The Invasion of Holland

The funny thing is that I have a sort of a childish interest in achieving a Dutch edition of my own book, and the notion of becoming my own translator is a hoot and a half. The whole idea began to become serious a few years ago when I took over the translation of Gary Renard's 2nd book, Your Immortal Reality (YIR for friends), into Dutch in mid stream, because the translation was in trouble. The process got under way when the Dutch translators at the time asked me to translate a few pages of my material which Gary quoted in the seventh chapter of that book, and I ended up besides translating those pages, also looking at the Thomas sayings, and then ultimately beginning corrections of the first six chapters. Eventually I took over the entire translation, and the book did OK.

In the aftermath of all this I checked up on the first book, The Disappearance of the Universe, (DU for short), and found that besides some 5, 6, 7 issues on every page, about once every other page Gary literally said literally the opposite in Dutch of what he said in English, so there was no doubt in my mind that the book had to be translated all over again. It was loosely agreed with the publisher at the time that for various reasons the best time to do this would be in the run-up to the third book, which is now due out in the spring. So this week I finally delivered the new Dutch translation to the publishers, which ended about four months of concentrated effort and ridiculous schedules. Meanwhile some reviews of the 2nd book were appearing in a newsletter, and it became clear they skipped reviewing the first book because it was more or less unreadable in Dutch, but they liked the 2nd book. I had also become acutely aware that translating my own book into Dutch would be nearly pointless as long as Gary's major book was in this bad shape, to the point that he was constantly contradicting himself in Dutch, while in English the book was crystal clear and logical. This situation is now on its way to being mended so that the first book will probably appear in a new edition in the spring, followed within the month by the third book, which is due to appear in English in March, and should appear in Dutch in about April. So my fervent hope is that it will work out more or less like the Tylenol scandal, leading to a greater success, triggered by the fix-up.

In any case, the translation process was something else again, and presented a million forgiveness opportunities for Annelies Ekeler--the proofreader-- and myself. Very frequently (but of course-miracles are natural) we experienced a profound synchronicity between issues we were going through and the subject matter we were working on. We had an absolute ball with it in the end, and I would not want to have missed the experience but the misunderstandings were frequently hilarious, including one morning when we started again to work on the translation via Skype, beginning with some private conversation, and then without transition I had proposed the first sentence that said something about the previous visits of Arten and Pursah, Gary's ascended master-visitors. For me this was simply the most effective way to switch from our conversation into work, but Annelies did not make the transition from personal conversation to work conversation with me, and she misconscrewed it (to borrow a phrase) badly and thought I was claiming that Arten and Pursah had visited me 5 times and she was shocked that I hadn't told her about it. Funnily enough, in a way I think this is the whole point of the book, namely that really Gary shares his life with the reader in such a way that vicariously through him we get to experience a lot of things that can be very helpful to each of us. It is all about the reader identifying with Gary, and so to open himself up to a new experience, which may not have the same physical form in our own lives, but which can be very empowering and eye opening. After all, these teachings are really radical, and the tie-in between the Thomas gospel, which so much seemed to be coming out of left field when first it was looked at through Christian eyes, is now increasingly beginning to make sense, and it is really Gary's work where the foundation for this connection was laid. The way we look at the Thomas gospel will never be the same. The first ever translation of Thomas which I read was by Prof. Gilles Quispel, in the sixties. He died not too long ago, and by now I've heard rumors that a daughter of his in fact has become a student of A Course In Miracles. He reported this in his last interview on Dutch television, and that would not at all be surprising. The edition of the Thomas gospel which Pursah introduced through Your Immortal Reality truly has that quality of freshness which makes the reader feel like being spoken to directly, and that is what it's all about.