Although I had just said, when it was all over, that I believed that the very first symptoms occurred when Erica knew that she was to become a mother, I now imagine that these were present before Karel and Erica thought about attracting a little soul.

In fact also according to the fool, because due to his “mad” consciousness, Erica lost her human way of thinking, her own character.

It is an entirely different matter whether this is possible.

There was no longer any question here of watering down the wine, both of them had to swallow this wine as naturally as possible.

I imagined that this was part of the invisible, intangible, which we people know nothing about.

In all honesty, they were the closest to my own thoughts.

However, I had to show my colours: I was completely off the mark and wrapped up in other problems.

Karel is actually too down-to-earth for it.

He does not talk nonsense during the day.

He knows nothing about this attraction and rejection; he is not interested.

He readily admits that he does not know about this illness.

To him it is sentimentalism, and a slight over-sensitivity of the mother.

If you think that you can possess Karel, you will lose him.

He is exactly as Erica now feels.

She is in trouble, but a moment later, you see her wandering in a universe like a butterfly.

It does not feel any anxiety, there is no evil, although, as we know, such a little creature has only a few hours to live.

If you can see the truth in this comparison, then you will understand that you will be able to see her fall before you at any moment and another personality will be revealed to you.

I already said, Karel sees her situation differently.

He does not beat about the bush: Erica is fantasising!

However, you keep seeing a different personality in him as well.

You do not get to know him.

He does not expose his inner self.

However, later I had to accept that he was the only one who remained himself in this incredible pandemonium.

He does not want to be hung and strangled by problems, which are universal for people like us.

He says: do not break your neck, lay off it, life is as simple as possible.

Although Erica was already complaining and trying to elevate Karel to her life, he remained unrelenting.

Her symptoms did not have any effect upon him.

Karel does not want anything to do with inessentials.

He sees his task as a doctor as something ordinary, and he also stifles any sentimentality as far as this is concerned.

He wants to see everything with the naked eye and make it comprehensible, and he avoids glaucoma like the plague.

Now try saying that he is wrong?

He smothers every thought, which touches even the slightest on the invisible or tries to prove it, he has both feet firmly and consciously on the ground.

Every mother experiences something and so you do not have to make a fuss about it.

Is what Erica is experiencing supernatural?

When she asks him: what does a mother think about the unity with her child, he shrugs his shoulders contemptuously and she gets a beating or tumbles into a ditch.

When she uttered the first words and she clung to these symptoms, I for myself started to think in a different direction.

Karel calmed down a bit, he was no longer so impetuous, rash, but he lets her know that he and all earthly science do not yet know anything about it.

After all, you cannot disregard science.

However, that was when the trouble started.

If you become connected soul to soul, you will start to see things differently.

One mother experiences her wonder very naturally, it is dead simple for her; another makes a great fuss about it and considers it a work of art.

One mother gains self-respect through it, another loses herself and is faced with destruction.

All that happens from bearing a child, a natural process inside you?

Karel did not know what to do about it, but he felt destroyed by it.

I heard him say:

“At the end of the day, I do not know everything either.”

At that moment, he felt that he had given himself a beating.

A moment later, he involves you in a conversation, he offers you a cigarette and asks you to sit down, because he wants to talk about Erica’s symptoms.

He jumps with you into a ditch, leaves you in the mud and watches you from dry land to see how you will get out of it.

He does not lend a hand.

He gets out immediately, considering himself soiled by nothing, but confronts you with the facts.

As if he is extremely interested in everything and he is upset by it, he dances with your vested self through Erica’s world and laughs wildly at your awkwardness.

You are now faced with reinforced concrete, you see and feel his personality, but you do not know how to approach it.

Therefore, it took a good while before I had fathomed him out, but from that morning onwards, I played with him.

He did not see me again until I died; but I have to admit that it was he who suspected in which armour I had hidden.

I did so to protect myself from his merciless swinging back and forth.

Yet, he was a such a good man.

“Is Erica playing games with herself, Frederik?”

Find out for yourself.

For him, there were no problems.

He says that problems are matters that you do not know about, the origin of which you do not understand.

It is a large henhouse, with ten cocks and one chicken, but even that one chicken would like to be a cock.

Even when you are drunk, you sometimes say things that are true, which you would not think of saying if you were sober, but they are usually to the point, because you see the other person blushing.

Is Erica making problems out of everyday matters?

He shows her how to do it, but we see two different worlds here, they are children in an adult body.

Karel says: all that thinking as a city person just upsets you.

People are no longer natural and then they start to search.

A pig and a cow, a dog and a cat do not experience it any differently.

You can learn from it!

However, just a second later you are faced with a poetic personality and you hear him say:

“Millions of mothers are faced with these revelations, they strive for sacred mercy, a comforting world which they wish to embrace, but they feel as if nothing else exists.

Like Our Dear Lord!

“When I was still a child”, he continues, “life was no longer a problem, I already saw then how it had to be done, because animals give the best example.”

Did I understand it?

I did not yet understand it, however, I thought I understood some of it.

“What do you want from me, Erica?

A mother gives birth to triplets and feels completely normal.

Another brings half a person into the world and makes a great fuss about it.

There are also who want to drink and drink themselves to a stupor.

I do not know or understand any of it, because I am not interested in those things.

But what do you want?”

Now Erica gets such a wet bath, she feels as if she has been thrown into his ditch and she just has to try to get out again.

”Do not cry now, it will not help you anyway.

I am a man and you are a woman.

Or do you want to change places?

Now if that were up to us, there would not be much left of Divine matters.

Just get on with it, which is all there is to it.

Is he wrong?

However, now we see him in his own castle.

The blinds are closed.

He is the ghost!

People pull the bell, but he does not let anyone in.

He goes in and out, cannot find any peace.

He does not think of sitting down next to the hearth.

For that matter, we see that there is no fire.

He does not know!

We also know that Karel does not like open hearths, they give out too much heat and your back remains stone cold.

Erica is unexpectedly standing before him and is longing to be treated humanely.

It is her husband.

Take off your coat, Erica, and sit down by the hearth.

Can you feel the heat?

Or are you cold?

What is the matter anyway?

You are now faced with the phenomena, with a person, and you are his wife.

You would give your life, your soul and bliss, but you do not yet know what this is all about and what it means.

Yet, you feel drawn into that life and you also descend into it.

However, you feel that you are outside.

It is raining; it is freezing cold, shivery, mercilessly uncertain.

That is what you possess.

It belongs to you alone.

Is it happiness?

You know very well that this is your beating.

One moment you are standing there wondering, yet you find yourself again and wander into a park where all the seats are occupied and there is no place for you.

You do not realize that it is winter, that the earth revolves around the sun and it does not pay any attention to all that human triviality.

If you possessed that insight, you would see everything differently, but you are beaten, you go to pieces.

Something in your character stops you.

You do not see it yourself!

Can I understand that?

Now you can know that you are able to analyse your own character.

You are faced with yourself!

You are standing right on top of yourself and you do not feel it.

You can know that this life will not reach out to help you, but you are one with that system of flesh and bones, it belongs to you!

In misery, you try to find a kind word.

Is that happiness then?

I heard him grinding his teeth, saw him tumbling into his ditch, but I did not interfere.

It was a new problem for Erica and immediately afterwards she was faced with yet another problem, because the door was closed too loudly!

Will things change?

Do all mothers have problems when they are carrying their children?

Do men have no understanding of maternal hypersensitivity?

If I think about it, I hear Erica saying, I am not experiencing motherhood, but madness.

She asks for information everywhere; she questions other mothers where she thinks they can help her.

“Do you also have troubles?

How do you feel?

‘Are’ you or ‘aren’t’ you?

Is there still sunshine for your life?

Is it you sitting here or someone else?”

Who can help her?

Karel cannot!

Nor can his learned friends. But there are phenomena and they are forced on her life of feeling, and turn her personality into a circus and a hospital!

Karel says that I have to study psychology. In his opinion, I am suited to it.

Five minutes later, he adds: “You should become a paediatrician.”

How about going into that?

However, you have to know him.

If a word happens to pass my lips, then he asks:

“Did I say that?”

You see his smile, his playful character, his farming origin, and then you can forgive him for everything.

You now climb an apple tree with him, you run through his orchard, he lets you eat the best fruit, and he shows you how wonderful God is with all His things, but a moment later he jumps with you over a ditch which is too wide and you fall in head first.

Before you really know what has happened to you he has disappeared again.

You can just see him running round a corner, waving, and then he disappears before your eyes.

This is Karel!

When that happened to me, I thought, good heavens, what a lot I am learning from the doctor!

However, none of this helped Erica in the least.

She continued to search for the secret.

She wanted to get to know about herself and all her symptoms.

However, they remained a mystery, shrouding motherhood: they became nightmares.

She lies there crying for hours, you do not see any tears.

Yet she is crying!

She feels helpless, tired of life, awkward.

She does not know, but she seems to be thinking about it.

Before she became pregnant, she had a cheerful character.

Now that has gone!

Always harmonious, that is also gone!

What I see is a miserly personality.

Her beautiful features have disappeared, and she seems older than she is.

You would not even have expected it from Anna, her servant; apparently, her spirit is stronger.

Anna knows what she wants.

I believe it is she who drags Erica through her symptoms and gives her the strength to bear her misery.

Especially now that Karel says that her childishness must end before it makes him sick.

Does Anna understand it?

I do not know.

She does not say anything, but we understand each other.

Is Erica to fail as a mother?

Anna does not say a thing.

However, I have the feeling that she knows something about it.

She has a certainty about her, which we lack.

She can suddenly act powerfully and with self-assurance.

When you think that she is in the kitchen, and you saw her busy there only a moment ago, you see her behind the house picking flowers which she arranges artfully.

She is making a statement by this and I understand her.

I felt that our worlds corresponded, have something to do with each other.

I do not yet know my own life and had never thought that you could say such great things as a result of something so ordinary.

She does it!

And she knows it.

I wondered: is that female, or male; do we men possess such things?

What is it?

Should you also descend into this?

You are faced with it and you are not aware of it.

You look at it and you do not see it.

If you are completely one with what is happening, you see a “universe” of happiness.

A person becomes so deep then.

And all because of an ordinary woman like Anna!

The reason why I suddenly became certain that Anna understood more than we did was due to an occurring feeling within me, of which I did not know the origin, but which gave me the certainty: horrible things were hanging over our heads, something nasty!

Erica is not acting!

She is not capable of it.

But I do not know yet.

However, it exists!

For Karel it is only a growing process, an activity!

When Erica asks him: “What is life really like, Karel”, the farmer’s son laughs.

