About the Author:
André thought to have been born in Hungary but his parents informed him at the young age of four that he has been dropped accidentally onto this planet by a stork from another galaxy.
According to others accounts he had a ZEN-like attitude about him since birth but only discovered through the practice of Martial Arts the practice of ZEN at the age of 30.
His distinct humorous view about humanity and observational skills and the authentic way to express them earned him the reputation of a straight shooter and interesting character many find inspiring.
David Friesen
S/V Toketie
André can be contacted through: andre.zenigma@gmail.com
Readers Remarks.
My dad has always been a preacher. At 5 years old it didn't matter, at 15 it was a nuisance, at 25 it started to all make sense, and today at 32 I'm reading my Dad's book, and I'm finding it hilarious, insightful, and a wonderful read.
I read it once because my Dad wrote it. I read it twice because I really loved it!
A great book full of insights, and fun-filled stories about humanity; written by the only man I know who truly grabs life by the horns, who lives with vigor and fearlessness, and still manages to escape death over and over again.
A loveable man, full of childlike wonder and non-stop adventure, and a book written by him to match.
I especially want to thank my Dad for the outrageous laughing fit on public transit, while reading his hilarious story about one naughty mango.
Sincerely, Skipper.
Jeanette Schwarz
Dear Andre,
Your autobiographical work is a superb rendition of your life's
experiences. It is well written, filled with many anecdotes and a
pleasure to read. It clearly shows your innate passion for not only
water, sea, but your love of exploring and confronting your findings.
It is spontaneous, open, and extremely candid and has a "no-
nonesense" approach. You have bared your soul on paper and it is
a privilege to have learned a lot from your own experiences in life.
Your solo outlook towards life is very optimistic and quite frankly,
your approach is perhaps the untouched medical surface that could
very possibly cure human depression instead of resorting to chemical
cures. Your voyages have widened your scopes, have made you better
understand the reasons we are all here on earth. You have shown that
nothing is impossible and that if you set your mind on something,
achieving your goals while trespassing obstacles CAN be done.
As always, you are a proactive man, always "in motion".
Bravo!
Gabriella Namian
Oceanborne Madness???
by André Schwartz
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Paul Lawrence who’s support and friendship went far beyond friendship when things looked grim and who feels like a brother by choice.
Jim Poushinsky, another brother by choice and a man who’s integrity and unwavering commitment for things that are right even at risk for life inspired me to put in words what I believe in. His friendship, editing and proofreading skills make this book readable.
Gracen Kim, who’s knowledge and navigation skills in computers and her permission to abuse her bistro “pvpuerta bistro|café & business center” in Puerto Vallarta marina as a virtual home base and without her patient instructions how to use a computer this book would have never made it to the bookstores.
David Friesen from S/V Toketie and Brian Ackles of S/V Tarun, more brothers, who inspired me to keep going when things looked hopeless. I will follow their wake.
I’m sure there are others that deserve to be mentioned and despite my excellent memory but regrettably short, have slipped my mind and I ask for their forgiveness.
There are many others I have to meet yet and hope to do so before changing tack vertically.
DEDICATION:
My two daughters that I know of: Jeanette and Kerstin, the former learned sailing at a very young age and still recalls my many blunders.
The people who’s path I crossed in good and bad and who contributed to these stories with their being, love and sharing my dreams even when just for a little while and whom I miss on my travels.
Index
Chapter 1 Oceanborne Page 12
Chapter 2 Alien? Page 22
Chapter 3 Sails vs. Power Page 35
Chapter 4 Mirror Image Page 42
Chapter 5 Memory Lapses Page 51
Chapter 6 Mango Frenzy Page 58
Chapter 7 Hospitalization Page 64
Chapter 8 Cynic? Page 75
Chapter 9 Corruption Page 79
Chapter 10 Characters Page 85
Chapter 11 Stooges Page 91
Chapter 12 Agreements Page 95
Chapter 13 Heatstroke Page 101
Chapter 14 Passport Cha-Cha Page 110
Chapter 15 Stupor Page 113
Chapter 16 Virility Page 116
Chapter 17 Mexican Hat Dance Page 123
Chapter 18 Rules Page 129
Chapter 19 Poverty Page 137
Chapter 20 Terrorism Page 147
Chapter 21 Sailors Blues Page 154
Chapter 1
OCEANBORNE
As I recall, it all began on a rainy day in the gutter of the streets of a rural area in a country I found out later was called Hungary.
