend. Like Wilkins Micawber, he believed that something would turn up, and in the interim ran up debt.

Hardly surprising then that right from early boyhood I had an overwhelming fear of money – or rather its lack. And I determined I was to make good.

Which in a modest fashion I did, but at a heavy cost to my well being. My character is best suited to some ivory tower, far from the grimy coal face of law and finance where I began my modest ascent. Perhaps some quiet monastic garden would have better met my requirements, and I have always had a soft spot for Tibet, that mystical roof of the world, full of mystery and the eerie music of long horns. Before the Chinese thugs got there.

For almost 30 years I have been trading financial markets to keep myself and my small family out of the poor house. For a couple of years I have been deeply engaged in automated, algorithmic trading of crypto derivatives and after much toil put on a handful of arbitrage trades.

But I have struggled to move on to the next stage. The next idea, the next trade. Perhaps that dread of the debtor’s prison has faded a little as I realise I don’t have to hang on for so much longer.

Or perhaps, more fruitfully, I have at last been able to repeat the mantra “Hoc Futui” and really mean it.

So I played the piano this morning, Bouree and Air by Handel. Not very well, it is true, but with great pleasure.

And I walked along a marshy river bank under a glowering sky to see the egret which lurks there. Spitting with rain, I was grateful for my fine boots and thankful I was not in clogs.

The mediaeval hinges on the old oak door creaked as I crept quietly into the musty gloom and sat, alone in this beautiful old building, and began a silent meditation on a Victorian pew. My little librarian friend arrived, a music scholar, and played the organ, quietly in deference to my efforts. I am as happy here as anywhere, completely at peace. Regardless of my rejection of religious dogma, I am drenched in the culture I was immersed in from childhood, and love every aspect of it. From the damp, beautiful old buildings, to the glorious music and the soaring art which belief has inspired over so many centuries.

Hoc Futui.

The world outside grinds on, but I have determined to shut it out. I have no idea what it is all about or how it came to be there. I’m not sure I care. I have no idea where I am going, if anywhere, or whether I am on a road to nowhere.

If this sounds negative, then I say not so. Peace comes from acceptance of what is and the recognition that almost every aspect of the external world is outside my control. Whatever may be said by others, I claim my thoughts and actions as my own.

If my contemplation leads me to inner peace and a more accepting attitude towards our desecrated planet and largely uncaring species, then that is all I can ask for. As much as I can expect. And all I could want.

Hoc Futui

Illustration: William Blake, from The First Book of Urizen