A moment later, she gets an answer, which is no good to her.

The farmer has now become a doctor.

Science protects itself behind nature; pears, apples, pigs, horses and other animals are given injections and have become laboratory specimens.

With a bit of mumbling he puts an end to the subject, but she asks me:

“Frederik, do you understand why my child is upsetting me so much?”

The farmer smiles again, I am left speechless, but she does not wait for my hesitation to pass and continues:

“I would like to know what your opinion is, Frederik.

Why do you not say anything?”

I cannot say anything, my childish inner life refuses.

She does not wait for my answer either and says:

“It is destroying me.

Frederik, I had not thought that it would be so difficult to have children.

I know exactly what I feel, but I cannot express myself.

How awful it is!

Yet, I am really not a pathetic person.

What do people really know about it?

Nothing?

Is the life of a child at this stage already capable of influencing the mother’s life?

Does a little soul like that have power over the mother?

Can that life already think?

People think that I am showing off and that I am extremely clumsy.

However, should I approve of my child destroying me?

Destroying my character?

That is the way it is!

Karel laughs about everything.

He is no good to me.

Do you not see, Frederik, that I am no longer myself?

Have you never heard of these symptoms?

Never read about them?

I place more store by your feelings than by Karel and his friends’ knowledge.”

How should you answer, when you have no understanding of such matters?

You can bow to it, shake your head and worry a little.

You are searching blindly, however, you have a hesitant attitude and wait until they answer themselves.

You feel your powerlessness and then eventually say: a specialist doctor is required for this.

You are not satisfied, you are poor, and it is the limit of your consciousness.

When I called in one afternoon, Anna said that Karel wanted to put an end to the complaining.

He had forced an “extraordinary specialist” upon Erica.

A man who he did not even like himself because of his terrible fuss.

And he was precisely the man he had to have.

This independent doctor now had to put a name to Erica’s symptoms.

“One faculty needs another”, Anna adds, and she tells me that Erica is expecting me.

I go inside and am faced with a new problem.

Erica’s help, her doctor, but Karel’s cosmic wind.

Look: Karel rushes out the door.

He is like a wild bull.

I can read on his face: “You cannot fool me”.

However, I am faced with an influential person, but I send out my thoughts to Erica.

“Now, now, my friend you should not have done that.

It is not exactly mean of you, but to me it is monstrous.”

I stumble to a corner of the room and collapse into a chair.

Oh, Frederik, what a mess.

What does Erica want?

What does that female soul want from me?

Why is she involving me in all of this?

I feel her thoughts, but she ignores me completely.

Also the doctor!

We are all in the same boat.

It is Erica who rows.

There is a storm on the way.

However, I see that there are fish here.

However, it is she who casts the fishing rods.

The doctor puts bait on the hook; the academic just has to follow her.

She casts the rods and no longer looks at the person.

I am shocked, now I can see that she is capable of acting like this.

I take my hat off to this personality; it is a work of art!

However, the man does not like me and, of course, I know why.

This is really useless.

Everyday nonsense.

What do I have to do with this science?

What does Dr. Wolff want?

Thanks, but no thanks; this is just the thing for a doctor’s wife.

She has lost her marbles.

Poor Erica, can’t you see that?

She also introduces the academic to me.

That on top of everything else.

“This is Frederik, our family friend.

Dr. Van Stein.”

The academic does not see me, which he is right about, after all.

It is quite rude of him, but he is in the right.

Karel would never have put up with that, he would have let it rain pears and apples and would have kicked you into his ditch.

Erica talks about her complaints in my presence.

What a drama.

“It starts at night, doctor.

It overcomes me.

Then those fits of crying.

I want to control myself, but I cannot.

I am afraid.

I have lost my control and myself.

I am there and yet I am not.

I feel worthless and small and you can see yourself how big I am.

Sometimes I feel like pulling faces.

And I do, but then I see that I suddenly burst out laughing like a stranger.

I can feel it clearly, doctor, but can anything be done about it?”

Van Stein is yawning.

The “university” is now being cleaned.

I can see that women are cleaning the windows.

A man is standing on a ladder and the doorman has fallen asleep.

Now I can see that a portly man dashes out the door and gets into his waiting car, as if he is needed for an emergency operation.

However when I try to compare all of this with what I just heard, it becomes pitch black around me and I suffer from a glaucoma.

What a mask this is.

A moment later, I can see that “Death” is kissing daisies.

I can also see that lilies-of-the-valley shine Van Stein’s shoes.

Greenfly climb up his legs and bite his calves.

Did you see that?

The doctor can feel it, he scratches himself, but he does not know that Erica sent all those greenfly to him, and the academic falls for it.

After all of this Erica has to catch her breath, meditate, then she can continue again for herself.

“Yes, doctor, at night it is really bad.

It sometimes overcomes me during the day, it can suddenly overcome me, you see?

I can actually feel it.

Yes, that is it!

Work that out, doctor.

Are you familiar with these symptoms?”

The doctor cannot see it and I know nothing about it.

Van Stein is frozen like a statue.

Do you not know what it is, doctor?

I suddenly saw it taking shape a moment ago.

Yes, I think I know!

However, Van Stein suddenly whispers something, which Erica cannot fathom.

It only makes her flounder.

She also says that it is a great mystery and then continues:

“I am there and I am not there, doctor.

Sometimes I break out in a sweat.

I feel strong and capable of a lot, so that I would like to do art or something.

There are moments when I could drink a full bottle of Dutch gin, I am so thirsty and I long so for a stimulant.

It then burns inside me, as if the child is talking to me.

Can a child like that think, doctor?

Can the child already influence you now?

Is the child fully aware?”

Van Stein fiddles with his fingers and almost slides off his chair.

He sinks away deeply.

He is thinking.

Erica asks:

“Is there perhaps something else which you should know, doctor?”

Such a little child, how honest she is, how selfless, how naïve!

She immediately resumes and does not allow him the time to think about it.

“Those thoughts creep up on me, doctor.

They lie in wait for me.

However, they are still abstract and ego-centric.”

I now know that this is no longer the old Erica!

Where does she get this from?

I have difficulty in remaining seated.

Van Stein is also grave, he wants to act and he cannot.

Erica is ahead of him again and says:

“They are horrible feelings, doctor.

But there is nothing else the matter, I feel fine physically.

It is as if it is raining inside me, I can no longer see the sun, I am walking in darkness all day.”

That is also completely natural, Erica, but Van Stein wants to give you a beating.

However, he does not, because he does not know where.

He now sees his university lying in the street gutters.

You are playing with him and his great life.

He manages to pull himself together, puts his doctor’s certificate under his right arm and puts on his hat.

He now looks like Darwin’s ape.

He is man and ape at the same time, but he does not know that.

He stands shakily before you and your problems, but he now forces himself upon you in a slightly wild fashion.

He feels caught.

But your female intuition wins from male wisdom.

Just watch out!

Van Stein still wants to examine her.

These two souls, who have nothing in common with each other, go upstairs.

They are like fire and water, visible independence and supernatural sensitivity, directly received through motherhood.

Or is it something else?

Van Stein is wearing a mask.

Erica is open and exposed.

She is now involved with daisies and violets, but it is not a bed which she lays at his feet.

He will lose himself as a result.

Now an academic is haunted.

Van Stein sees ghosts!

Erica enters her own castle, she rules there.

The academic rings the bell.

He sees that the door opens and closes.

Yet, he rings again, a bit louder, and pushes in the door.

He already wants to enter.

He is lying flat on the floor and now sees that the marble in the hallway shows footsteps.

To him this is the sign that many people enter and leave.

So, it is not a supernatural being, after all?

He sees a person like himself.

But a bit different, he is half mad!

However, what do you do if, during such a conversation, you are put in a chair as a layperson and treated kindly?

I do not smoke much, but now I really felt like having a cigarette as never before.

I am burnt out and see the couple coming downstairs.

There they are again.

I do not even want to listen anymore, but I have to.

No!

I do not think there is such a thing as coincidence.

But short-sightedness does exist!

I hear Erica talking about a conversation she had with herself.

Then the bombshell is dropped for Van Stein in the middle of his conscious and knowledge.

How merciless a woman is in such a condition, I whisper to myself.

I no longer know her; she is like a mad woman.

Do not believe him anyway, Erica, he does not know what to do about your symptoms.

Even if you were to drink ten bottles of gin in a few hours, he would still not believe you.

You have only made a fool of yourself and your husband.

You will now be talked about; you will become “the talk of the university”.

You will now have to arrange your own flowers and clean your own windows.

Did you not see a scarecrow?

Good Lord, Erica.

It is all Karel’s fault!

“Doctor, does it not mean anything to you that I have longings for a drink?

Does it not mean anything to you that I walk outside and think that I am inside?

I eat and drink and it is not me.

I feel that someone else is eating for me.

Does that not mean anything to you?

It is like I just said, it is an intimate conversation with myself.

But it comes from inside me, Doctor...!”

I sit in my chair and hear talking inside me. I hear: “Just go away!” “Get away!” and similar expressions.

I now know that it is Erica and I do not know her yet, I have never seen her behave so harshly and rudely.

It is becoming commonplace!

Yet I am not mistaken, she said it!

Oh, Karel, what have you got yourself into?

How stupid of you!

Just like a child.

It will cost you your stupid head.

You will still have to learn to bow your head.

Why did you do this?

Van Stein will look into it, Erica throws him out, although she controls herself and makes the best of a bad job.

She follows the knowledge as far as the living room, then Anna takes over from her and the door closes.

Well, Erica, you are rowing yourself into a ditch.

Now you can put on the bait, he is casting your own rod, eats and drinks well and lets you and your child starve.

Can you not predict this?

If he had gone into what you said, dear, he would have died on the spot.

I saw your soul; Erica, I could feel it!

You are not talking nonsense!

However, you made a fool of yourself, because we stupid people have not yet developed a language for it.

Such feelings cannot be materialized.

You are on fire and there are no flames.

Just work that one out.

Did you want this idiot to do it for you?

Did you not see him lying in the street?

Did you not see how he picked up his doctor’s certificate and pushed down his hat so much that no one would recognize him again?

“Can you understand a ‘chap’ like that, Frederik?”

It is another harsh word from maternal lips, as a result of which you see her intellectuality shrivelled, which you would not have thought possible before.

How nasty we people are.

Or is it because we do not yet know ourselves?

Even if Rome declares you a saint, you must pretend to yourself that it is not you, or that better and higher self will floor you.

“That’s Karel.

Are you happy now?

Why did that man not say anything?

Frederik?

Am I a dreamer?”

She does not talk any more, but pours herself a drink.

