C. S. Lewis seems to have spent his life yearning for a sense of other-worldly joy and bliss. He attained this, momentarily, at first in his intense interest in Norse sagas, Wagnerian legends and music, George MacDonald’s fantasy stories and in flashes of landscape. He admitted in his autobiography Surprised by Joy that for a long time he made the mistake of striving too strenuously and consciously for this transcendental joy. It was not to be attained this way. It was elusive. It came, not as an end-product of reading, acting, striving or imagining, but as a side-product of these things, something that just happened. Nor should you expect it to last. Trying to make it last didn’t work. It could not be captured. Many mystics had discovered this.