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B J Laubscher – Where Mystery dwells

One night while attending a patient during a confinement on a lonely farm, and while waiting for the slow progress of the woman in labour, the farmer and I talked of many things as we drank coffee into the small hours of the morning. It was then that he told me of a strange experience which came upon him one day high up in the mountains.

The phenomena of nature, the flowers in the spring, the things which grew and the cascading little waterfalls as well as the lazy drifting clouds always inspired him in a mysterious manner to think poetically. Sometimes he would write his poems down but always the melody of words and their hidden meanings would fade once he laboured intellectually at clothing his feelings with words.

On this particular afternoon he sat on one of the highest peaks having just come from his sheep station beyond the mountain range. He looked down over the valley and the vineyards below, while up there he sat in absolute silence, under a sky that was almost thick with its blueness and again he felt an urge to express his appreciation of the reverence of that moment. There was something within him that wanted to come out, indeed a strange desire to reach out into space and feel it and interpret it as a poetical reality.

Then while immersed in this emotion of reverence, he looked at a piece of quartz which he held in his hand, and as he looked at it and its glistening gold-like speckles, suddenly an intense illumination engulfed him. He saw millions of little stars with rainbow rings streaming from them in place of the piece of quartz, and he felt his consciousness enter into every particle belonging to an infinite whole, while his being was buoyant with intense delight for he knew at that moment that he had looked into God. And then in a flash it was one, but the memory remained as a relic of his celestial soul.