It is another phenomenon, which I never saw before from her.

She asks me:

“Did I used to be like this, Frederik?

I am ashamed, but it really does not bother me.

Is this not something peculiar as well?

I am going mad, Frederik.

Is that passion a part of me?

That is impossible!

My soul is ailing!

I am going crazy!

It just crawls up from inside me and attaches itself to my throat and the roof of my mouth.”

I am deeply shocked and ask: “What did you say?”

She is herself again and continues:

“Did you not understand me just now?

It attaches itself to my pharynx.

It is very itchy and I am dying of thirst.”

“But then wouldn’t you be better to have a drink of milk or something else?”

“Milk?

The very idea, Frederik.

It has to burn as far as my throat, through my whole body.

When I drink alcohol, I rinse away those feelings and it is as if the child is talking to me.

Then it subsides.

I thought that it reached my stomach.

Sometimes it goes even deeper.

However, that could also be my imagination.

Yet, Frederik, it has to do with the child.

You know what I mean.

Do you not understand me?

What do you think?”

“I said, let’s hope that you stay normal.”

She only vaguely hears me and asks:

“Please help me, Frederik.

You can do it!

I am afraid.”

“Discard those thoughts, do you hear?”

She comes to with a shock and is as happy as a child.

“You see, you can help me, Frederik.

That’s it ... you are already helping me now.

Do you understand?”

I was shocked by my own words, by their sound.

Was that me?

She looked at me, because she did not know me like that either.

She immediately continues:

“I cannot accept that this is a growing process.

Something tells me that we are experiencing horrible things.

I ask you, Frederik, will you help me?

Will you not abandon me?

Will you come as often as you can.

Or will I have to fight it out alone with Anna?

You may think that I am weak and that it is a strange carry-on.

I swear to you, I do not understand myself.

I have changed, I am not as I used to be, I am sick!

How horrible!

However, I have to fight it out with myself.

Karel does not have the brains for it and the patience to listen to me and yet that would do me good.

I can look at the light and I cannot see it.

Is that perhaps a psychopathic characteristic?

Will you help me, Frederik?”

“I will do my best, Erica.

Will it be any good to you?

Do not forget that I am a layman.

Even if I love children a lot and I am interested in everything to do with them, I know nothing about them!

However, I advise you: act ordinary.

As far as the sun is concerned, it will come back again.

Do not look at it, stay close to home, do not rack your brain.”

She contemplates this, I try to fathom her out, it is the only thing I can do.

I do not yet know where I should start my own research, if I want to achieve the unity of soul to soul and receive the answer from her.

I think that this is the only way.

I have to support her.

As a child, I also had my own thoughts of which my mother said: “Look at you going round worrying, it cuts me up.”

It is irritating you.

I laughed at her and did not understand it.

Now I believe that she was right.

Also I felt only that sensation.

A soul touched me; it could also be life, or another personality.

It is all the same situation for Erica, I believe, her intimate conversation.

How stupid we people are, how poor our language is, we are oafs.

Wantonness from the “Achterhoek”, Gelder’s vulgarity, we have the consciousness of a pig.

I also believe that I am getting to know Karel better.

However, Erica is alone in her misery.

I am busy helping her!

I think I can accept that I can do it!

I am suddenly filled with happiness!

What a lot I have learned.

Frederik, you are now becoming a man!

She suddenly asks me:

“What is feeling, Frederik?”

I swallowed the words that I was about to say, but which were too coarse for her life.

I had wanted to express a curse; I was so shocked by her question.

This will mean nothing to an outsider; it is a wonder to me.

Erica feels that I am becoming one with her soul.

She suddenly gets that knowledge from me just like that.

I do not know this side of her personality either.

It is something entirely new.

“I do not know what feeling is”, I answer her, but she has dozed off and has forgotten about her question.

The realisation radiates from her that she knows that I have put the clocks back by centuries.

All social wisdom and sense now go overboard.

Yet she is awake, she mumbles her question again.

I hear: “Feeling is life and life is feeling!”

I am not any the wiser from it, but she is thinking.

We will see later who is right.

Perhaps we will never get to hear the answer.

She is talking to Van Stein; she is therefore talking in her sleep.

These are sober, natural phenomena, and everyone has them from time to time.

I can feel that it comes from within her.

The dull sound of the voice is not hers.

This is also something new to me.

I am capable of giving up my ideas as if there was no coincidence.

Everything is becoming predestined.

I mean, what a lot I am learning.

Who sent her to me?

Who chased me out the door to meet her?

I go back to that moment and become lost in my memories.

Now I am faced again with my first acquaintance with her and my feelings are talking to itself!

In front of me is a woman who still knew a short time ago what she wanted.

Now she is like a piece of driftwood.

It’s a row-boat which is drift ashore.

I would like to tell her, but it is too harsh and cold for her personality and too unfriendly, because she is not like that: due to your kind, the world will end.

You have lost control and you are now sailing under the compass of another life.

Your ship is sinking, you can see land, but when you cast the anchor, it does not stick!

It is as if she is on the way to her own grave!

A moment later she is standing on top of it; she is resting on her gravestone after picking flowers and imagines that she is connected to heaven and earth, of which she does not know a single law, like me and millions of other people!

She is now wearing a mask and behind it, an individual is laughing at us.

But we do not know that person!

Did you see that mask?

It is good at art and it drinks bottles of gin, it is in front of you and it is not there.

It looks at the sun and there is no light.

It has passion, strong powers and false airs and graces.

It irritates you day and night, but it is the worst towards midday.

You can say nice words through that mask, like a poem.

Can you now hear that thundering outside?

Do not be shocked, it is Mother Nature!

It is also thundering within Erica.

She sees her own grave; she is standing on top of it.

She pulls Karel’s doorbell and freezes as a result of his inner self: I am starting to understand.

I believe that I am starting to feel all this misery!

“Yet you can help me”, she utters.

Her dreams during the day are not so bad, she feels an increasing happiness for herself, and she needs help.

Is this telepathy?

Unity of people?

Like soulmates?

I do not like those words, and I have always hated saying them.

I do not take part in occultism, and I hate spiritualism.

That is for women who have lost their husbands.

The only thing, which I have respect for is that they are no longer afraid of death.

They are just like children who are playing a nice game, because death is no longer shocking to these people.

It is all very interesting, but I do not like it.

I now suspect that Erica’s soul is talking to me.

A short time ago, she would have laughed at all of us.

Now that has come to her.

Was it of its own accord or through her child?

She mumbles “because of that life” and that makes me afraid.

While dreaming, she takes over every word from me.

It is shocking to me, if I did not know so much about the world, I would now clear off.

I am not that sad either.

But can you understand it?

Is it only her vocal cords that speak to me?

What is it?

Her unity with Mother Nature?

You could give her what for!

Her words knock me for six again when I see that she is wide-awake and she says:

“You have to think, Frederik, if you carry on thinking like this, you will make it.

You can do it, you have to sense things!”

Did you hear that?

They are my words, my thoughts, and my choice of words.

She is analysing me!

She is unravelling my soul; she knows my personality.

I am now in a bath wearing my clothes and a hat.

The tap is closed, but water is trickling over my big toe.

What a shock for a person.

Now she says from her grave:

“Did you think that it was raining, Frederik?

It is as dry as a bone outside.”

I feel pressure on my throat, I have more difficulty breathing, and it is tension.

I would like to call for help, but think it is stupid.

I would give her a fright and I myself would tumble into Erica’s ditch, because Karel has nothing to do with any of this.

However, this is a terrible example, which is now a matter of feeling, but we people suppress it with our fanciful decency of behaving normally in everything.

It is a maternal attack, turned around and compared to Mother Nature.

Because while I was thinking and analysing it was raining inside me.

She says that it is as dry as a bone, in other words: continue, do not look for another way, this is the one!

Try saying that everything she says is nonsense, hysteria, and maternal sensitivity!

But is it maternal tenderness, her pure inner life?

Or is everything becoming hazy?

You are now outside in the moorland, on the ground, no, inside it.

There is a good view from this place.

You see paradise above you, people are smiling at you, but you do not know where it comes from.

Did you see that smile?

These are precisely the greenfly of the doctor.

They are also your own!

They tickle your legs, your head, but especially your heart and your inner life.

You start to think that it is intuition, your sensitivity, but you are receiving it.

After all, you went into the countryside!

You want to have some peace, away from the everyday, social rot around you.

You are dying, dead tired, but as open and aware as a child.

Now your windows are cleaned.

The violets are horse riding.

The forget-me-nots shine your shoes.

However, high above you in the sky, you read a prayer which makes you cry.

Or rather it moves you to tears.

Did you not see that?

I write down in my notebook that a mother, expecting her child, gets supernatural and lowlife thoughts.

However, I have to accept that it was not me, because I cannot do that myself.

I am too dopey for that, too childish.

Yet, what is it?

I could now tell myself: when you started taking notes, you already drifted northwards, while you wanted to reach the sober West, which your notes were intended for.

I also move with another compass.

But a dog smells it, wags its tail to express its disgust and runs away.

What are we people trying to achieve?

Yet, I tell you that I am happy.

I learned an enormous amount today.

Erica is clearly awake and asks me:

“You have seen much of life, Frederik.

You have read a lot.

You are so different.

Just believe me, tell me what you know.

Help me!”

I can feel by her talking that she is exhausted.

She has no strength any more to think, her longings have become unreal.

I believe that she already asked me to help her a moment ago.

“Of course I shall!” I let slip, “I will do what I can”, but I make it clear to her that she must find it ridiculous.

Nevertheless, I remain inwardly connected to her.

I have the feeling that I have aged greatly and that months have passed since I came in here.

It is strange, I feel that, when I surrender my feelings for eighty percent, I can hear the voice of her soul.

And she can hear mine.

Will this lead you to madness?

I do not know and I did not think about it either.

It does not matter to me, I have become a bit stronger since I started to think.

Yet I am treading my own path.

She is treading hers.

We meet each other somewhere in this space.

She invites me to tea and cake; I have to pay for my own treat.

A moment later, we are sitting outside, together on our way, and it has rained.

You can smell the rain in the woods, and it is rather musty.

We feed the ducks; there are no people.

We are alone in this world and are like a second Adam and Eve, if I could believe in the first one.

Just follow life and you will know!

We live a carefree existence, and there is nothing to disturb us.

We do not have children and we will not have any either.

We are too old for it.

And we do not believe in the wonders of the Bible, we do not want to hatch out children any more at the age of ninety.

We tremble at the thought.

We no longer have the patience.

There, suddenly I have a brainwave ...!!

I now know.

But will she know?

