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.

Seventy (One) or One Hundred Fourteen?

That's the difference between the Pursah version, and the Nag Hammadi text. Or to be precise, it's really 71 vs 114, since 6 & 14 are contracted into one saying in the Pursah version, and so her selection of 70 corresponds to 71 one sayings in the Nag Hammadi text. Thus, counting purely the number of sayings in the Pursah version, it covers just 62% of the material. She also adds substantial material to Logion 13 (on page 81 in DU), so that it seems fairly justifiable to condider her version to equate to a good two thirds of the Nag Hammadi version. Understandably however, questions do come up from people about the justification for Pursah's selection.

We have only the statements of Pursah to fall back on, which really boil down to the fact that she claims there was too much corruption in the other sayings. Historically that is a credible suggestion, except that the extant materials make it very hard to figure out what such a kernel might have been, though it would seem that the most "accepted" belief currently is that indeed the Thomas Gospel would have existed in some recognizable form within 20 years after the crucifixion, and many would assume that this was not necessarily the full collection as we know it now from the Nag Hammadi text. And so it remains that we have really only Pursah's testimony as her past-life recollection that authenticates her particular selection. The reader either accepts that or not, that is a personal decision, but some of Pursah's edits and comments seem highly credible. In particular the contraction of 6 & 14 has that "Why didn't I think of that? " feel to it.

Along with that, it seems to me Pursah is not rejecting every word in the other sayings, which she excludes from her collection, but on the whole she indicates, as reported in YIR on page 160, that "the other 44" were later additions. Again that does not state that pieces of them might not contain authentic words etc., her point seems to be only that the 70 as provided by her are totally solid, and the other 44 just were not part of the original collection, the "kernel," and are thus under suspicion of having too much corruption in them. In a more general sense she has indicated in DU, that once you truly understand Jesus's thought system it is relatively straightforward to figure out which ones are authentic and which ones are not. Some people may wish to try their hand at sorting out the chaff from the wheat for the other 44, but that is likely to end up with endless bickering, that is not of interest for the student who is simply interested in understanding Jesus better.

It is these practical considerations which also led me to stick with just the Pursah collection for my book, and not to overly emphasize the NH version, there are already too many books on that one, and they seem to keep coming. This collection in the Pursah version grows on you the more you work with it, exactly because of its coherent nature.