Former Dutch Queen Juliana 100 years

Today, April 30th Princess Juliana (Dutch Queen from 1948-1980) would have been 100 years old, and the Dutch press has been full of articles recently. Most however are trivial if not banal, and the essence of her reign to this day cannot seem be discussed openly and fully in the Dutch press.

The reason I want to mention her here is because she assisted Professor Quispel, who was one of the first researchers of the Thomas Gospel from the Nag Hammadi library, and who acquired the first manuscript in 1952 with the backing of an American philanthropist, and the manuscript later was apparently donated to the Jung foundation. In 1955 Quispel wanted to research the rest of the manuscripts that still existed in Egypt, at the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Queen Juliana was fascinated at the time with the potential of original words of Jesus being found, and asked the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs J. W. Beyen, to help facilitate Quispel's access to the Coptic museum in Cairo, and this in turn seems to have led to a publication of further manuscripts in 1956. Quispel apparently remained convinced to his dying day that, but for that mission, the Nag Hammadi library and the Thomas Gospel would have languished in the vaults of the museum and most likely decayed completely by now. If this is true, I'd vote for this to be one of the most important things Queen Juliana did during her reign.

Unfortunately, the reign of Queen Juliana became tainted with a palace crisis of 1956, in which her independent spirit seems to have been effectively suppressed by a deft collusion between her husband Prince Bernhard, and Dutch politicians, who felt clearly threatened by a Queen who had a mind of her own, as did he, since at that point she would not tolerate his extramarital affairs any longer and was asking for a divorce - which would have been the end of the good life for him. By cleverly planting his version of things with the foreign press, passing it off as fact, he managed to turn the whole world against her, including manipulating the Dutch body politic to do his bidding, and basically put the shackles on the Queen while at the same time saving the marriage in name, without having to give up any maneuvering room himself. The episode was shameful enough as it was, but then last year the Dutch Court chartered a friendly historian, by the name of Cees Fasseur, to write a book, which under a thin veneer of critique about some of Bernhards more outrageous behavior, in effect did little else but solidifying his version of events, or at least attempting to do so. Fortunately, the Dutch reading public was slightly smarter, and generally did not accept the fact that Cees Fasseur had access to unverifiable private sources which are not available to anyone else.

By now there are beginning to be some critical voices who do not swallow this pablum, one of them Elsbeth Etty, who is a book reviewer for the major newspaper the NRC/Handelsblad, and who delivered a pretty devastating speech to celebrate the publication of the book, Juliana en Bernhard, by C. Fasseur. The other interesting independent voice is one Wim Duzijn, who writes a blog for the newspaper De Volkskrant, and who thankfully does think independently about these things too, and produced a very worthwhile discussion of the whole episode in context, here: "Bernhard wist niet wat een pooier was." (Bernhard did not know a pimp from a hole in the wall.) On the whole however, it is clear that the dominant coverage in leading Dutch newspapers remains confined even 53 years after the fact to the frame of reference of the German magazine Der Spiegel, which at the time published an article that was clearly inspired by Bernhard. But, thanks to the brilliant intervention by the assorted greengrocers of Dutch politics, appearances were saved by telling the Queen she would have to toe the line. The slight of hand that was used, was to turn the relationship that the Queen had with the "faithhealer" (as she was designated in the press), and channeler, Miss Hofmans, into a putative cause of her marital problems in lieu of recognizing this situation as a symptom of a situation that was clearly out of hand on many levels. This allowed the politicians to slaughther this sacrificial lamb instead of dealing with the issues, and so to save appearances and the bad peace. To this day, this duplicitous and cruel solution has hardly been seen through except by a precious few commentators.

Also, Queen Juliana's farsighted and humane way of conducting herself during her reign, remains under the cloud of these events, even though she remains the most popular Dutch Queen ever, and in many ways was truly a healing influence who helped resolve many crises (including the ending of the Dutch Colonial ambitions by supporting the independence of Indonesia). In other areas she proved likewise to be very farsighted, for just as she understood the colonial era was over, she also understood that the emerging "cold war," was more likely to become a run-up to world war III than a way to prevent it, and as we now know, events nearly proved her right at times, the most dramatic of which was perhaps the prevention of nuclear war by the Soviet Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, which could have been the end of the world as we know it.

Consequently, I suspect that it will once again have to come from the foreign press to shed light on these things, and render it possible in Holland for the events to be discussed the way they actually were, so that former Queen Juliana can finally be recognized as the great and farsighted leader of a people who she really was, and which was recognized in popular opinion, but never by the establishment. A hundred years from now the critical role she played in helping professor Quispel gain access to the sources of the Thomas Gospel may also finally be recognized as something for which the world owes her a debt of gratitude. I just figured I'd make a start with it right here and now, because I feel that this particular contribution was near and dear to her heart, and more reflective of her spirit than much that's talked about in the popular press, and its importance without a doubt is global. As with everything else it's often the seeming little things that count, and that are much bigger in retrospect than they seemed at the time.