My assumed parents picked me up and a torrent of sounds reminded me that I was not to be outside in weather like that. Why not never became clear to me even in my adult life. As a child I had always felt strange to go for cover when it was raining, snowing, windy, dark or too bright. Why was it wrong to be outside when it rained or snowed or any weather for that matter? It was fun to feel the water running down my body, the squishy mud between my toes and watching floating objects swirling in the currents as the water rushed toward some unknown destination. Or catching snow with open mouth and letting flakes land on my hand and see them turn into droplets of wetness.
On occasions I was packed into a lot of things to keep me warm, but somehow I still got wet, and cannot remember if I got upset about it. My parents did! They fussed about me saying I would get "monia" (or something like that) and I wondered if that would be a bad thing?
It was all empty promises. I never got monia or if I got it, I never saw it. A few times I had a runny nose and coughed a bit and on those occasions I had to stay in bed and tolerate a glass tube stuck into my mouth that Mother would a bit later remove, look at, and then put a cold, wet rag on my head.
My fascination with running water was taking form in so many ways that it was a good reason for my parents to send me to fetch water from a well about two hundred meters away. We did not have running water and had to fill a barrel with a bucket. It was a lot of going to and fro. By the time the barrel was filled the sun was low.
Saturday was the day we had a bath. We filled a wooden tub with water from the barrel, heated a portion of it in pots on a wood stove, and suffered the burning of our eyes from the soap that got into them. But Mother was happy!
Both of my parents were out of the house most of the time. I had a lot of time for myself, which I spent at a nearby pond with my younger sister. I gathered tadpoles in their later stages when many already had legs, and took them home in jars, putting them into the tub to keep them alive and observe them.
By the next morning I forgot all about them, but was quickly reminded when Mother chased little frogs by the hundreds and wondered where they came from! I tried to rescue a few, but she wouldn't have any of it. She showed no mercy as she swept them outside.
The next day the same happened, but this time she noticed where they came from, and with a swing of the broom caught me before I could take cover under the bed. I don't think my mother had much of a sense of humor, nor did she laugh. I did, before she hit me with that broom!
Following this episode I carried a lot of water to clean the tub, the barrel and the floor from all that was left of the unfortunate frogs. Nevertheless, my preoccupation with water did not diminish. Whenever it rained I snuck out to find a gully or a temporary rivulet, and something that floated and that became my ship. I watched it as it floated on the water, bumped into obstacles, freed itself and continued downstream until it disappeared into a rain gutter or some other hole in the ground, and into oblivion.
Mother observed me when I was about two years old; drawing a bowl shaped something with a line sticking out of it, which had looked like a cross. She was curious what it was and asked. According to her I answered, " A ship." That made her wonder, because there was no way for me to know anything about ships as there are no ships in Hungary of that type, and at that time we lived in the south-east of Hungary with no lakes, rivers or any body of water. Books would have been a luxury so that was out of question, and my drawing remained a mystery for her.
As I grew older, I fashioned wood into shapes of boats. They had a mast without sails, and often tipped over because the base did not support the stick and I couldn't figure out how to keep the boat from tipping.
From somewhere came the idea to put something heavy into a hollowed out body and a mast. When I did that, I had in essence built a model Viking ship. It had a square sail and was fantastic. No longer did I allow it to disappear into a gutter. I spent my time on the pond with my new toy. Other boys played with toy cars and balls, I played with my ship and in my fantasy I was in that ship, exploring foreign shores and lived a life of adventure.
Time spent on the water was quality time. With other boys we built raft floats, I even used the tub as boat and my newly acquired skills of swimming added tremendously to my enjoyment.
We played games that had to do with sinking ships from the shore, and we used mud bombs to bombard the occupants of the ships. One was a tub, the one I supplied without my mothers knowledge. I still have no idea how I got it to the pond, but seem to remember dragging it, and carrying it like a turtle on my back, and then again dragging it when it got too heavy. But by golly, it got there! And we used it as our main battle cruiser because it held two of us; one paddling it while the other made and threw bombs back to the shore at the "Bolshevik Ruskies".
