Chapter 2
INTRODUCTION

3. MY CHILDHOOD

The beginning
School
Natural medical doctor

Abandonment
Self-centeredness
Jealous Monologues
The Inner Adversary
Catharsis
Identity
Kennemerduinen 1990
Japan and Hong Kong
MeiMei
Tribulations/Escape from the hell of the future
Brazil
Final tribulations

7. THE SACRED VALLEY
(“Sermon of the Valley”)

The Descent
The Depth
The Return

Looking back
Compassion
Renewal
Beauty

My life: the old demolished to its Essence to from the Essence rebuild anew.

Already for twenty eight years I have been trying to formulate that which cannot be formulated. It’s my praise song to Existence. Life is at the centre of this, not I. What happened to me was impersonal. In all my Great Experiences described here, myself (ego) seized to exist. The I and Enlightenment are excluding each other. If you are rooted in your I, Enlightenment is on the background, has It taken a hold of you, then the I is simply no longer there. Í – as the daily identity - am enlightened’ is therefore fundamentally impossible. The Light on the other hand is the fundamental carrier of the entire universe. It is invisibly omnipresent, it is the Essence of all and everything. When you disappear into it you do not see the Light, you are It. It is therefore not an experience, but a jump in identity. An experience is something that happens to you, in which the I undergoes, but fundamentally keeps the same identity. The core of Enlightenment is not that the existing I was given something grand, but rather that this existing I suddenly dissolved in the Supernatural Dimension of Being. The I-self has gone through a fundamental transformation. You realise you are not the small self, but something that transcends that greatly. This is not mysticism. Mysticism speaks about the temporary unification with the Divine. It sees enlightenment as an experience, not as Realisation. It doesn’t accept the jump in identity. There rests a taboo on the fact that we in our deepest nature are Divine. Hence, mysticism is making you dependent ‘of the experience’ and can degenerate into ‘spiritual materialism’.

Most people think that ‘spirituality’ is an expansion of mind. Because they don’t know what mind is, they think that Mind is extended from their daily experiences. Spirituality and personal development are so confusingly and wrongly used. While the first is the surrendering of the small self, the second aims at the expansion of the existent experiential world. There is nothing wrong with it, as long as the two dimensions are not – intentionally or unintentionally – mixed up, which in present days sadly is the case. For starters the words used are very overlapping, to such an extent that already in initial orientation confusion arises. Terms such as ‘True Self’ ‘expansion of Consciousness’, ‘meditation’, ‘Love’, ‘the spiritual path’, en many others can be interpreted in multiple manners. Is the True Self an extension of yourself – a visualized creation – or a dimension of the ‘Other Side’, that you only realize after giving up your already existing self, that is what is meant here. F.i. being the inner observer of yourself implicates a distance, a jump you have made in consciousness. There is a discontinuing transition to a different dimension within yourSelf. Becoming aware, therefore, is not an ‘added value’, expansion of the existing, but rather ‘a realization’, a ‘step backwards’ in the vertical dimension. Whilst the truth behind the words is diametrical opposite, the terminology is suggesting a false jumble. Everybody uses the ‘same terminology’, but in fact is talking about fundamentally different realities. Eventually it comes to the surface that it entails two different life attitudes: the way of (Non-)Being and that of having and wanting. Spirituality as the Truth or as imagination is what it is about.

Obviously, you can only drop your I, if you first have one. It is of great importance for two reasons. It quite frequently happens that I-weak people have a transcendent experience. I remember as if yesterday, I was called to a young man, who was caught in an acute psychosis. He was desperate of fear that permanently was in and around him. He was caught in a void of indescribable desperation. The case here was that he had been intensely involving himself in ‘kundalini techniques’. The first principle on the Path is therefore the care for a reasonably integrated I-structure. This means in most cases that first you have to be involved with your own wholeness, with I-integration. It emphasizes the use of personal development and therapy as the first steps to further awareness. Tragic though is, that currently people when they ‘are in growth processes’ forget, that ‘growth’ is not the goal in itself. On the other hand, ultimate happiness of life exists in that, at a certain point you will be able to drop your I. ‘On that dune top everything fell from me’, ‘with him I forgot myself entirely’, "in my meditation there was only sitting’. It is the criteria for true spirituality: when your true inner renews, the old will fall away.