Hold on tight, Frederik, and do not believe anymore in coincidences ...

Everything has been worked out beforehand!

If you remember that now, you will be able to carry on.

Now you can see her sun better and also your own light.

Sharper and more virginal.

There is no cock crowing.

You are not yet able to wait for the Gethsemanese answer.

Do not believe that nonsense.

Look beyond it, only then will you go higher and come closer to Him.

His heart chamber, and you will see that His blood flowed for you!

Erica’s experience put into words was:

“Frederik, surely you do not believe that I am talking nonsense?”

I would have liked to kiss her, this good child of Karel’s, if I had had the strength for it, but I thought it would be too unfriendly.

No, my poor soul, you are not talking nonsense, you are as natural as can be, even if I still have to find it out for myself.

I am in the middle of it; my constitution will cope with it.

However???

All the same, I say that what we are talking about is ridiculous.

It will have to come to an end.

I can tell you that seventy percent of me no longer believe in coincidence.

Now I uttered, without much sound, but with a shock to my system:

“My Erica, the materialisation of words only takes shape when you light the fire of your human will!”

Oh, Frederik, ...

Are you not frightened of yourself?

I thank heaven that she has not understood my words clearly, because she did not react sufficiently.

I repeated them to myself and thought they were wonderful.

Not anything like my usual!

Then what?

I established again that I was sent those words; another person in this world gave them to me.

Because I do not believe in a subconscious.

Like Karel, I would say, whom are you trying to kid.

Are these Erica’s thoughts?

I cannot accept it.

Now a death is laughing at me, which gave me a few of its violets.

However, I felt that these thoughts as words brushed past my own on the tip of my tongue and wrote themselves as it were.

Read the sentence again and you will have to agree.

It is art.

I wished that I had a style like that and could say such things.

Also supernatural?

I said to her that I believed in her, she did not need to worry.

And I was telling the truth, for just now, of course, because I had been in that wood where it smelled so musty.

She nods and is content with everything.

I really believe that we will experience great things, but also miseries, which are just as great.

I already see the house on fire.

We all run onto the street.

When you are outside, you stand with a poker in your hand, while you let the treasures burn.

Now you have to feel what it means.

I do not yet think about it, because it is becoming too much for me today.

However, I know that this is also a mask!

Can you see behind it?

Before she became a mother, as I already mentioned, she was a beautiful woman, without a grain of feeling for occult science.

Now you would say that she has become that herself.

I was never able to discover those feelings in her, which bring us to telepathy and whereby we reach out for a sixth sense.

Her body is not suited to it, even she seems a bit provincial, I would say that her build, the colour of her eyes, are not ready for it.

She dresses really well, but there is something about her, which is not from the city.

Can a person like that bear and deal with the depth of an occult law?

According to eastern yogis, the human body has enormous meaning.

Those people can see as it were by your body who you are, they know your wandering gait as surely as they know a snail with its house, they knead you from front and behind without you knowing.

Is this all hearsay?

Not at all, I have seen the world.

Has Erica any of this?

Is this nonsense?

What is it then?

She takes over thoughts without knowing it.

Just think about it, I also feel that we will soon be faced with these laws and the true experience of them.

Only then will you feel more respect for my thoughts.

Now you are still laughing, you shrug your shoulders, but then we come closer to each other and everything gets respect for our own personality.

As spiritualists know, Erica is wavering ...

She wavers in another life, and I am that and that is her own child.

At least if it is a child.

What is it then?

I want to apologize.

I really thought of a dog.

However, if I go into it deeper, as you will see and feel if you go along with me, this wonderful thing is not so bad after all.

I myself already understand it.

You?

I do not know whether it is already time to analyse it.

Yet I would really like to convey my feelings to you, if I could make you happy in this way.

What I have to accept is that we – now you will have it – are descending towards animal consciousness!

Now I have said it ...

Can you feel that it is possible?

That we are busy minutely analysing her soul?

You would like that.

It is not yet at that stage.

Would you say that it ... is possible?

Animal consciousness ...

It sounds tremendous!

How can it be?

I let go of it completely ...

I want to be free of every influence.

I do not go on while everything is unsettled, nor do I want to walk on ice from one night.

However, another mask is already laughing at you!

She did not possess those feelings either before she was carrying the child.

However, I have to accept, even if a few drinks do not matter – for many doctors it is a medicine as long as it is in moderation – that she, our Erica, is capable of emptying bottles.

Her inner life is now tuned to canine consciousness.

Is bestial!

True or not?

Therefore, it is also something worthwhile.

Which she has to fight against as a mother and through which her self-respect is being destroyed.

What will Dr Stein think of her?

She is a sexual imputation to him.

That is why it is such a shame that Karel has forced this misery upon her.

Is it a pity?

Are pities created?

I will just say, if Erica had not complained so loudly, I would not have got to know her, in other words: do not go into it too deeply, but it is a little wonder.

The sun is shining for me!

Karel lets her wait at his door as a beggar and that must not happen either.

“You see, Frederik”, she says ... “that he lets all kinds of people into his castle, but I do not like those frills.

There is no help.

The fire has gone out.

Ugh ...!”

Which throws me completely again, because she is busy getting that out of me which is part of my inner life.

She chooses metaphors, which I would use, and she makes jokes that are humanly responsible.

Is that madness?

Has she sentimental or erotic inclinations and is she behaving in a degrading manner, which have nothing to do with each other?

I ask you ... is this because of the child?

Can a child already influence a mother before its birth ...?

It is not as strange and unnatural as we think it is.

Admit it, it is supernatural.

No specialist will be able to help her.

Do not laugh, world of science, do not shrug your shoulders, country boy.

You are completely off the mark.

I am beside her and I am beginning to understand that I can help her.

If you let her finish talking, you will know a lot more and I will get the true satisfaction that she has got hold of my life.

I repeat: before she became pregnant, she did not have any of those things ...

The day before Karel had also said to her:

“All that you think of unwittingly, for yourself, what you can think of, belongs to yourself!”

Work that one out, but it is spot-on.

However, it is no good to her.

“Then”, Erica says, “I ran out of the house to find some peace.

When I came back, he started again and got me out of myself, he threw me into his ditch.

Later on that day he gave me flowers from his heart and said:

“I say, dear, a horse also has to do with motherhood, but we people do not hear it complaining.

Because this animal is so natural, it is not bothered by any symptoms, but birth is birth!

That young foal is also a child of Our Lord.

Why would you not be able to deal with it?

You are a person.

Listen carefully, a person.

You can see the full picture, and get help; science is so far advanced.

You will certainly not die from it.

Do not forget, my child, I want to remain independent.

I cannot neglect myself and what I have to represent.

What is soul and what is life?

What difference does it make to you?

Get to know yourself first, but close to nature.

This is what you must think about, and He who is enthroned above us has mercy on you.”

You see, Frederik, that is Karel.

Are they flowers from the heart?

You can now see a little bit of him and his character.

Then he added:

‘Everything, which we people experience is predestined.

Not through God, because He does not interfere in our childbearing and births, for this purpose, He created mare and stallion and He gave me the ability to make you bear fruit.

Now you are immediately faced with your Bible and that incredible story, as a result of which they will not blindfold me."

Frederik, I could have kissed him then from happiness, if he had not continued with:

‘You are heading for the mental institution and I will not get you out, because everyone is powerless against it.

I would say instead: you are too well-off!’

He immediately rushed out the door again and left me alone.

Later in the evening I got him back to that subject, because he can sometimes say such accurate things, with which he could now help me, if he only wanted to, or at least if he saw the purpose of it.

It came so suddenly, he said:

‘Erica, my patients will tell me whether I am normal.

I do my best; sometimes you stand looking at those poor souls and you cannot reach out a hand.

The blood then rushes to your head and it is as if you get a beating.

Not by those people, but by Him, because I believe He could change immediately.

I therefore do not believe in supernatural powers, laws, laying on of hands or wonders of the soul, which is nonsense, Erica ...

He lets us drown in our miseries, and fight it out completely alone.

He does not want us to interfere in those things, because we academics also have to accept His halt!

But a cow knows it!’

You could give him what for, Frederik, but you cannot do anything about it.

When you hear him, you think that he is right.

But it still bothers me.

After all, I cannot deceive myself, can I?”

She is waiting for an answer.

I say:

“You must want to be strong, that is all!

Go to a doctor, then you will know what to expect.

They do not know.

Karel is right in himself, but he does not know what he means, at least, if we throw everything of our self overboard.

He means to say, if I understand him properly: Everything is good as it comes from the hand of God and if it is not good, that means you must remain natural, because otherwise God will intervene.

However, God does not intervene, Karel is faced with his dead people, he has to accept that he has nothing to say, he cannot exercise his will, against the powers and forces which face him and also his colleagues.

But remember: he means it in your interests.”

However, we have to try to help this soul, I thought, whatever the case, she needs help.

There is more united with her than we suspect.

There are powers at work here, which we do not yet know about, but we are starting to see a few of their phenomena.

What will happen later when the same phenomena become stronger?

We are not out of the woods yet.

In addition, you are either your own personality or you are not.

She is no longer her own personality.

And is that because of her pregnancy?

We are faced with her inner life.

Science knows nothing about it, absolutely nothing, studies are not yet of significance.

If you go into it as a layman, then you will automatically gain something.

You do not know whether it has an axiom.

She wants me to answer, and it is true, I really know something about it ...

For example, if I consider theosophy, which accepts reincarnation of those people, then I am immediately faced again with Karel and his “university”, which says: the soul is on earth for the first time.

When a child is given life; that is the very beginning.

We are no further!

Yet, who is right?

It is already making my head swim.

When you hear her ask: “Is such a little mite already able to influence the mother?”, you are inclined to reply: “Yes, it must be the case.

Where do your feelings and symptoms come from?”

Yet, now you are faced with hundreds of thousands of possibilities and you knock down a parapsychologist.

You stamp on your psychologist; a psychiatrist suffers from rabies.

You can feel that it is not working!

That is impossible.

I am not able to dismiss that through, which mankind has received its character and personality, as a result of Erica’s symptoms, her talk and her longing for a drink.

There was now nothing left of our social thinking.

We sunk into desert sands; we were not building something up but destroying it!

Should “universities” succumb because of maternal sensitivity?

As Karel says: through oversensitive mercy, consoling revelation?

Do not make me laugh!

You will certainly feel it, it is questions and asking questions.

Then there is something else.

Whatever your opinion of Karel, he is choosing the correct path.

I tell you, I do not hope to see him any differently than he is now.

He is a natural doctor.

He is down-to-earth and has his feet firmly on the ground.

Karel wants to see foundations, or is it something else?