After a few sinking, we reversed the roles. The people ashore wanted to be the "Magyar", and the guys in the ships had to be the dirty, mud-eating "Ruskies", trying to invade our homes and steal our home baked potato cakes. Insults flew along with the mud bombs, and in the end the defenders of the land and potato cakes rushed into the water and flipped the boat over, spilling men, mud and words of revenge. But oh, the fun we had! The seed was planted to one day have a boat, and continue the fun. Not even the return of the tub took the fun out of the idea.
Darkness had fallen by the time I arrived at the house we lived in and saw light inside, which meant my mom or my dad were home, and would be wondering where we were. Babysitters were not even heard of then. Kidnappings, murder and all those modern ways to make money and headlines did not exist. Kids in general were left alone to play, and adults were too busy with work to molest us. So we were pretty much on our own, and conflicts among us were solved without the involvement of adults. We learned to get along without the support of a gang, or we just avoided unpleasant encounters.
Talking about unpleasant encounters, here was one to avoid! I thought it better to leave the tub outside under some bushes than to take it inside and reveal it's heroic role in a naval battle. I entered the house to hear: “What…who… Good God, Jesus, Maria and Josef, (for years I thought that was my name), -where have you been? Look at yourself!"
It would have been pointless to explain to them the hardships in a war and the sanitary conditions during those times so I resorted to the best explanation that would make sense and told them "We were playing."
"Where did you get so muddy?" they asked.
How does one explain to civilians who work for a living that making bombs is a dirty business? I shrugged my shoulders and remained silent as my rights allow. That doesn't wash with parental authority, as I was to find out. Water, on the other hand, is a different thing. Looking and not finding the tub, Mother demanded to know where it is and what I did with it. According to the Geneva Convention, I'm not to give out that information, only my name, rank and serial number, or so I heard. What followed next was torture, the early equivalent to modern day water boarding. Why weren't camcorders invented earlier, when they were needed? I got smacked a few times, dunked, scrubbed and dunked again under water and then came the punishment; scrubbing the planks. To this day I carry out that sentence. It's been truly said: "No scorn of the Gods is like the wrath of a woman".
Mother escorted me to the well and threatened to drown me. She nearly did, all the while telling me that she deserved to rest when she came home after a hard day at work and not to have more to do when she was home. I bet she never considered what it was like to go through a war and fall into the hands of an enemy and be tortured. In spite of these traumatic events, I ended up in West Germany in the Navy. Here's how it happened.
After the Hungarian revolution in 1956 my parents escaped to West Germany with us, and we all became German citizens. During a vacation my parents visited Kiel, a port town on the Baltic where my fate was sealed. There floated a white ship with three masts reaching for the sky and a materialization of my dreams. Tears obscured my vision and my heartbeat so hard it was hurting. When a sailor asked me why I cried all I could say was: "It's so beautiful!" He offered to talk to the captain and if he permitted it, I could come aboard. I almost wetted my pants. Not only did he get permission, but with a senior sailor allowed me to climb up to the crow's nest on the ratlines. The deck and the people looked so small as if they were toys and an hour later when I left, I knew that one-day, I would sail the seas in my own boat.
The drafting system was in effect in Germany and all eligible young men had to serve in the military. At the age of 19 they got hold of me, and my efforts to avoid service in the military did not bear fruit. They asked in which branch I wanted to serve and my love for the water elicited the answer, "Navy!"
"Do you know how to swim?" they inquired,
"What? Don't we have any ships?" I asked. My fear they have all been destroyed during the war must have been all over my face.
The recruiter looked at me with a sadistic grin on his face and said, "Wiseguy, we'll take good care of you and when we're finished with you, you will be this tall. With hat." His thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart indicated the size. He then made a few notes on his form and my career as a nonconformist in the navy had begun.
I want to skip the details here as much as I can, suffice to say that I managed to get one promotion where others got three, and a psychologist certified me as coming from the mold individualists are made of, in other words, totally unacceptable for military purposes. Where did all this lead? Into a Dojo where I continued the practice of martial arts I had begun before the draft.
Sounds like a contradiction but the way I see it, self-defense is the art of not becoming a victim. It does not necessarily include the creation of victims in the process. People are not taught how to make peace, not even to keep it, but only to enforce it through more violence. It escapes my logic how anybody can think that by beating our perceived enemies long and hard enough we can create friends and peace. It’s like fornicating for virginity.
