When I grew 6, I went to first grade elementary school. My parents did not send me to kindergarten, because they decided that I had to spend enough time at school. In first grade I encountered the beginning of something that would become one of the most wonderful blessings in my life as well as one of my greatest challenges!.........Girls! I was attracted to those pretty twins sitting at the back of our classroom with about 50 pupils. Yes I was one of the "birth-wave" children after the war. One day we were playing with marbles on the playground, the twins and me and we forgot time and space; only our presence and the game was our universe. After some time one of us noticed the stillness around us.....everyone was gone and we didn't notice it at all. So we run inside to receive our 'punishment' laying letters on the right words of a reading shelf. I still remember looking back to see the twins crying...so I did too.

I was always attracted to girls or so called "in love". It was not so much a sexual attraction as well as the feminine radiation, the gentle softness and sweetness of some girls I really needed in my life, because I had only one brother who was the opposite of my character and our home was not much of a home. My father had different girlfriends in the course of the years and my mother did her best to shelter us. However there were many verbal battles between them. Surprisingly they never divorced. My father was member of a rifle club and was authorized to have guns at home. I remember one night my younger brother and  I were shivering at the top of the stairs listening how he was threatening to shoot her. That was the reason I often looked for a "home" elsewhere. I found it by my gym teacher, who lived a block away. He thought I came for his daughters and even took me on holidays to a camping in Italy, but I merely came for the wonderful feeling to be in a family.

I was often very lonely as a child, but it wasn't hurtful, because I didn't know better. I remembered one day when I was about eight years old I was sitting on the sidewalk and poking with a little stick in the sand between the stones thinking.... "What am I doing here, why am I here? Sometimes when I was about to fall asleep I looked at the crack on top of the curtains where still some light was visible and thought: "How did the world look like before I was born?" A strange emptiness came over me which stretched out into infinity. This was the first time that I unconsciously touched "The Great Silence" that would become my home forever much later in my life. Back at school children called me 'grandpa' because I was so slow. Just observing life often already - "in the world, but not of it". When somebody asked me much later in my life why I was so slow the answer came like a lightning bolt - because I have so much time - It still took me several decennia to be enlightened about this.

I also was protected several times in my early years. Once I was about 6 years old, playing outside with some older boys. They were jumping inside a big construction hole with water and with planks floating on it. And then they climbed out again. I liked that too. So I jumped in also, but couldn't climb out any more. I remember saying: "Must I stand on the water?" Yes, everybody shouted. So I did and went full under water. I saw the yellow light through the water but didn't feel afraid nor suffocated. And then I was pulled out again by an adult, who carried me home a few yards further. Later on my mother told me that even my underwear was not wet.

Another time, I was in bed in a room I shared with my brother. As young kids we made often a lot of noise before sleeping, and once it was too much for my father. He came in 'fuming,' and carried a large ruler made of thick (about half an inch = 5 cm) Indian wood. He started beating on me with all his force so hard that the ruler broke and then he stopped. I was laying under the blankets and didn't feel more than a light pressure, but I shouted 'my lungs out' to preserve the illusion. Later he came back. My mother was very adamant protection her children and forced him to apologize. Well, I thought it was very interesting, but I wondered why.

The last one I remember was when I was playing with electricity; the plugs and sockets were not so well protected in the early fifties and when you connected them the current already came through when the poles were still showing. In Holland 220 volts. So I put my thumb on one pole and my forefinger on the other. The effect was not pleasant, but it didn't hurt me.

At elementary school I was still attracting to girls and if they didn't like me I just fantasized about them, visualizing them next to me when I was sitting in the rear of the car  and even then I could feel the soft gentle radiation I needed so much. Then I grew older to fourteen, fifteen years had no girlfriend but still surrounded me with the  eight, nine years olds. Most of the time they were very pleased with the attention of an older boy, but the  first time it brought me in trouble was when I picked up a young girl  at the morning with my bicycle and rode next to her to school. That was too much attention for her and she told her father........a cop! So I had to follow the whole process in the office: mug-shot (photo), finger prints, etc. And I was send to a psychiatrist. I still remember the name of that psychiatrist — Ed..... He was my father's tennis pal, who had a high score on the tennis court. His brother Bob had the highest score. Shortly, there were only a few sessions and I was released soon.