It is especially relevant for the time we live in now; since it is characterized by demolishment on all levels: individually, socially, economically, culturally, religiously and ecologically. Through that we feel alienated, isolated, useless, threatened and fearful. Being totally thrown-back onto ourselves is a problem very few people can cope with. The existential crisis expands like an oil stain. Very few feel that they are still in control of their own destiny. It seems that all of us are heading towards the great breakdown: The Great Nothingness. As if paralyzed we watch. Or seek distraction in work, the computer, in handy's, television, vacations or parties. Nothing to us seems worse than the confrontation with the Great Nothingness, the Emptiness. Insight into this situation is therefore urgently needed. If you look at it from a shallow perspective, our situation is indeed rather dire. Daily being confronted with demolishment, sadness, problems, stress, depression and burn-out is not something that makes you happy. The core question here is if decay is meaningless. Maybe this seems absurd on first glance. Think about it more deeply, perhaps new creative ideas will come within you. For example; destruction can be useful if it concerns structures or paradigms that are no longer viable, all things that are old, sick, worn out, spent, bogged down, detrimental. As you can observe it in nature, in the fall everything dies in order to be replaced with new sprouted life in spring. Same goes with us people, it even goes that way with cultures. It brings you to the mystery behind ‘dying and being born anew’.

I have a joyous message for you. The crisis appears not to be as dire as you might have thought. It is indeed a process governed by a law. Ironically enough that law has been as old as mankind itself. It is a matter of insight in the nature of the Ultimate Reality. Until recently this would be referred to as ‘God’ or ‘Being’. That came close to the Truth, but not quite entirely*. For example, ‘He’ will not help us with understanding our current crisis any better. We are faced with a choice now: do we drop everything related to religion and spirituality or do we ask the question leading to the Truth again? If we do the latter – and recognize that God does not suffice anymore – then we must search on ‘the Other Side’. Now, the surprise is that God is indeed not the Ultimate. The different traditions, my own Threefold Realisation as well as the natural sciences confirm this fact, that God as well as the tangible world are imbedded in that which is called a ‘Cosmic Vacuum’. The point is that this is not just a theoretical shift. The character of the Vacuum – in earlier days also called ‘the Womb’ or Great Mother – is very specific. ‘Her’ Groundless Ground has a very unique Cosmic Dynamic. Everything without exception – including the Divine and the tangible world – is born uninterruptedly from her deep Abyss, whilst everything continuously returns into It. This principle is called the Law of the Universe: the dynamic balance between destruction, permanence and renewal.

* Intended here is the ‘God’ as it is shown to us in Christianity. The true ‘God’ transcends all definitions. That’s why for example saying such as ‘the God of the Bible’ are in contradiction with itself. In the great Mother tradition – whereby the Light is born from the Absolute Nothingness – the Divine is the Light Body of the Great Mother. See Chapter 11 – ‘Turn On’.

Against this background our own existential crisis finds new meaning. We live in a time, where the emphasis lies on ‘returning to the Origin’. ‘The Nothingness’ now appears in an entirely new context, instead of inspiring fear and fright, it is the Vacuum, in which we – spent and worn out as we are – return to be born anew. Cooperating with the ‘Cosmic Law’ testifies to wisdom. Seeing salvation in need, frees us from our suffocation. And be honest: have we not ourselves contributed to the current crisis? In our inability to BE we have sought our refuge in "having". By gaining more and more, we thought we could draw luck towards us. Having, however, can never replace our thirst for Self, Truth, Love and Solidarity. That is why it grew to an obsession. Now we are being confronted by rude reality: our greed for having that threatens our existence on all levels. We are moving towards suffocating in our own accumulations. The Void - the Cosmic Vacuum – does not tolerate (extreme) piling. These surely disturb the dynamic balance between destruction, permanence and renewal. Since ‘Great Mother’s care in the first place goes out to balance ‘She has given a sign to destruction’. Instead of mourning, the person with insight understands the invitation of the Mother.

If we are honest, we must acknowledge our self-centeredness and admit that we are hopelessly entangled in a lifestyle, that only making us unhappier. ‘Burn-out’ seen this way – of ourselves and our culture – is nothing more than the fiasco of our own self-centeredness. This offers us the opportunity to find our True Self and our original life purpose. Praise the Mother! By surrendering to Her Vacuum – The Cosmic Nothingness – we can discard the old – our ego – letting it die and be born anew. That which first formed our biggest fear – our fear for Nothingness – now appears to be our salvation. No man can die for us to let us be reborn again (…), only we, ourselves can. Trust in the Primordial Mother – the Fountain of Regeneration – makes this possible. Isn’t life wondrous? And as you no doubt have understood: I was granted the unbelievable Grace to have gone before you in this process. The account of this process is written down in this book. May I hereby invite you?

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Last update:02/21/09