I prefer to share this world with everything and everybody, instead of us all fighting for it like a bunch of starving hyenas. Humanity would be wise to use their intelligence to solve problems peacefully, rather than through force. They seem to be the only species carrying grudges. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, makes for a world of toothless blind people that will starve without seeing the beauty in the world. Wherever they turn is darkness.
For a while I bogged myself down making money, apprenticed and finished in a few more trades, working as an instructor of martial arts while taking several courses in various fields and was busy like a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest. I lived a life like millions of others, but it was not what I wanted, and I thought about going to Canada and living somewhere in the wilderness where I would build a log cabin, hunt and fish, get my pilot's license, and live a life that suited my sense of individuality.
I earned my black belt in Germany in Judo, Tae-Kwon Do, Karate, Kendo and sixth Dan or degree in Jujutsu, and was achieving what as a child I had wanted to be when grown up; An adult, an Indian, a pilot, and live in the Canadian wilderness. The next two things to work on were to go to Canada and learn to fly.
In 1978 I arrived with my very pregnant now ex-wife and we settled in a small town in the prairies not far from the Rockies. Two years later I had my private pilot's license, a baby girl and a divorce. I was now grown up according to some people, but I didn't think so.
Some folks said "You are now such and such an age, it's time to put both feet on the ground." Heaven knows, I tried, but I could not even get into my pants that way!
Something was amiss. My daughter and I moved to Vancouver, BC in '86, and I practiced on her my grown up attitude with terrifying and idiotic ideas. To my delight she was resilient to my stupidity, and when I finally wised up instead of growing up, things became much easier. I noticed she was more receptive to what I said or did when I allowed her to be an equal, and became more friend than father.
After two years in Vancouver I took up sailing lessons, and felt like my life started anew. In 1991 I bought my first sailboat, a 26' vessel with a swing keel and a kick-up rudder. It had water ballast that could be emptied to lighten it so it could be pulled on a trailer. A great little vessel to increase my skills and have fun, but she was not a vessel to sail the world with.
When I got her I thought it was all the boat I ever needed and large enough for the two of us. True enough, but a teenager needs to have a boat like the size of the Titanic to feel comfortable on! Being taught by dad was not cool, especially when he kept insisting on going sailing when her friends wanted to go to the mall, which was all the time. When I relented to have some of her friends come sailing with us there was a gaggle, a giggle, and a google whenever there was something to be done. What they whispered and giggled about I have no idea, but for sure it was not about how to tack or take a bearing.
As I watched the girls fooling around during a fresh breeze, trying to outdo each other by shouting at the waves, a bigger one hit the side of the boat and dowsed them with a good splash. Listening to them screech and holler like banshees, I asked myself if they would ever understand the ways of the sea, and develop an attitude necessary to sail a boat responsibly and safely?
Today I can answer that question with a resounding Yes! I taught a group of women sailing and they all passed their exam better than their spouses and without breaking things first, but it took two days of answering their questions before we got to sail. The first two days they asked holes into me with whys, how’s, and what ifs, but then we got out sailing and things started to pick up nicely. By the time the course was finished, the ladies had all learned their stuff.
For a while I worked for a few sailing schools, and then started to teach independently and decided to buy a bigger boat. Problem is, when you buy a boat and put it in the water, it shrinks. I swear! There should be a label on boats to tell buyers what will happen! The first one was all the boat I would ever need, I thought, but when I threw my jacket below it looked crowded. For sure, she’d shrunk like a wool sweater.
I began to look around, doing research on boats, going to boat shows, and asking owners about boats; what kind, how big, and came to the conclusion that in the end I need to trust myself and be happy with my choice. There are basic considerations as to safety, comfort, and performance, but the rest is learning to adapt to what the boat can do and accepting it. As a Buddhist would say: "True happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want." My final choice was a 39' French built boat, and with her I am where I want to be at all times.
On her I learned more about myself, and although I instructed sailing for several years now on various boats, my learning curve went vertical.
It became apparent where my strength and my weaknesses were, the difference between theory and practical application, and where my limits reached their end.
I learned to improvise, invent and explore new ways to make do, and patience. Adaptability to changing situations became paramount. Knowledge meant nothing without it’s proper use, very much the stuff that was not taught in school during my years. It would be hard for me to come up with any comparable activity with similar challenges to ones abilities. Taking responsibilities, becoming self-sufficient and resiliency are the results of living and traveling with a sailing vessel.
