Paul’s awakening

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It is unusual when a father writes the biography of his son. It happened in the case of the Dutch mystic Frederik van Eeden who wrote the biography of his son Paul after his son’s death. Paul clearly was not someone with special qualities, he was unremarkable, he was quite a normal person and he even had small character mistakes. When he became ill, then he changed. The change took place slowly, but continuously. An inner purification took place, clearly visible to all. At the final moment, the moment of his death, he did not fall ‘asleep’, but there was an ‘awakening’.

After his expiry Fredrik van Eeden tells something about one of his gardeners. You should know that Frederik was experimenting with a garden project called Walden. This is what Frederik writes himself: “One of the gardeners on Walden, a sensitive man, for a long time had found it difficult to talk to me about what took place. I did notice how he struggled with the idea of telling me something, but saw that he did not know how to put it into words to me. At last he became a little more courageous and approached me with extended hand, saying: ‘Congratulations to you, because of your son!’

‘Thank you!’ – I said and it was said in perfect seriousness among the two of us, without any misunderstanding”.