Sadly, since I first posted this piece, this day was spoiled by some disturbed person taking a kamikaze trip in their car, trying to spoil the festivities, and in the process killing several people (5 at this writing) and wounding others (12 at this writing), and the hospital reports that his own life may be in danger still.

Quispel, Thomas, Juliana, Westerdam - Coincidences and Synchronicity

Hmm... I received my papers the other day for Gary Renard's Cruise, themed after his new book, due this fall, Love Has Forgotten No One, and suddenly noticed the name of the ship, MS Westerdam. Then I started reading Daniel Schorr's memoirs, and in the second chapter "Going Dutch" he described arriving in the city I grew up in, Rotterdam in 1946 to work for a Dutch press agency, onboard the SS Westerdam, one of the old Holland-America Line steamers.

Meanwhile, I'm writing an article about the Dutch Queen Juliana, and about the palace crisis of 1956, concerning her involvement with the "faith healer" Ms. Greet Hofmans. I'm reading Schorr, as part of my research since he originally wrote on the situation as a reporter for Life, but withdrew the article at the urging of Dutch government figures, except that it was moot anyway, since Henry Luce had already let himself be convinced by route of the Dutch Ambassador (in Italy) not to break the story.

Now Daniel Schorr actually had worked in a press agency in Holland, so he was a natural for this story. However, there is also a connection between Queen Juliana and the Thomas Gospel. Now Gary in turn writes about the Thomas Gospel. And in my opinion at least, it is through his work that the actual meaning of the Thomas Gospel is starting to make some sense to me. Meanwhile it was Queen Juliana who helped Prof. Gilles Quispel in 1955 to gain access to the manuscripts of the Thomas Gospel from Egypt, with the help of the Dutch foreign ministry. Prof. Quispel remained convinced to the end of his days that if it weren't for his intervention, the whole manuscript might have turned to dust in the Coptic Museum in Egypt, in the same suitcase in which it was brought up from Nag Hammadi in 1946. Subsequently, Quispel in turn was a key player in the very first translations of the Thomas Gospel, one of which is still sitting on my bookshelf today.

Not only that, but Quispel knew both Ms. Hofmans, and the Queen quite well, and so they all lived through the 1956 palace crisis, on which Daniel Schorr reported, pursuant to which the Queen was forced to sever contact with Ms. Hofmans, but Quispel maintained the contact to the end of his days. So suddenly a lot of seeming loose ends connected, seemingly with me in the middle. There will be more to this story before this year is out.

The Better Angels of our Nature

Surely those words are a very lovely way to refer to the Voice of Reason within. Abraham Lincoln said that, in fact he appealed to this notion in his inaugural speech in 1861, hoping to appeal to the things that united people, instead of dividing them, and I want to quote those lines here in full:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. (Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4th, 1861)

Evidently, his appeal to higher reason did not bear fruit, but his language was surely inspired and inspiring!

And so people at different times have come up with different words, for a phenomenon that most of us know, and will recognize for what it is, regardless of the name we give it. Names in the Course such as the Voice for God, or Jesus, Holy Spirit, Reason, all are ways to highlight that unspeakable clarity of total absence of any ambiguity, which characterizes the endless rattle of the ego. What it is not is the "speaking in tongues" as it is commonly understood. It is a fully conscious inner clarity which can at times have the dimensions of a voice, but at many times it can be more subtle, as in hearing a thought, more so than hearing a voice, or it can jump out at us from other sources which seem to be within earshot or line of sight quite accidentally. But we know it by the crystalline clarity that sets it off from the humdrum muddle of the ego's traffic in presumed thought.

We often forget we have these experiences, and deny that we have them, just like Helen Schucman complained at times that nothing ever happened in her life (see Ken Wapnick's Absence from Felicity).

The Course puts it all in the framework of Jesus, because it is a great children's tale, and it is comfortable within the cultural framework we live in. As a very young child (circa age 4), I was introduced to him by one Miss Hofmans, who without any doubt channeled him. Much like the Course sees Jesus as the Manifestation of the Holy Spirit, so she would mostly speak of God's Help, with the clarification that he was not like Santa Claus, bringing me what I want, but that the deal with him was to let the Help take whatever form was best for me. Later there were others who helped me in various ways in my relationship with him, which was always an attraction, but never easy. 