It is Erica.

She cannot explain herself.

She is smothered in her feelings, they do not get any material significance.

She does not have any foundations either.

As far as I am concerned, I will wait and go my own way.

It is up to you what you do!

However, I believe that I will be proved right soon.

Karel recently said:

“Frederik, if I had known that with all my knowledge I would be so powerless, I would have stayed with the cows, or I would have become a vet.

An animal talks to you, the naturalness of the animal pulls you automatically in the right direction.

The animal tells you how you must act, but a person with all his divine origins is deaf and dumb, unobtainable, unpredictable.

You will achieve what I have achieved in six months’ time.

You and your childish optimism, your awkwardness, penetrate the problem deeper than we do with all our self-assuredness.

I am serious!”

However, I did not fall for it, I would have to pay for it the next day anyway!

Yet, is it the truth?

I say goodbye to Erica and long to be alone.

Oh, that fresh air.

Go to the countryside, Frederik.

Fast, run as fast as you can.

People are sitting on my bench.

So I will carry on.

I want to think.

Now that I am one with nature, green and grey, and the unity of this universe speaks to me, the trees bicker about a passionate love for Him, I run out of the woods and lock myself in my room.

One thing is clear to me: Erica possesses animal consciousness.

It will destroy her.

I let the rest sink in for the moment.

I think of her and send my thoughts to her from afar.

Will it help?

“I have something to tell you.

Erica, Mrs Wolff, if you are serious, if you promise me that you will stop drinking, I will do my utmost to help you.

I do not yet know how and by which I should do that, but we understand each other.

That is all for now!”

A few days later, when I call in again, she confronts me with the facts.

“Shall we have a drink, Frederik?”

I now have to accept that the thoughts and help I sent her are worth nothing at all.

I have to do it in another way, but I refuse to drink.

“Come on, Frederik, just one for the company.

Do you think that I will drink this bottle straight away?

Do you want to bet me?

Do you want to know whether my child likes gin?”

I think of Karel, he would have given her a good beating.

She feels it and says:

“If Karel sees me, it will burn within my soul.

But he does not know yet, he does not have to know either, it does not matter to him anyway.”

We establish that it lives here in her.

It is terrible and hard to understand.

She is now a fellow, she has scholarly actions, the hand to drink and also the swig.

Her cluck of delight, which you hear afterwards, but makes you tremble and shake.

This is another consciousness, it is no longer from her.

I beg her to stop drinking.

“Do not turn to drink”, I say.

She smiles and does not mind.

Yet she puts the bottle in the cupboard and asks:

“Could I be too old to have children, Frederik?

I am now thirty-seven.

It seems too old to me!

We have waited too long.

Do you believe me?”

I have to act awkward again, because I do not know.

But I have my own thoughts about it.

She continues:

“Why did we not have children when we should have had them?”

It is like nothing on earth, but it is a human question.

She has more questions, I hear:

“Or can you have children when you want to yourself?”

Even stranger, but it is also a human question or loose talk.

Furthermore:

“Frederik, in all honesty, we did not want them.

But that is not quite true either.

Karel likes children, I am not bothered.

I do not know whether I am happy with it.

I could love my children, if I knew beforehand that I knew them.

I see misery enough.

They are problems!

Do you not think that the number of questions is increasing?”

What she just said sounds completely reasonable.

Children are problems, every mother thinks the same as Erica about it.

For many their offspring signify misery, arguments, destruction and, however absurd, a distance between husband and wife.

The list is endless!

However, are Erica’s words those of an erotic hothead?

I have not worked it out for myself yet when she says: “Frederik, I think that it will be horrible.

I do not hear a word from Karel.

He used to talk about it constantly.

Now I am expecting a child, I am alone.

You would think that he is no longer interested anymore.

His love for his own flesh and blood has gone.

What has caused this change?

Oh God, what a problem!”

A few seconds later she says:

“Well, why is a mother not capable of bearing her children on time?

Why do mothers get children, even if they do not want them?

One mother gets rid of them, another complains and begs and does not get them.

There are women who travel the whole world to get children, but not a single professor can help them.

Mothers destroy the embryo and make themselves infertile, others have an operation to achieve the opposite effect.

My God, ... if you have to deal with all of this, they are such dreadful mysteries!

Fifteen good years passed.

I think between the age of twenty and thirty is the best.

Then you are most suited to it, I will not say: then you are open for it, you are most in harmony with the event.

You are young yourself and understand everything better.

Now we are having our first.

Just as long as it is the last one, because I have already had enough of it.”

Is all of this nonsense, madness?

However, I do not get the time to think about it when she continues, she touches upon laws that make my head turn, and which no one knows the truth of, but which every mother is tuned to.

“Frederik, are you trying to tell me that God meddles in all these things.

That He makes sure that you do not get any children?

That He ...!?

Ask yourself thousands of questions ...

Is it God who favours one woman and lets another perish?

Is it through God, I ask you, that one child is gifted and another child has psychopathic tendencies?

Then just keep your God, I do not want anything to do with Him!

Are you trying to kid me, I repeat, that He meddles in this misery?

I know, I am talking under Karel’s influence, but is he not right?

You must understand, Frederik, I am not well-versed in the Bible, I have not studied it properly.

I do not want to insult you, or anyone, but answer me!

I am searching, but you are unravelling!

You will solve this mystery for me.

I do not know what is the matter with me, but it is all part of what I now feel, it is the cause of my misery.”

She is expressing my thoughts again, she is sucking a part of my life into her, as it were.

It is wonderful, but certainly frightful.

If we are capable of following her, we will really be faced with the facts.

I ask you, does God let children be born?

Is it not as Karel says: He created a stallion for the horse and I am here to allow your womb to bear my fruit.

However, he was trying to say that it is in your own hands!

God gave you, us, the ability, He has nothing more to do with it!

It is horrible enough.

We are in a large muddy society and we become stuck with His laws.

Are we animals?

An animal has more capacity than we think.

The animal does not reason, it acts, but better than we people, it listens to its master.

Did Erica ask for all these phenomena?

Karel and she are normal people, they have richly blessed bodies and are gifted with a good intelligence.

They are also simple!

Karel is not imagining anything!

However, their friends, and I am one of them, do not yet know anything about this, they are just ordinary botchers.

They have borrowed some wisdom and they make sure that no one bothers them.

However, now God comes and upsets this life.

In passing, He chops the happiness in this house into pieces, in His way.

It just comes suddenly ...

I said “in passing”, within a few minutes, the terrible drama happened.

However, Karel and Erica were not aware of it.

Who could understand that?

Who will explain the Universal laws to us?

This couple, Erica and Karel, were one flesh, but how could Erica know that the man, whom He had given her, would poison her.

She gets life juices in her, slipped away in life’s depths, lost and denied herself by giving herself away in her female hotheadedness and then sunk into an extraordinary sleep filled with love, and she dreamt.

She saw forget-me-nots and daisies making wreaths around her dark hair.

She experienced unprecedented bliss, so awe-inspiring, of such supernatural beauty, that she saw Him in her sleep, and thanked Him for all the good He had given her and Karel.

Within three weeks, she has symptoms and she has to accept that her dream has deceived her.

Yes, that God Himself has deceived her.

Did God give them a child?

Is it He Who gives His child a mother inclined towards drink?

Is it He Who has given her all those nightmares?

She was never like that before!

Erica feels like smashing everything to bits ...

Is that God’s divine love?

You see, I do not believe that!

I cannot believe this, because I do not consider Him capable of it!

I know that it is we ourselves, although I cannot support this claim.

I am perhaps a bit too sensible for that “universal” metaphor.

To Erica it seems that the blow, which she received, is given to her directly from His universe?

“Whom are you trying to fool”, Karel once exclaimed, when this subject was raised for the hundredth time, I add my opinion ...

I flatly refuse to give this scrag the name of “God”.

Erica has become pregnant because of it ...

I believe that I understand this soul!

Truly and indeed, she feels deceived!

When I was still a boy, I had an argument with my father about the powers and forces, which certain Bible sayings were supposed to have inspired.

I still do not know who put those dreadful words into my mouth.

However, I remember that they came out before I could help it.

My father saw that I reacted like a mad bull, but he also forgot himself.

I told him coolly that the God from the Old Testament was a brute!

I immediately ran out the door and stayed away all day.

Mother found me, led by her intuition, up in the attic.

Meanwhile, I had nailed father’s God to the beams, hung up on a firm rope and had carved Him in the decayed wood.

I enjoyed myself and was barely aware that I was still alive.

At that time I found so many things which people said about God were contrary to His laws of Love, and laws of Justice, with which people tried to bribe me – and how many more other children - and which they presented us as proof of the truth.

Was I such a rascal then?

I do not think so.

I made friends and also kept them.

I, who had already learned to think as a boy, always was a support to my friends!

Now, at this age, would I have to accept that I was wrong then?

Do I now have to accept that the God of the Old Testament is also a Father of Love?

A theologian could try to defeat me, Erica and Karel, with his theories, or by attaching Divine origin, Divine justice to sayings from the bible.

I cannot believe that all of this is justified, the policy of a God of Love ...

To me it is recklessness, to speak of a universe and time, which we know nothing about ... and of which nothing is proved!

Please understand, I am not talking about “Christ”, nor about the events in connection with Him.

Before me lie mantraps and clamps which prevent us from finding the way out,

not with the Son, but with the Father, in other words the Father of the Old Testament.

Now people can talk and talk, proclaim wisdoms.

People can pretend to be learned, to be like professors.

People have to accept those mantraps and clamps for good, because the God of the Old Testament is a stranger ... a hater.

We people do not want any underground destruction.

He did it!

After all, the Bible says so!

Are you not a person then, do you also belong to that herd-like carry-on?

Are you even putting a revolver into His hand?

No ... I do not believe that He is violent.

I cannot accept that!

I believe Erica and Karel, but still follow my own path.

I am in doubt about one thing ...

Did God bring chaos into this life?

We will have to wait and see.

It hangs in His universe whether we will receive the answer.

Oh, how those angels of His have abandoned us!

“You see”, I said to Erica, “I do not believe that God has deceived you!

We people are like a herd of sheep.

What does a sheep do if it has wandered away from the main herd, away from the man whom it respects and who must guard over it?

It eats all the things in your garden.

It tramples on all your good gifts.

It eats up all the crops and continues until it is hungry again, then it starts all over ...

Where it appears, it creates poverty and misery.

Now take this to your human heart, make a comparison, look back how you left home and face up to all your deeds that you have created as a lost son.

You will now know that this entire world belongs to you, all of this earth ... but you have not understood your possession!

