Translated from Dutch by Google Translate
The lecture is called "The secret of happiness". And it is a forbidden reading. Why?
If you trace history, all the people who claim what I say are denounced.
Today I want to dwell on one of these figures. Baruch Spinoza. A philosopher of the seventeenth century. The Golden age. When the Netherlands was the most powerful country in the world. And the most liberal. In all other countries of Europe, the Church ruled. If you didn't believe what was told there, they hurt you. You could even be sentenced to death. As a result, the greatest thinkers and artists fled to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. We were then not only economically, but also culturally the most important country in the world. In that free climate a thinker like Spinoza could be born. His ideas form the foundation for the period in European history known as the Enlightenment. From then on, not God, but man's mind determined the truth. The Enlightenment is also called the age of reason. It brought us the mechanical world view. As a result: to this day scientists see the universe as a machine, the operation of which can be understood with common sense.
But. That was not how the founder of this movement thought. For Spinoza, Enlightenment meant something different from what history books write about it.
The thinker was expelled from the Jewish community while alive and was forced to publish anonymously. In addition, his books were banned after his death.
That's remarkable. He lived in the most free-thinking country in Europe.
The insight I want to share with this lecture is that Spinoza dealt with a subject that everyone fears to this day. He strove for spiritual enlightenment. As all alchemists did before him. And they were seen by the people as occultists. Like black magicians. Lecture in Dutch.
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