Our very survival depends on it because the ocean is still the same in spite of all the new gadgets people are so fond of. In fact, I believe those new gadgets get one in deeper trouble as when they were not available. People were more aware of the risks they faced instead having the illusion of safety with those things.
Chapter 2
ALIEN?
I falsely presumed to have originated on this planet, but that assumption was corrected about the age of four when my alleged parents told me the truth. A stork had delivered me to them from another galaxy, which accidentally dropped me on the Earth.
Reluctantly I admitted the possibility, after observing the predominant species on this planet. Although I looked like them, there seemed to be emerging evidence that I was different. The herd mentality is still very strange to me, as I did not like to be in big groups. Moreover I don't have the tendency to self-destruction, and I like to take responsibility for my thoughts, feelings, and actions.
It was a very lonely time while growing into my teenage years. I wanted to be like other kids, but they must have known of my off-world origin, because they picked me last for soccer teams even though I wasn’t the worst player. I seldom had more than one friend at a time, and seemed to see things that others did not. For example, I noticed it was not raining between the raindrops, and a glass filled half full with water was also half empty.
Indeed, a friend of mine got very upset about my observations, and informed me that was the reason nobody liked me. At first I thought he meant they did not like me because the glass was half empty or only half full, but then he clarified that it was because I did notice both, and they did not. Hardly my fault, I thought, all they had to do is to take notice by looking, but it was too late. My reputation as being strange escalated into "weird" and "out of this world" in a negative way. I became known as "the spaced out kid" or "Sputnik" for short.
In order to live with such people I went undercover. I did the same things as them so I would not be discovered to be an alien, although I was not convinced yet of my alien status. As years went by I felt more and more a stranger, and noticed in conversation with others that I was not interested in talk about trivial things. Who was who in the music world or in sports, when and how many goals someone scored, just left me cold. On the other hand, I was interested in discussions about how big the universe is, or when God started his life and who created him. This was definitely not the way to break down my fellow schoolmates' suspicion about me, and reading science fiction stories did not help either.
My popularity was limited to stirring up the teachers, particularly Father Juergen, a corpulent man who was easier to jump over than to go around, and who had a voice that reminded me of the chirping of a sparrow just before the cat got hold of him! The way he moved about in front of his desk in sudden spurts as much as his mass allowed, his head jerking and swiveling on a thick double chin, brought out my cat nature and tempted me to take a swipe at him. His piggish eyes, with heavy bags of dark rings fitting his red thin remnants of hair, were arched in an inquisitive way as he waited for questions he could authoritatively answer.
Except for my questions that is. To this day I'm convinced he would have loved for me to be put in a cauldron with boiling water like a side of pork, so he could watch me squirm. No wonder I put my most challenging questions to him. It was a match made in heaven and the other students loved the way the class went when he and I had our battles. They just sat back or played battleship.
My other victim, our history teacher, loved asking me questions. I answered with a question of my own which he refused to answer, and instead he insisted it was important to remember when Charles Charlemagne became king of the Franks. I wanted to know for whom it was important. It didn't seem important to me, and what relevance did it have for this moment? The war was on, and we created history instead of digging up bones!
In one instance we had a discussion about borders. My point of view was that borders were artificial man-made divisions because people did not want to share with others what they had, and so created enemies. He rejected this with a wave of his hand; saying "why" was irrelevant because the fact is that there are borders. I replied that that will change with time, and perhaps one day there will be a world without borders. "Dream on", he said, and continued rattling off dates and events. I envisioned a unified Europe when I was twelve, and people laughed at me for saying it. Perhaps it was only a coincidence, but it is almost a fact now. Maybe it was only wishful thinking, or perhaps being an alien allowed me to see into the future?
To my delight I discovered some fellow aliens. They were also working undercover to change our species suicidal attitudes and greedy behavior, by giving living examples and advice on how to live in love and mutual respect for everything and everybody, authentically and with awareness for the benefit of existence. Death and destruction are poor alternatives. How much do we need and take with us, to die satisfied?
I embarked on my journey with a sailing vessel to learn more about this planet called Earth, also known as Gaia and Terra, and found it to be a place of great beauty that is attacked by the greed and ignorance practiced by its occupants and called “progress”. They make movies and write sci-fi stories about aliens attacking Earth and invariably are portrayed as the enemy. It's strange to see people looking for an enemy outside of themselves, fighting and killing each other to eliminate their foe, blaming others for their situation instead of looking inward where they would encounter the real enemy. They are destroying the planet they are living on, and it is not an enemy from outer space they need to worry about! They do a great job this far and we couldn’t do better even if we wanted to.