One day I "fell in love" again with a neighbor girl of 12 and she liked me also very much. I made dozens of pictures of her and my father developed them in his dark room; that was his hobby. One time when her parents were not at home I visited her and her older sister to watch a holiday parade. Unexpectedly her parents came home and I escaped along the drain tube. The next day she said that she told everything to her parents and that she was no longer allowed to see me. Well, physically we had nothing. I hadn't even kissed her, because in that age 15 years old did not kiss 12 years old. Emotionally it was quite a different matter, I was devastated and now I can understand that some people commit suicide  in that state. Well, I didn't and went to a nearby brook and decided that I never ever again wanted to feel this way, with so much resolution and power that it seemed I was 'cut of' from a certain layer of feeling in the mass consciousness. From that time on I had no longer any emotional stress by the ending of several relationships I encountered in the future; and when the girls came back (they always came back) I declined. Even the parting of loved ones at so called death didn't bother me. I loved them and had sometimes even contact with them after death, but there was no emotional pain or stress anymore. It was not a lack of feeling or that I was not capable of emotional pain, because I definitely was, but not at departures.

Also at rather young age I tried to control some 'addictions'. In my teenager years I became friends with a 'supermarket' owner. He owned a bungalow across the street and I was free to enjoy his color TV set. That was quite a luxury at the time; we still had a black-and-white one. I noticed that I became addicted to the TV and spend too many hours behind it. So I wished to change that quick. I succeeded in following a strict discipline. I watched an interesting movie or series and at the most exciting moment I shut down the TV and left. After doing that for two or three times, you're cured — but only if you realize that this will be the process all the time. Another discipline I followed was concerning my addiction to chocolate and sweets. I stopped eating them entirely for a year -- thereafter I could balance my 'sweets-eating' again.

Around this time I learned English at school and I received an inner 'prompting' to study English very, very well. I didn't know why at the time, but decided to follow that feeling and translated a little book from cover to cover. The words I didn't know I wrote down and studied later by heart. Well, it paid off, for I needed English extremely often in my life. First I married a girl in India, who could speak English and later on I traveled frequently to the United States. I learned to trust the 'promptings' of my Inner Self when I grew older and knew that they are always true.

One of this "promptings" returned to me as a beautiful blessing. When  I was about 27 we had a disabled house-friend, who drove in a special Dutch car. In an accident his car was total loss and he couldn't afford to buy another one.  I felt sorry for him and bought him another second hand car, from the goodness of my heart without any hope of repayment. Normally it takes one or more lifetimes, before karma pays you back, but in my case it came immediately as poetically is said: "A thousand times and more...!" A few years later my grandfather called me to come to his home. He bought a new car and gave his old car to me as a gift. Two years later he called me because he wanted his car back. So I did and he gave me his "new" car. Some more years later my wife bought me a new car. And that was the end of the good karma. A real gift of God!

Going back in time. When I was about 16 years old I became very interested In Theosophy. (see 'My Pathway to the Light')  I liked to become a member of the Theosophical Society in my home town, but you were only allowed to submit for membership from age 18. However there was a group of 'young Theosophists' under the tutelage of a remarkable lady, the mother of one of the participants. We were taught how to speak in public. I was horrified. I was very shy at the time and now I had to speak in front of a group of 5 people. We had to study the book: "Comments on 'at the feet of the master'. The book was written by C. W. Leadbeater, a well-known Theosophical author. "At the feet of the master," was written by Alcyone, a pseudonym for Krishnamurti, a well known spiritual teacher at the time. The day before I had 'to perform' I could not sleep. Little could I know that I had to speak for public and classes my entire life. (See Job and Marriage)    

 My Pathway to the Light