In a world like ours, dominated by technology and materialism, which is advancing at a speed that exceeds human capacity, it is urgent to recover the ability to contemplate. Contemplation is a spiritual understanding of reality, clearly ineffable and transformative, that surpasses both mere sensory experience and pure logical reasoning.

To contemplate is to love by knowing and to know by loving, intuitively, by simple apprehension. It is to be amazed by the mysterious; to rest in the uncreated Beauty of creation. To contemplate is a meeting without concealment with the real and its founding reality. Contemplation is silent listening, possession of the beloved, unexpected illumination, emptying of oneself until one sees the end, totality, essence. Love. It is a foretaste of eternal life. Contemplation has the strength of eros and the sweetness of agape, the light of the Whole and the simplicity of Nothingness.

Contemplation does not seek to analyze reality, but to plunge into it, without letting anything escape it, until it possesses it totally and rests in the contemplated object. Contemplation is a thirst for Transcendence, a passion for the Absolute, a longing for Eternity. Therefore, it elevates us above ourselves until we find, as the mystics say, a beautiful reality that is more real than the real, objective and subjective at the same time. It goes through dark moments for reason, as St. John of the Cross explained like no one else, but radiant for the soul.

Contemplation does not disconnect us from the daily routine, but on the contrary, it gives it relief, depth, since it unites us indissolubly to the main thing, to what is permanent and lasting, to what is really beautiful and valuable. It teaches us to live like Mary of Bethany doing the work of her sister Martha. Or, better said, to live like Martha with the spirit and attitude of Mary. Contemplation leads us irremissibly to simplicity, overcoming all mental duality. Through contemplation, the human being knows that he is a being for love, and that love is eternal, beautiful and true, that he is an "I" for the "we", and that this "we" does not disenfranchise, but rather empowers the "I".

Richard of St. Victor defined contemplation as "a deep and pure gaze of the soul directed towards the wonders of wisdom, associated with a static sense of awe and wonder. Many centuries later, Evelyn Underhill, called it the "supreme manifestation of that indivisible School knowing which lies at the root of all our artistic and spiritual satisfactions".

Contemplation is endless finality, if we use the well-known Kantian expression, a yearning for transcendent perfection. But it in no way corresponds to an irresponsible attitude. It intuits that the more we are aware of the presence of God and the divine, others and the other, the more we will be ourselves.

Contemplation embraces, with an eternal embrace, the material and spiritual worlds, showing how the two intertwine in the search for the unity of beauty and the beauty of unity. Therefore, contemplation overflows us, transcends us and envelops us, for it arises in a connatural way, as the way two friends get to know each other; not by way of reasoning, but of love.

Contemplation impregnates the finite spirit with infinity; it expands us in time, imbues us with the presence of the whole and brings us closer to the Absolute in an unspeakable way. Our deep being becomes intoxicated with light, escapes and returns transformed. "It was then that I saw your invisible things by the intelligence of the visible things," wrote Augustine of Hippo.

Initially, the West prioritized contemplation over action, the so-called contemplative life over the active life, leisure over business (negation of leisure). However, the novel and attractive Protestant perspective of work, especially Calvinism, the force of enlightened reason and the dominant materialistic culture rejected the riches of the contemplative life because of its lack of economic return and its lack of scientific evidence. As the Orthodox sage Pavel Florensky rightly said, Catholicism and certain Protestantisms have sinned of an excess of juridicism and rationalism. Juridicism has led to giving prevalence to external behavior over intention; rationalism has led to giving primacy to the concept over the spirit. Juridicism and rationalism are lethal poisons of contemplation.

Simone Weil, whom I admire more and more every day, affirms that man must "put down roots" again. A renewed spirituality is making its way, trying to find purpose in human life, to access the transcendent, to find beauty in the present moment in order to live a more conscious, profound and reflective life. In final: happier.

The Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, in his recent book 'Contemplative Life' (2023), asserts that "inactivity is a form of splendor of human existence" and advocates incorporating contemplation into our ordinary work to increase our quality of life and halt the destruction of nature. Some years earlier, the Catalan philosopher of dialogue and spiritualist ideologist Raimon Panikkar, or the German-Hungarian Jesuit Franz Jalics, had warned of this with mastery and depth.

The new contemplatives, aware of the benefits of silence and stillness, of recollection and tranquility, invite us to connect with our surroundings, to be fully attentive, to spiritualize ourselves, and to find moments of peace and solitude where we can recover our vital energy. Mindfulness is the beginning of contemplation, as fasting is the beginning of purification and respect for dignity. It is not surprising that the internship of silence, meditation and contemplative prayer has proliferated in our society, like mushrooms after a good storm. Nor is it surprising that many contemporary artists are committed to narratives open to individual contemplation or sensory experiences that encourage introspection. The human being is, by nature, contemplative. And just as he is hungry for subject, he is also thirsty for spirit, that is, to recover the ability to see the invisible in the visible.

This article was originally published in ABC. Read the original.