Can God find enjoyment in our failures and successes?

Can He destroy you?

Perhaps, but will He also do that?

We people, Erica, already stumble over one word ... over thousands of trivial things, but we cannot see the basic essentials!

Or, as the Bible says: We see ... we see the splinter in the eye of another so quickly but we do not notice the beam of wood in our own eye.’

When she asks, where I received that wisdom ... I cannot give her an answer ...

I do not know myself.

However, I felt a wonderful feeling envelop me when I talked about it!

It was as if everything was talking to me, all the things created by Him.

Am I open to that?

Try explaining it?

I replied:

“I heard about it in the East, dear lady.

Sometimes the East knows more than the West.

The West likes scrounging.

The East remains itself.

What does this mean?

That we Westerns have lost our naturalness.

We now participate in scrounging.

The East concentrates on what lives in you.

In other words: an academic from the West is concerned with himself...

He tries to solve mysteries through himself, which are obvious in nature, but the origin of which he will not accept.

In the East, people say that every insect can tell you that!

That animal also has its own universe.

That brings you to white and black magic, or, to put it more simply ... self-knowledge!

I know one thing, an Oriental is still a child of Mother Nature ...

We Westerns, and along with us every city consciousness, interfere in our lives and in the quantities received from God so brutally that the truth is not known, even if it is written in giant letters.”

“It is wonderful, Frederik.

How well you can put things.

I knew it ...!!

You are so different to the millions of people of this world ...

You are really still a child.

How wonderful it is!

Do you know that I sometimes take walks around the earth?

Now I can do it, I did not use to be able to.

Please, carry on?”

“It is a fact that even the most aware people among us would not want to swap lives with an Indonesian under any circumstances.

That is, not his material life ...

His inner life is higher than ours is, at least of those people who have created natural order in their own homes.

Because the rest is a mess!

I believe that all people on earth will one day be elevated to city life, because this is the purpose of this humanity.

After all, you cannot continually renounce culture.

That brings me back to Our Lord, who says: ‘I will create a paradise for you!’ - at least according to the Old Testament.

However, look at the misery and judge for yourself!

Moreover, what about Karel’s scrounging?

You have to be able to feel the science; the East lives according to natural laws, here we make a science of everything, but the soul of all life will show us one day that this is not only unnecessary but also completely wrong.

Take court decisions.

Do they satisfy the natural feeling of justice?

Usually they do not!

Take the Church.

Does it give light?

On the contrary, through the image, which it gives us of the Divine, it creates the darkness that envelops Him, only denser.

It was never really enlightening for the poor of spirit, it never gave them anything, because the God which it preaches about still damns people...

And I do not accept that either!

You see, Erica, that is scrounging ... spiritual science under the ground ... loose talk...!

That is blaspheming God through the dead!!

Selling His universe for possessions, for gold, silver ... material nonsense!

I could give you another example, which would make you understand me better.

And then you would understand what I mean by scientific scrounging.

I will give you an example.

Karel has a patient ...

He visits him, and the patient believes that he is working on a cure.

However, all Karel does is prescribe some medicine, nothing else is within his reach.

Sometimes years pass, then death still comes ...

Karel is faced with the fact.

All that time he lived from his ignorance ...

The patient paid him, but got nothing in return ... nothing more than a bit of hope of getting better.

Do you know what annoys them, what sends them to the devil, even if these gentlemen do not tell you?

No, you do not know the answer.

I once talked to an academic who said:

‘You are standing there like a pile of conscious deceit.

You would like to throw the money you got on the corpse, because you feel like a scrounger ...

A street sweeper is more upright than we learned men.’

That man then walked away.

I never saw him again.

However, I knew that he felt that he had not earned that money ...

He had only come out with some useless knowledge that did not help and was good for nothing!

Do you call that harmony with the eternal?

Did you think that this is the way to use gifts of the heart and senses?

I know, we humans may not think like that, but what do you expect?

Look at the fuss they make, their trappings and material chatter, what are they like?

Those who see their own comfort say that if we continue on the path of knowledge and find a way to bring people back their lives then we will be inviolable, that makes up for everything!

However, until that time... and that time will never come!!!

I tell you, they will just have to sort that out for themselves.

If Karel was to carry on thinking in that direction, I believe that he would no longer be able to accept that alm.

But he does not think.

I tell you, when I had to choose, when my life was starting, when I conceived the plan of becoming a doctor, I dreamed one night about this horror and then immediately abandoned all my wishes ...

Never in my life, I told myself, would I become a doctor.

I will not take part in scrounging!

Erica, only later did I understand properly how crazy those thoughts were.

Expressions of youthful sensation, because, after all, our society and evolution were standing completely still.

However, this is just the way Karel is.

Yet, I know that we will still hear it from his lips.

He is too honest, too much a farmer ... to continue to raise his hand to a corpse!

He does not like masks!”

Erica laughs about it, but she is now calm.

She laughs as I have never seen her laugh before and I am pleased for her.

I know who she is laughing about ... it is Karel.

When I stand up to leave, she insists that I stay.

“This hour is too precious”, she says, “to end it now.

You have made so many things clear to me.

I have never realized that life is full of scroungers.

But you are right.

Karel is a right one!”

I am immediately sorry for talking so stupidly.

After a short silence she continues:

“When a very ordinary person sells something, Frederik, and it later appears that the goods were faulty, that person goes to prison.

For swindling or something else, society rejects such an individual.

However, what do Karel and his kind do?

You see, I understand.

It is ridiculous if you boast about what you know, although you know nothing, at least your knowledge is powerless.

Now I see Van Stein differently, now I pity the behaviour.

He can say what he wants, think that I am sentimental and am probably an erotic woman.

I can now see my poverty!

My God, how you have helped me, Frederik.

So much misery has fallen from my shoulders, through your words alone.

I am so pleased with you ...

Just do not be scared, Frederik, I mean that I am happy to call you my friend!

I mean it.

You are worth your weight in gold.

Your words are so soothing!

What a man that Van Stein is!

I now know... I do not need scientific help.

They can help me later to deliver the baby, but no more than that.

It is over!”

She laughs so wildly and passionately that you can hear it in the street.

She sees more than I do.

She looks at the ground, but that is where Van Stein and his “university degree” are, in my opinion!

I now understand that greenfly can sting people and they like to have their fun!

I have to accept again that her powers of reasoning are sharper than I thought.

She used to be spiritually poorer, now it is as if she has become a thousand years older and wiser.

It tells me that not everything is awful, nor becomes madness, but it can also mean growth and blossoming.

She asks again:

“Where did you get all that wisdom, Frederik?”

I replied: “You either have it or you do not ...

You know, I am a stray.

Sometimes I can talk about human matters.

Suddenly my world of thought is closed to me and someone grips my throat, stops me completely.

It is as if I have burned up my own oil.

Or perhaps it is something else and I will have to go back to the East for the answer.

I do not participate in theosophy or spiritualism, I remain sensible, with both feet on the ground, and I know the universe.

This is not a result of my more mature age, which is not an issue.

It is all to do with spiritual gifts.

That immediately brings me to the question: why does God give one child so many of His gifts and does He let the other be a failure?

Age has nothing to do with it, Erica.

Old age is ... stupidity, youth can be ... creation, expansion!!

What do grey hairs and all the experience have to do with it?

Did you think that all this came with the years?

A few months back I did not know anything about this, now I am learning by the second.”

I had wanted to tell her, I am learning through you, but I found that too much.

I would only upset her.

Yet, this was the sacred truth.

A few months ago, I was still a dunce, small in spirit.

Yet I feel, no, I know, that I will have to become even smaller if I want to grow old!

To grow towards His antiquity, His antiquity, which is not material, but spiritual.

For earthly antiquity is of no significance.

I said to Erica:

“You will change!

Believe me, your child will come of its own accord!

Now do not laugh, even if I express myself awkwardly.

You have to remain yourself, I mean.

It depends more on whether your soul as a woman can overcome your soul as the mother in you.”

I had said it.

I heard myself talking again.

How can it be, I wondered to myself, where do you get all those things from, they do not come from you yourself.

Or am I now becoming myself for the first time?

Erica asked:

“Can you repeat that?”

“What?

Why?”

“I think it is worthwhile.”

“I really do not know what you mean.”

“You said, after all, whether the soul, which the woman in me ... and what else?”

“Did I say that?

It sounds very impressive.”

I now feel that I am deceiving her.

I must not let her see that I, like her, do things, say words, which do not come from me.

Then it will definitely become a madhouse.

I quickly regain composure and try to act normally, but I am deeply shocked.

Thank God, she does not notice that; she asks:

“Do you have such knowledge of the soul then, Frederik?

Tell me more about it, I want to know all about it.”

I felt ice-cold and did not understand myself when I told her that sometimes something lived in me, which I did not understand myself.

She looked at me, deeply dismayed.

But immediately afterwards she said:

“You are like a child, Frederik, I already said so.

You can certainly say nice things sometimes.

You should have studied.

Or you should have become a writer.

You say things so liberally, so arousingly, so playful, so artful.

I believe that you are a born psychologist.

Have you never practised, Frederik?”

“Never”, I answered mechanically.

“No, I have never practiced!”

“It is not strange, but a pity, because you have definitely missed your calling, Frederik.

You have a great hidden talent, you could write beautiful books, which would be of use to us.

Just imagine that this, everything we have discussed, really everything ... from the first moment, was written down in the way in which you think and speak.

That would be such a wonderful book, of unparalleled substance!

I know for certain that you would become famous.

And I also know why.

I am comparing it to my own situation ...

You know that I can play the piano.

Despite all my efforts, I cannot achieve what you seem to come out with just like that and which you say is not part of your life.

I see it differently.

You can say things, which are put there by unknown forces.

The world calls that ‘inspiration’.

Learned men do not even know precisely what it is!

Neither do you or I.

And yet it exists!

I am not a creator.

You are!

Every artist longs for it ... but only achieves it a few times in his life.

In your case, I see it every day.

Whatever it is, Frederik, you express yourself in everything through an unknown feeling, a power from outside or from within – it is not important – and it becomes art.

Your soul lives!

I, and later also Karel, will have to endorse that.

Do you think that we do not know you?

Before I became pregnant, I readily admit, I did not see as clearly as I do now.

I could feel completely happy if it was not for all that misery.

Yet I also believe that God knows everything.

I am starting to understand that He shares out His things according to His insight, and that gives me hope.

In other words, good and bad, happiness and unhappiness, high and low consciousness – just as you say, Frederik – all of these live within me.

However, you are no longer aware of the lower consciousness, everything is on a higher plane in your case.

I repeat, you think that no one knows you.

