From a very young age, Johan Willem Kaiser, “Wim” to friends, and whose name I like to abbreviate as JWK, was a very important spiritual influence to me. He was a friend of my parents, but I was too young to attend the Oude Loo and Open Field spiritual conferences where he was an organizer and sometimes a speaker. I do not recall if I ever met him, but I doubt it, I was only nine years old when he died, but I studied his work intensely from early on.
At age six, my first year in grade school, my parents had enrolled me in Bible class, with Ms. Sjoukje. I was in a public school and Bible school was optional, but my parents convinced me that it was a good idea to know the stories. In the second class, it came to God creating Eve from Adam’s rib, which was presented as literal truth, and it offended my senses. I insisted it should be read on a symbolic level, not literally. I had my parents withdraw me from the class. I was capable of reading the Bible on my own. And I remember getting my own first Bible as a gift, and I cherished it.
Later, I would go on to learn to read it in the original Greek and Hebrew, in that order. JWK was a great stimulus for that interest. He understood the Biblical stories purely as parables throughout, looking at the content, not the form. But also, because he read the original languages he was able to pick up on some distortions that crept in on account of the translations. The context was provided by my father who was more of a Jungian therapist than a psychiatrist, so the study of myths and symbols was always part of the conversation in our house.
My parents had left the Remonstrance church between my birth (1951) and my sister’s, 2.5 years later, I believe because they had met Ms. Hofmans by then, and as a result they turned away from formal religion, but not from the Bible, or Jesus. They were typical of the concept of “spiritual, not religious.” Just not church going, and more focused on our own, inner relationship with our Creator and Source.
From 1946 through to the end of his life, JWK had a close collaboration with Ms. Hofmans, who channeled Jesus (she called him God’s Help - which is the meaning of the Hebrew name Jehoshua). Initially she identified the inner voice as that of a former spiritual teacher of hers, Exler, abbreviated to Ex by her. Later she realized it was the voice of Christ, or God’s Help. Guided by the messages that came through Ms Hofmans, they collaborated in a joint mission in which they had very different roles, she worked with people by praying for them and sometimes channeling messages, and he by writing about understanding the Bible at a higher level. And they collaborated on organizing international spiritual conferences that were initially hosted by the Dutch Queen at her castle, Het Oude Loo.
The most important themes that I came to understand and appreciate through this exposure, and which in many ways were preparatory for the study of ACIM for me, were:
They used a funny tagline for their conferences, which appeared a bit vague: “God founder of the world and therefore invincible.” Somehow may be they were struggling with the notion that the Kingdom is NOT of this world. I never found a good explanation for this curious verbiage, but it kept me wondering what they meant.
JWK was very clear that there was no such thing as vicarious salvation, that this concept was a distortion of what Jesus taught, and it sprang from cowardice, as in not wanting to take responsibility.
JWK was also clear that individual identity was a pseudo-reality, and a joke, but he somehow never cleanly arrived at a non-dual position, as Jesus does in A Course in Miracles. I strongly feel that this is where he ran aground practically, and all his brilliance could not clear this up.
In the mid-nineties, I was in Holland at one point and met with a number of former friends of Kaiser and my parents, and by this time I was studying ACIM, but most of them could not see that the teaching that God created us as spirit only, and that he had nothing to do with making the world, might clear things up a bit. I struggled with it for a while, and finally I wrote an outline for a movie scene, in which I met with JWK for coffee at the Hotel Américain in Amsterdam, and after his initial hesitation, once it sank in he laughed out loud and was slapping his knees with a feeling of total relief that this cleared everything up.For me, the single biggest thing was Kaiser’s clarity about Paul’s distorting of the teachings, which I spent many years mulling over, but finally through the Course and then Gary Renard’s weaving together of the Course and the Thomas Gospel, the dime finally dropped for me that Peter and Paul, c.s. turned a non-dual teaching into a dualistic theology. That may have been good enough for the Roman Emperor, but it was a complete perversion of Jesus’ teachings.
In general, JWK and MH turned away from formal religion in general, and were more about one’s own spiritual practice, and tried to be as open minded as possible, which was reflected in the interfaith spiritual conferences they hosted.
I think the above sums up why the exposure to these teachings in a lot of ways prepared me to later connect with ACIM, and as noted, the idea that God created us as spirit, and that is what we really are solves the final conceptual problem that theologians call theodicy: How can a loving God, allow all this suffering in the world? And the answer is: he doesn’t, for there is no world, even if you’re dreaming one. Keith Kavanaugh sums it up like no other.
Jesus was always a teacher of nondualism, but for the apostles turning it into a dualistic worldly teaching that ultimately could be adopted as the official religion of the Roman empire. But… there was much the apostles would not understand till later, and nowhere did he say how much later. The Gospel of Thomas, especially in Pursah’s version that is used in Gary Renard’s books, only makes sense if you understand he was teaching non-dualism. Even in the canonical gospels there are many statements of Jesus, be they from the Thomas Gospel or from the hypothetical “X” source which only start to make sense once you realize Jesus was teaching non-dualism. As Course students we learn sooner or later how we all misinterpret the Course in a myriad ways before we truly get what is is saying. So the teaching happens not by the words but in between the words. When we get it, the words make sense, and we are no longer confused by some of the seeming contradictions, which are a teaching device to reach us where we are. In short, Jesus is not in the words, but the words can point us there. The issue is not arguing theology, the issue is that this bit of history can be a mirror to see how the ego in all of us tries to co-opt Jesus and recruit him for the ego’s cause.
The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. ²It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. ³The ego may ask, “How did the impossible occur?”, “To what did the impossible happen?”, and may ask this in many forms. ⁴Yet there is no answer; only an experience. ⁵Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you. (ACIM, C-in.4:1-5)
People have found their way to Jesus regardless of theological obstacles, as a rich medieval tradition of mysticism testifies, Angelus Silezius, Jakob Boehme, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Jan van Ruysbroeck, and many, many more. Which is another way of saying the same thing: do not let theology delay you. All that matters is you orient yourself to your inner connection to spirit, and follow whatever form or guidance that is helpful in doing so. Ultimately it is always that inner connection to Self that is decisive. Some people will learn from music, or from nature, or from a book, it all makes no difference - spirit is what we are and it will pull us through, whenever we are ready to quit the merry-go-round.