In my early twenties I went through a period of intense study, and became fascinated by everything I thought could help me sorting Jesus out from the theological mess that surrounded him. Since at that time I was reading fluent in both Hebrew and Greek, I thought at times that perhaps I should also learn Coptic (for the Thomas Gospel), or Aramaic, because of the many Aramaicisms in New Testament Greek. Somehow I had a growing sense of absurdity about the whole endeavor, and there came a time when I was totally crystal clear that Jesus was perfectly well able to communicate with me in language I could understand right now, and I'm quite clear in retrospect that it was that inspiration which ultimately would lead me to A Course In Miracles, which is in plain English, and one hell of a lot easier than Greek, Aramaic, and Coptic, and not only that, but to top it off, then came along Gary Renard, who gives the whole thing one more time but now in the vernacular, so it reads as easy as the latest thriller. It seems to be only through those sorts of experiences that we gradually learn to trust the Inner Teacher, who is present in all of us, but is just denied and repressed most of the time, as we indulge the shenanigans of our ego. The Thomas gospel, the subject of this site, certainly is one wonderful way of rejoining the original freshness of that voice, and knowing ourselves spoken to directly by him, as if we were there.

On lower Broadway in NYC,opposite #100, there is an inscription in the sidewalk close to Trinity church, commemorating a visit of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, in 1952, as there are of many other dignitaries who visited New York. Juliana's visit at the time was a beacon of hope to some, but not fondly remembered by others, including her friend Eleanor Roosevelt, not to mention her own husband Prins Bernhard, who entertained different sympathies than she did. She was a deeply spiritual person, who also knew the same Miss Hofmans who I referred to above, and turned to her for advice frequently, to the increasing dismay of Prins Bernhard. At this particular time Juliana was increasingly concerned that the emergence of the cold war, promoted through the Nato alliance, was not a sure preventative of World War III, but rather a disastrous polarization, that might practically ensure the arrival of a Third World War. Some people guessed that her sympathies lay with a movement called the Third Way, which sought an alternative to defuse the building crisis. But it was too much a political movement to suit the Queen. Also, the Third Way may not have been a practical solution. Politically there was a fear that time that it might appear that the Queen went too far in some of her speeches, in effect front-running the political process, which was a no no, considering her position as a constitutional monarch. Clearly the Queen's focus was on the spiritual need for inner peace as a basis of any efforts towards peace in the world. Today. we can look back on the insanity of the Cold War years, including the disastrous attack plans of General Curtis LeMay, as well as the narrow escapes we had, such as the incident with Lt. Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, the Soviet airforce officer who narrowly avoided nuclear holocaust, in a long string of close calls during that period.


Clearly Juliana's inspiration was to try to find a way out of conflict, and she was quite far-sighted in her concerns, different from her husband, who was illegally on the take from Lockheed at various times, and did not care for her position at all. The Queen framed the issue primarily as a spiritual one. There was at the time even a political movement called the Third Way that sought an alternative to the cold war polarization of the world, but may have been naïve to the same extent Lincoln was proven by events to have been naïve, if you will, by appealing to those 'better angels.' But Julianas approach was more a spiritual one, emphasizing inner peace, and the failure of any real world peace does not mean that the attempt, the consideration, was not an extremely valuable one, and one that reflected an inner choice, and a willingness to look for a way out of conflict. Lincoln got a civil war, and Juliana found herself spurned in her spiritual interests by her friend Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as back home, because she was ahead of the political process, which technically she could not and should not be. Eventually the whole thing erupted in a palace crisis in 1956, in which her connection to Ms. Hofmans was ridiculously played up as the source of the problems, allowing a face saving way out for Bernhard and the Dutch political system, at the expense of the integrity and credibility of Juliana. So Lincoln got himself a civil war, Juliana got herself a palace crisis, but some 15 years later Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford were also looking for a way out of conflict, "There must be another way," pursuant to which Helen found the inner voice of A Course In Miracles, and gave the world a realistic way out of the ego's perpetual war, which has never given us perpetual peace, because indeed it is a way to preserve war, conflict, murder, and sin, symbolized in the world's unending fratricide. (The story of Helen and Bill can be found in her biography, Absence from Felicity, and Gore Vidal brilliantly exposed the fallacy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace in his book of that name). We might also note here that for Gary Renard, his inspiration for his spiritual experiences which led him to A Course In Miracles, and which gave the world his wonderful books, also was finding a way out of conflict in his life, as he clearly describes in the first Chapter of The Disappearance of the Universe.

J, or Yeshua, the Jesus as he presents himself in the Course, in a way then demonstrated that what matters is only the little willingness to make that other choice, to know that the conflict of the world is not our home, and to point the way out. In following him we learn to "Teach only love" (ACIM:T-6.III.2:4), by in effect leaving the world to stew in its own juices, and to learn that destruction in form is not what matters, but our presence in spirit is. That is what he gave us and gives us, and those who listen will know and understand that the crucifixion was meaningless, for He (The Holy Spirit) cannot be destroyed, as His manifestation is not who he is, just like peace on earth can never be as long as we keep investing in conflict, and J's teachings are the way out.