Soon I will probably have forgotten everything again and I will see you differently.

Now I can see your soul, your ability and your whole personality, which is of a charming beauty to me, in which our world is lacking.

Sometimes I am mad, Frederik, but I know that it will release the madness in me again.

That is my own salvation, my hope, and my strength, to bear the dreadful things.

Now I no longer know what I just said.

What were we talking about?

Oh, I remember, I think: I said that I am sometimes completely mad.

No, that is not it.

You calm me down.

Because you have that certainty within you, although you pretend you do not know.

What I feel and what you sometimes receive belongs to one world.

Suddenly it shuts itself off, you are put out of that castle.

Are you not?

I once heard someone compare kindred souls to flowers of one colour.

I did not understand it then, but now I am beginning to understand that man.

He meant that souls can be on different levels.

But does mine belong to such a sinister kind?

Well, now I suddenly realize it.

This is how it should be!”

I can only endorse it.

She has started to see the truth.

She almost got me there.

We were one for those few seconds, like flowers of one colour.

However, she also wore thorns!

They took mine out on the way here.

This is why I am so childishly aware, which she so admires.

I do not know, I cannot understand it yet, although I have to admit that it is wonderful.

Peace comes to you.

She tells me that she is off the mark, she has digressed from our actual subject, and she was right about that.

However, now she has discovered it again and continues:

“You see, Frederik, that is all creation!

I believe that I can feel it again.

It is not stage-fright.

It flies from your pen without you thinking.

It is creation!

Good heavens, Frederik, I will stop it.

I could start writing poetry.

Now it is becoming really horrible.”

This is real.

I knew how it came to her, although I do not know its origin.

Whether it is a stinking cesspool or a heaven?

Who can say?

She is capable of great things and a moment later the feeling, or the power through which her feelings are put into words has disappeared.

When this has gone from her, I suspect that the child will be born.

It is not relevant whether it is a girl or a boy ... but I also suddenly have my doubts about that.

A new certainty came to me while we were talking.

At the very moment that I said, that the gender of the baby did not play any part, the knowledge came to me that it is significant.

Again such a prevalent feeling, which I hope to learn more about in the future.

Now it makes me afraid again.

I feel certain and aware that when the child gets to see the light of life, Erica will be back to normal again.

It follows that everything that is now revealed to her comes from the child.

It does not matter what she does, strange or not, it makes no difference.

It comes to her from an independent source, which we do not know about.

Am I now pregnant or is she ...?

Or is it someone else?

Life?

Erica shows clear signs of madness and of ... an artistic calling!

However, she does not have those forces within her under control, she must wait and tolerate what manifests itself.

And it is precisely that enforced passiveness which is the cause of all the misery.

However, I believe that we have become much wiser.

The things she feels are essential phenomena of an unprecedented nature.

They are as real as possible, yet you have to explain them according to your own supernatural destination, if you have the courage for it.

You can see them, they are almost tangible, but they still forget that we people do not know God.

They also forget that we are not friends of the Bible and know nothing about theosophy and spiritualism.

Erica loses her own mind because of it, she is changing by the second.

Not me, I flatly refuse to.

And yet I am torn, there is a split in me.

I am open to a madness, which has nothing to do with that of animals.

It does not affect animals!

Erica interrupted my train of thought:

“Frederik, if Karel sees that I am drinking, he will beat me.

I am not allowed to drink, but I cannot stop.

Am I behaving foolishly?”

You see, that is neither here nor there.

That was an old story, but she brings it up again.

To me it is proof that she does not see what her surroundings are.

I do, I have seen how it works with her.

If I have not spoken about it yet, that is because that material nonsense does not matter a jot to me.

If you feel the need, fill in her surroundings yourself.

It looks fine here.

There are nice things everywhere.

We are both sitting in a beautiful corner, with magnificent paintings above us, which Karel especially has an eye for.

Erica’s grand piano is in this room.

I just mean, analyse her if you can.

I answer her:

“Just leave it then, stay away from it.”

However, I see that she has suddenly changed, just listen to what comes:

“Can you believe, Frederik, that I sometimes feel like a madwoman.

I swear to you that mad people must feel the same thing as the way I am now behaving.

If you do not believe me and laugh at me, I would like to ask you: go away and never come back here!

But you do not laugh about serious things.

You can listen.

I know what you are like.

We love you, so does Anna.

Do you believe me?”

I do not go into it.

She searches for the words for a moment then continues:

“I remember what I was talking about, Frederik.”

Erica now holds onto it.

For a moment.

“You see, now it is gone again.

I now really do not know what I wanted to say.

Am I not just like a madwomen?

However, I call everything inspiration.

It is incredible.

Frederik, when I sit at the piano at such a moment, then I think that I could smash that thing to bits.

I only hope that you are here then.

Then I will be creative.

Don’t you think?

We will see.

It is strange.

I tell you that I am getting back into it.

Now I feel clearly, I can think more clearly.

It might be because of the gin or because of our conversation.

It does not matter to me.

I now know that it will not happen, or I will look ridiculous.

However, if that feeling or that force is within me, good heavens, how I will let rip.

I do not believe that I will need music then.

It is just like a thunderstorm, as fast as lightning, but then I know that I am mad!”

“Just stop that talk of madness, or I will leave.”

“Do not do that, Frederik.

You will not go away.

You are not like that.

We women can trust you.

You are a gentleman in all respects.

Karel will remain a farmer.

You can wear what you like, you will remain a gentleman.

Not Karel, everyone can see that he is a farmer.

You can see it in his face.”

I do not recognize her, but I have to accept that she is thinking differently again.

And when she says:

“You see things as they are”, it comes to me inwardly.

However, she continues: “You see the things through their own harmonic construction.”

I really do not know anymore whom I am dealing with and I retreat even deeper into myself.

It is a pity, but I consider it necessary.

This soul is still unknown.

Yet there is a lot of good in all her things.

Could that be one of the Divine mysteries?

A few minutes later she comes back to the subject of Karel and her drinking and gives herself the beating she had long promised herself.

But I have already heard that a few times, and it is nothing new to me.

When she asks me whether she could become mad because of the child, she is on top of it again, but that is drawing from the past.

It is failures and successes, searching, being flung backwards and forwards, misery and happiness, wisdom and stupidity, a struggle for a conscious person to exist!

What other conclusion can I draw?

Nothing, after all?

There is no doubt because there is an invisible stick and it will soon hit out at Erica.

I can already hear her screaming, no one can help her, I may never lose sight of that.

The phenomena cannot deceive me.

“But I do not wish to go mad!

Then I would rather jump out the window or drown myself.

I want to become a mother, but not become mad.

I will become mad, or ... or it is my child!

This is what I know, feel and see from myself.

I talk through the life of another person.

You talk through your own power, your own consciousness.

Would you wish to deny me that?

You see, now I have got you.

You are shocked, are you not?

You have never heard me talk like this before.

I am now totally myself, conscious and calm.

I know what I am saying.”

She is right.

I thought that I saw her face change, or perhaps I just imagined that.

But that is impossible, I saw it.

Then she was really supernatural, or a conscious madwoman!

She also says:

“I will show you, Frederik, that I have my own willpower.

Just do not worry about me.

I will make it!

I will resist my urge to drink.

I do not want to be faced with this problem in the future.

I do not want to be to blamed for the misfortune of my child.

I will stop!

I myself will do everything I can.

Something tells me: do it!

Where it comes from ... I do not know.

It is probably ... my better self ... from myself!”

You see, that is your purest form of self-knowledge.

In this way, a person gets to know himself, all higher things, which come from the depths of misery.

Now I remember something: even world happiness lies under the manure heap, an Oriental once told me.

When I asked him what he meant by this, the man laughed at me.

He stood up, but still looked at me and said simply: “Divine Omnipresence ...!!

His white Lotus!

Go home, back to your father and mother, you have no business here.

What you see is a simple mask.

Stupid, Western civilisation!

Just go!”

You could also say those things about Erica.

From her confused inner life the smell of an Egyptian Lotus arises, but with red, white and blue around its stem ...

Received from her own source, resulting from physical contact.

Now it is not so strange after all.

What do you think?

It is only a pity that Karel laughs at everything and will not go into it any deeper.

He could now experience such bliss.

Can you feel her kiss burning on your lips?

What is her love like now?

Universally deep, I should say.

However, I really do not understand it.

Did I ever know that?

Yet, if I think for a moment, I long for such a sensation, such a sting, such a poisonous insect, even if it gives you bloody wounds, you would actually ask for it.

I believe that I would like to be involved in that mad love!

Now I am faced with a heavenly dessert and I am the first to put my fingers in it and lick it.

But like a good child, you see!

When I was standing outside her rainbow-like, nocturnal darkness, and clear blue sky, I thought once more: go to the countryside, Frederik, just get away, heaven and earth have gained contact with each other.

Someone will hang himself today.

But I do not want it to be me!

What a time I had.

I was in a hell and in a heaven.

I have to deal with everything first.

How will I get through it?

However, this study is completely free of charge, I kidded myself.

This university is in the street, the ashbuckets are full of it.

People throw it away and no one desires it.

Yet ... I now heard heaven and earth kiss, “My God, we people cannot understand you.

I have sacred respect for You ...

If I am using the familiar form, it is your own fault.

It was you who gave us all those names.

You yourself wanted us to say Father and that is how I feel about you now.

I have become closer to you.

Much, much closer!

No one will believe me, because they do not want to hear this familiarity.

But do you not laugh at everything?

Is that not exactly the same for you?

I do not believe that words can reduce your sacredness and omnipotence.

Instead, I believe that behind that crazy death words are no longer used.

That knowledge came to me today ...

I have started to think differently!

Professors are to be found in the invisible!

They do not speak, they slip into your life naturally.

They are as sticky as syrup and are then stuck to your life, but here it comes.

I am listening!

I want to be a receptive disciple.

And I believe I will become one.

But then I will have to be on my guard.

Thank You for everything.

Luckily, I am like a child!

I left home alone, like a lost person.

It is You Who leads me back home.

Oh, Father, oh, Mother!”

What kind of a person am I actually?

A being on two legs, cursed with some pride and metaphors, from flesh and bones, some oxygen, but gifted with something, which lives in me and knows whether it is being deceived.

Actually with an infallible intuition ...

But of which I do not yet possess one iota ... in comparison to His, which weighs millions of kilos!

What a comparison!

This is typical of children.

Erica has some characteristics of it.

Karel as well.

Sometimes I think that we all possess them.

In the black eyes of Africa, you can even see it at night.

Especially if the children who live in that part of the world notice that there are snakes in the area.