This planet is covered with water more than 70% and only about 1% is usable for everything that requires fresh water and the inhabitants are treating it as a garbage dump. Out of sight to them means it is gone. Fact is, all this usable water has been recycled since life on Earth began and in the meantime we put so much garbage into the water, air and soil that the filtering effect has been compromised to an extent that we now need to buy water in stores which has been artificially filtered to be consumable. In many places on this planet, I can assure you, my toilet is cleaner than the surrounding water! Remember: there is no water coming from an outside source to replace our dwindling supply of good, healthy water.
Slash and burn is practiced on land. Clear-cutting destroys habitat for all living beings including humans. Only mechanical robots don't need clean air to breathe. I like calling this planet Aqua-world because there is so much water. Many of those other aliens prefer to be on, near, or submersed in water, so there is a possibility where we come from is a water planet also.
However, I also met a great number of natives to this planet who are using floating vessels and enjoying the waters while adapted to the herd mentality with the attitudes of sheep. They allow others to think for them and to do as they please. This is similar to their land dwelling cousins who are satisfied with solid ground under their feet, and feel secure as long as there is nothing moving. Death is like that, not moving, stable and safe. Death seems to be the most desired condition for many. That might explain the self-destructive tendency. It is very evident in mass-opinions like politics, religions, cultural identities and worldviews. It can be found on football fields, sports arenas, in churches, temples and battlefields. Instead of teaching and promoting individuality, they created institutions called schools and universities where mass conditioning is carried out. Don't move your mind, don't rock the boat, and don't question authority! Can you imagine the stupidity of priests blessing soldiers going to kill, writing bible versus on guns and bombs and tolerating it? As a matter of fact, it is defended as the right thing on mass media. If that is not the ultimate in religious stupidity and hypocrisy claiming to teach love, I don’t know what is.
The galaxy of my alien species discovered individuality as the preferred method of coexistence. We come together as individuals to perform a task that requires group effort. When the task ends, the group dissolves into individuals again, following their own bliss without a trace of herd mentality. We have no politicians, priests, bureaucrats, lawyers or leaders, and therefore we are not imbecile followers. We've learned to resolve our issues without the involvement of others who have nothing to do with the problem. We are not looking for who did what to take cheap revenge, but look at the problem and work together to fix it. The problem is the issue, not the person. People can be educated, not problems. We don't believe in punishment or rewards, or in inducing guilt and shame in others. We have no conformists. We keep no secrets from each other, because only the one who knows a secret benefits, and all others are left out. We understand that possessions create thieves therefore we share. There are no wars, no hunger, and no greed. Nobody has more rights because they have more than others; there is no privileged class.
If this sounds utopian, try a different approach to education. First you must educate your educators because ignorant educators can only teach ignorance. Ask yourselves why you'd place belief before knowledge. Believing is easy. All one needs to do is to tolerate being dunked under water and say: “I believe, I’m saved.” The only thing you will be saved from is the work required to think for yourself and acquire knowledge.
You know, one man with one eye may lead a million blind but will never follow a million blind. A person of knowledge will transcend beliefs. Remain inquisitive until there is no doubt left. Find out if what you've learned is indeed the truth, or if it may have changed over time. Any person who "knows" has a closed mind. Nothing is certain because everything changes, so remain open. Become role models, teach with your being, and remember, nobody ever learned swimming on dry land. How can you enjoy the sweet fruits of your own cherries if you plant thistles instead of cherry trees? Think about this.
Of course, it is not that easy to shed old habits, and I acquired many of them during my stay on this planet, being surrounded by humans and educated by them. But in the end I remembered that all I have been taught wasn't necessarily the truth. The problem isn't what I was taught; but rather that I believed it. Not that I had much choice. After all I did not have any other aliens around me, and if I did, did not recognize them at that time. It's nearly impossible when society's education puts a blindfold of ideas over one's eyes through which to see the world, and we grow up believing them and thinking we are thinking.