Goodness, I saw how shocked they were.

One day one of the coolies was a bit off colour, a snake had bitten him.

We saved him by giving him a mud bath.

In the dark shining water, I debased the divine violets, a swarming abundance in the dark waters, which I tapped to let him drink.

Dangerous if you know the laws.

Just as dangerous as the happiness, which has now come into my life.

I am having difficulty remembering something.

I worry about it, but I cannot concentrate enough.

It lives within me and I do not know it.

When I think I have it, it slides from my fingers and flies off into the universe where it came from, or sinks into the earth where I am standing.

I am lost.

Really... I have it!

But I am wrong.

It is completely different.

I have to watch out for myself.

They must never know me there, otherwise, I will lose my independence.

Karel has kicked me into his ditch enough.

If I let Erica go her own way, anything can happen, but I know that if I speak I will be out on the street with all my treasures, I have to stay there like a sphinx!

I learned today that anyone who does not know me would gain respect for me.

I am on my own now.

I have encased various aspects of my personality, but if I want to, sooner or later I can reveal them and use them as balsam for a wounded soul.

I do believe that I have the talent to write.

Erica is right.

What she calls inspiration lives within you!

What it actually is, will some day be revealed.

I think that it is switching off, disappearing, of your conscious personality, but that it has nothing to do with your subconscious.

I already said something to that effect before!

So did Erica!

She is receiving feelings of which she is not aware but which have an effect on her.

In addition, in my opinion, we people do not get anything for free.

Everything, which people wish to possess, demands an effort from your soul and bliss.

I now know that this will lead to thousands of problems for me.

But I will not go into them just now.

She says things and she does not know the source of them.

Do I know?

However, I do know – and no one can make me change my mind – that I am her source.

I already know now where she draws from and by what she is lived.

However learned they are, I will soon win from Karel and his friends.

But I will go my own way.

My university is on the streets!

Pay attention, it is becoming exciting.

It is a university, but you have to have the right feeling for it.

And it is understandable, because life is speaking here.

As far as its character is concerned, that is now still a mask, a death!

It has to do with the sparkling of the stars, clear moonlit nights etc. etc.!

With everything which has to do with the soul.

It is also obvious that Erica’s eyes reflect motherhood.

What you sometimes see in her eyes is frightening and it takes you to the art, which she keeps on talking about.

I have already started taking notes, my notebook is filling up, and the game will begin.

Erica is now wearing a mask!

We do not look through it: we, I mean, learned men, Van Stein and his kind.

I do!

Thank God ... yes, my God.

I thank You!

You can see it.

I have regained my respect for You.

Now what ...?

She is close to me and yet far away.

Just as she says herself, she is here, but she is not here.

Just as well for her that I am still a child and do not know anything about this unusual love.

If I were any different accidents would happen.

Because I also found that out for certain.

I told her something and she spoke to me.

But our lips did not move.

We communicated mentally ... heavens sung then.

We were given wings!

The drone of an organ came close to us.

We were in the meadows!

Above us was the universe.

The blossoms from the only tree there, sheltered us.

I decided then that we had not yet lived.

We felt like child angels must feel.

There was only silence!

A sacred unity.

Later we continued hand in hand.

And we now walked in silver sandals.

There were no people ...

This castle belonged to us alone!

God in heaven waved to us!

Then we saw that He is a Father and a Mother.

Love!

A while later we ate divine fruits, as if to prove that we were still of the earth, at least that we could be as we wanted!

All of this is in order to provide proof.

When I come under pressure later, I will be finished with it.

It is still material.

But can you feel it?

I have made up my mind to try to contact expectant mothers and shall place an advertisement for this purpose.

I want to exchange ideas with them, because I want to support Erica in every way.

It is also for my own benefit, because the research has now begun.

I am searching.

A few days later, I get an answer to my advertisement.

I had asked to write frankly about their pregnancies.

Of course in strict confidence.

Here are the results.

It occurs more frequently that mothers feel like a drink.

There are some who feel like drinking bottles full.

However, they have the force and willpower within them, because they resist with all their power and finally conquer it.

One mother says: “At the end of the day, you cannot turn your child into a drunk...

I also flatly refused to do that.”

I could work out her background from her writing style.

Her husband is a labourer.

But I admired her so much that I promised her twenty-five guilders.

Another woman writes: “I really felt like a nice glass of wine, but my husband did not earn very much.

And I longed so much for nice clothes that I made a really nice dress from a few old ones.

Not one like women nowadays want to buy, no, a dress like the one they used to wear.

Then my husband thought that I had gone mad and he had to laugh about it.

They were happy days for me.

My brother’s wife was completely different.

Now and again, she had the inclination to smash up the house.

She felt like a beer and she wanted nice clothes just as I did.

It was comical in her case.

She could play the fool, which really surprised us.

We said then that he would be like a complete showman, watch out, it will be a boy.

And it was a boy ...

But later on, now that her boy is eight years old, she has become so bad-tempered and her child has become so badly behaved that you cannot love either of them.

She lies and cheats you, which had never happened before.

It is a madhouse, if you ask me, sir.

I only hope that it is of some use to you.”

She will have her dress.

Even if it is not one in an old style.

Another mother talks about changes in her character and in the character of her friend who is two full months ahead of her.

And like the previous mothers, they also have nothing new to tell.

When I had come that far, I went outside.

I suddenly felt rather strange.

I do not like interfering in other people’s business.

However, in the wood, on my bench, there is an expectant mother.

I immediately see that she is an ordinary person.

She is sitting next to me and enjoying herself.

It is easy to start a conversation.

I do not know any more how I started talking about her pregnancy.

However, she thinks it is an everyday matter that expectant mothers drink.

Those anxieties as well.

She does not go into them.

That is a part of it, she says.

And she has other things to do.

Should I then accept that Erica is putting on an act?

This simple woman is frightening me to death.

When I asked her whether she was financially secure, she replied that she was not too badly off.

She was only concerned about the cradle and a few other things that she badly needed and did not have the money.

I thought she was so honest that I gave her a hundred guilders and immediately went away, because I thought I was terrible.

The woman had crazy thoughts.

I had meant it sincerely, but it had suddenly occurred to me.

She did not say what I wanted to know.

Her thoughts frightened me.

I am not a sexual pervert.

This is a mean streak, Frederik, but you too are no longer normal.

You must not forget what you are now doing is by no means an everyday matter.

And here I am with my street psychology.

I do stupid things.

I lose myself in this way and that must not happen.

I want to make up for this, but I do not know how.

I tremble from myself.

I will not do this again.

I wish I had read through those letters instead.

I am back in my room again.

I will make notes.

I have regained a feeling of peace.

Surely because I gave myself a good beating.

When I am doing this sort of thing, I feel some pain below my heart.

A while later, I feel it in a different way and it is as if my heart has something to say.

It is a satisfied feeling.

I let myself go completely.

My train of thoughts is now natural.

But when I picked up my pen, I had to experience that the pen would only write outside my will.

I thought I would suffocate and it gave me the chills.

What was that?

Was that perhaps inspiration?

I do not want that, it reminds me of death.

I felt as if all my organs wanted to tell me something and I broke out in a sweat.

I was deeply shocked.

Who are you really, Frederik?

Is it part of being a writer?

Are poets bothered by it, do they also feel this thumping in their body?

It is a great tension, I have never experienced anything so strange before.

I throw down the pen, walk back and forth and force myself to think of other things.

I see myself in Italy, Paris, Sumatra, London and Berlin.

I was also in Grinzing for a short time, because the wine that evening did not agree with me, it was too sour.

I am lying sleeping on the train and at the same time I am in Venice.

Can you hear that?

Did you see that?

There is no more to it than that!

However, I have completely lost my inspiration.

Compared to me Erica is a conscious person.

So is Karel and even Anna.

My maid is deceiving me.

You will see.

We are therefore artists.

A cold bath will do me good.

I am still too young for it.

I mean, for that inspiration.

The nice part has now been erased from me.

It is my own fault.

I am starting to understand that we people are never alone.

Who is trying to tell me now that a flower is feminine?

We do not know things by their name ...

Not the soul ... and now everything changes!

I am outside again ... I rushed for the door, out into the street, back to the woods.

Here I am now sitting.

What was that?

Do you have an answer to it?

I know ... but I must not think about it.

It is very precious.

You could also call it diabolical.

But I am magnetically loaded.

Armed as much as possible.

It can break you, make you start anew, you can lose everything because of it or gain everything by it.

Either you have it or you do not ...

You are stuck in the saddle or you fall out of it and break your neck.

It is all or nothing and I have said all I wanted to say on this subject.

I now know for certain that I have to leave it to rest for the time being.

Its phenomenon leads you to grow and blossom.

It all went too fast for me just then.

I now know.

Hours of effort are over.

I will have a nice bite to eat!

I did not lose my appetite because of it.

However, Gerrit is different, he sees something is the matter with me.

Or is it me!

When I ask him what he thinks is the matter, he does not know.

I am therefore not secretive in any way.

I eat, just as I did yesterday.

I see people in a different way today.

I am far removed from madness.

I do not want anything to do with it.

The sound of my voice is also normal.

But I will not go to Erica until I feel that it is possible, that it is good!

I will not let myself be drawn by coincidences.

I am searching and go for a walk to find out.

I am thinking sincerely and in full awareness about everything.

I do not want to possess anything, which I can get just like that.

I have to know all the details of it.

This is how my diary looks today.

I am jubilant and feel the joy of the happy person, which I now am.

How beautiful nature suddenly is.

I had never seen it like this before.

When I become one with everything in this way, it is as if I see my grandfather before me.

He also loved nature.

I now know that no trumpeting has yet called the dead to arise, I have to accept that he is still at peace.

I now feel like laughing at him, because when he was still alive he wanted to take care of his own affairs.

And with an impertinence, which did not please Our Lord.

I no longer need him.

However, I feel that he had now lost his zest for living.

He will be extremely cold there!

Just work it out for yourself, big ...!

After all, you always knew better!

This has nothing to do with Erica’s symptoms ... I understand.

I cannot escape from it ... everything has taken shape, but I do not want to lose sleep over it.

Go away, man ... go back!

I no longer need to clean your castle, they will call you to do that.

At the end of that day I thanked Him for all that I had been given!

Then I was overcome with a soothing sleep.

I forgot everything and got up bright and refreshed, completely free from all kinds of strange pressures, in order to do the task imposed on me.

I know that life on earth can almost be a blessing.

And God did not give us eyes to see and ears to hear for nothing, to put it briefly, a body in order to work and live, a castle, of which my windows are open wide already!

Anyone who does not understand this is a lost soul.