As it turned out, fortune led me to my parents. They had been educated Roman Catholics, and my father had been a soldier in the German army during the Second World War. During his service his beliefs had been shaken off, and he questioned everything that he heard and thought to be true. My mother still wanted to believe and searched for God in every religion, and found it nowhere. She insisted on me reading the bible every day. So on one side there was my mother who pushed me to read and believe the bible, on the other side was my father who warned me that living in Hungary under the communist regime, I would be subjected to brain-washing in school by listening to the same propaganda every day.
Four years of school in Hungary proved to have been enough for me to recognize (after our escape in 1956 to Germany) that the same thing happened in the church. On top of all that, now my soul was threatened with hellfire for eternity, if I did not believe the teachings of the priest. Siberia sounded better each day!
The questions I asked during religious studies were enough to arouse the suspicions of the priest, who had the ears of God and could sentence me to hell. I stopped caring what would happen when I discovered that he could not answer my questions, and just wanted me to stop asking them so he could continue with his lectures.
At the age of thirteen, after a determined refusal to go to church on my part, I wanted God to punish me with death so my mother would cry over my grave for trying to force me. Challenging God was the ticket. Shouting an insult of the worst kind I could come up with, and believe me, Hungarians have a monopoly on choice words when it comes to insults, I expected a lightning bolt to strike me as swift as a pick-pocket in the streets of Agassiz.
Strangely enough, no lightning struck, but instead I had the sudden recognition that there is no God outside of existence. All of existence including me is the same thing. There is nobody to punish or reward me.
This insight opened doors I never even knew were there, and when the police found me and took me home after my parents' alerted them to my disappearance, my mother thought I had a nervous breakdown after listening to what happened, and decided to have our priest look at me. After a 15 minute evaluation of my condition he put his hand around my neck, and with a red face demanded of my parents to have me undergo an exorcism because the devil got hold of me.
As my mother and father were more loving than the servant of God, they took me to a psychiatrist who listened to me for four hours telling him what I did, thought, felt and experienced that night in the park. He then called my parents and inquired from them if I had any Buddhist, Hindu or Eastern philosophy training. Of course not, we are Catholics. Why?
"Well", he said, "what I gather is that the things he says are eastern in concept but I need to see him a bit more to be sure." When they asked what he thought had happened to me, he answered: "Whatever happened to him, I wish it would happen to me!"
That episode of my life is etched in my memory. It has influenced my ways of thinking and observing events around me and has affected my path in life, especially around the issues of freedom, religion and education. When we are taught what to think, that is not freedom. Being taught how to learn is closer to it.
There are laws; civil laws, corporate laws, criminal laws etc. that mostly originate in some religious superstition about moral concepts and conduct. Some are based on common sense, but all are limiting freedom. At least common sense laws are arrived at by common agreements between different people, while the others are imposed.
Take the Ten Commandments; all of them suppress emotional expression. How on earth are you going to explore your potential if you have to stuff it down? How would you know how to correct an error, if you do everything right? How could you know what a mistake is? What is a mistake anyway, and how could you fix it and develop solutions if you won't experiment? We all are making mistakes, and when we use intelligence we learn from them. Too bad only a small percentage of humans are wise enough to do so.
Remember: A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor. We have to have challenges to grow and push the boundaries to discover new things and ways or we’ll grow stagnant. Remain inquisitive, it’s nature’s gift to us. God never gave commandments, Moses did! It is said: God loves unconditionally, so why would he give you commandments? Moses did that because he could not handle his sheep any longer. After 40 years of being too stupid to find his way out of the desert, his control over his flock was slipping out of his hands. He needed a law that cannot be questioned. He had been a lawyer at the court of the pharaoh before his odyssey, and that's what lawyers do, they insist on laws when intelligence fails. Moral of the story: Never leave it to a lawyer to find a way out of the desert!
So what is this lawyer guy to do? Call on a higher authority, that's what they do, even today. Stupid people never cease to amaze me. They are imbued with God's immortality. Nobody dares to question it. I remember a guy who answered me about why he believed in God? "Just in case", he said. Mind you, he kept doing all the things that will take one straight to hell according to the commandments. And so do millions, causing me to wonder why are they going to church and claim to be of any faith? Might as well use that time to make love to someone, at least it will be real fun.
All these fantasy ideologies have not created any peace and I daresay, do just the opposite, but humans cling to it as a monkey to a fistful of peanuts, even though their freedom and life depends on letting go.
There was a guy named Marx who said; "religions are the opiate of the masses" and another one said; "if one has science or art, he has religion". More likely if they don't have science or art, they have religion. On my planet we would choose art and science any day.
When sailing down the coast I ran into some heavy weather, and it put me in danger of losing my life every second for two days, and I remembered a priest saying "there are no atheists in foxholes". How would he know? He was never around those people when they died. How would he know unless they survived and then credited their escape with God's mercy? What kind of hogwash is that? During all those hours of howling winds, crushing waves and life threatening situations not once did I call on God or even though about it. I was too busy surviving.
Someone asked me if I was afraid and I answered no, I was too scared to be afraid. Scared that the boat would break, or that my daughter would be very upset over my lost at sea status. Was I afraid of dying? Hell no! I was more afraid of not living! And live I did, and still do. There will be time enough to relax from living when I'm dead, but I'll refuse to die before I've lived, and there is no better time than NOW to live because there are no other Now.
Death will come to all of us (except to Texans. If they cannot take it with them, they aint goin'!) And we never know when that moment comes so you might as well live now and enjoy every second fully aware, or you'll die regretting not having lived. Unawareness of living is the same as being dead. In an unaware state we hurt each other. Just imagine not having the chance to say you're sorry to someone you hurt before they die. Or imagine you wanted to see the world before you die, and you are dying with a million dollars on your bank account without having done so, because you were too busy piling up the money.
Death is the only certainty and once you fully understand that, you are free to live and be unconcerned about death. She will come regardless of who or what or where you are. Don't act dead while still alive. Live it up!
A Zen student asked his master: "Master how should one live his life?"
The master answered: "By preparing himself for death."
"But how can one prepare himself for death?" asked the student.
"By learning how to live." was the old man's reply.
Robin Williams, playing Patch Adams, used the words in a sense that death is not the enemy, indifference is. Why are we so afraid of death? It's the natural end of life. Let's be prepared for that.
This message is thousands of years old and we still do not understand it. Maybe we teach the wrong messages. Millions suffer fear from countless diseases, and the worst of them all is fear. In fact, fear causes most disease.
Religions induce fear if you don't believe what their leaders want you to believe, and induce hope for an eternal life if you do believe what they say. Some even promise a reward if you do their God's will, according to what they tell you God's will is. And then we are stressed out over which God is real, and what is the true will of Him, Her or It. Nothing kills better than stress.
What a big surprise when you arrive at the Pearly Gates and there are no virgins, no Saint Peter, just an old hag without teeth asking you to give her back her youth. Know that if a God wants something from you he or she will tell you that him or herself. Never let a person tell you what the will of God is. They only want you to further their objectives without putting themselves in danger. Don't be a sheep no matter what they promise you.
Our planet has no sheep, and nobody tells you what to do, what to think, or how to feel. We understand there is no right or wrong, because that would mean there is judgment. Situations exist, and if the situation is undesirable we change it when it is in the interest of all by consulting with each other for the highest good of all concerned, and act accordingly. We may not always come up with a solution that pleases everybody and then we sacrifice our idea in favor of the other and see what happens. There are no guaranties in anything, and knowing that allows for flexibility. That's why life is an adventure, or in the words of Forest Gump's mother, "Life's a box of chocolates". You never know what you'll get.
If I'd known what to expect on my travels, I would never have left. This world is the best so far. I've never learned this much about myself while living on land. There were always others around me whom I'd been busy observing and comparing myself with, and never had time to find out who I was. It took only three days alone in the open sea to find the person I searched for all my life, me.
I watched waves, clouds and the winds and there were no two the same. They mixed and formed other patterns, shapes and appearances, and reality was the result only in the moment, not in the past or the future. Patterns dissolve and form new patterns every second, and even that are too long a time span. It's like observing along a sharp knife-edge, without width.
Other things became clear to me also. The way reality is, or the way I see it, is the interference of waves from many sources. We all contribute, making waves of our own design, and the results of all those waves together create reality. Of course, what I think will affect reality, but so does everybody's thoughts, and the interference of all those thoughts is what reality is. Some are small, others huge but they all contribute to reality, and we are able to affect the size of those waves. We all need to learn about cause and effect so we can make wise choices.
Ah well, these are just my ideas and I will not claim them to be the truth. Surely these thoughts have been thought and observed before, but not by me. For me they are new and therefore significant insights. The good news is; if I can have them, anybody can have them too, and you don't even have to be an alien.