He's a speaker, painter, writer, poet and theater maker
A few years ago he was in a coma for 51 days because of a medical mistake;
since then he's grateful for every day he's able to live:
Otto de Bruijne.
It is somewhat difficult, but it's fine. Otto, welcome!
Please be seated.
Would you like to drink something different?
Yes..well..I don't know what you have to offer me..
I can offer you red wine?
Red wine? In moderation, yes. Excellent!
I had it ready for you
Thank you
Otto, I read somewhere that you call yourself a fantasizer
Yes, at least that's what they called me.
What does that mean for this conversation?
It depends on whether my fantasy will be triggered by this wine
Yes, and if so?
Then I will just start to rant - I can't promise you anything.
OK
I will...
What is a human being without fantasy?
Many people have no fantasy, right?
Well, I don't know...I don't think so, no no no.
I think it's almost like the oxygen of life
Fantasy?
I think so, yes.
Otherwise there's little else left I think, or not?
To life! To life, right? Yes?
Actually I should stir it a little first, right?
You're a conaisseur, Sir ?
No,
my wife is.
And I follow her.
Do you enjoy it?
Yes,
it's fine.
Really?
Yes.
Once you thought - while you were an unbeliever -
if I become a believer one day
then it's over with all the fun in my life.
Yes, - That was a beautiful sentence. - I thought...
eh..
faith is a serious thing.
That's how you thought while you were an unbeliever?
Yes, and besides -
But the funny thing was that the opposite happened, because
at a certain moment I was fed up with the atheistic seriousness,
I mean, I was so much my own boss
I had to take care of everything, cause after all, I was alone and I only had one life
There is nothing above or behind...
so life all of a sudden becomes very serious and eh..
or you can say "let's party!"
Yes, well - if there's nothing more? - no, not for me.
Not for me. I was always busy with things
in my head, between my ears. The fantasizer, right?
In other words, there has always been the question: what's behind everything?
I mean, that is my character.
But at a given moment I developed a kind of jealousy
of people who radiated joy, humour, happiness,
who could relativate themselves and were also christian.
And that intrigued me enormously. I thought: what is that these people have - a sort of ease, letting go of worries
able to laugh at themselves,
could humor be the basis of that, namely the humor of: I am not my own boss?
I can relativate myself.
You paint a picture of christians
eh...humorous, easy-going, laughing at yourself -
Yes, maybe catholic christians, I don't know
I mean, where have you ever seen them?
My father was not - he was actually a reverend
but not serious enough
But it's not an accurate image is it?
It's not the right image,
and maybe that's the reason that at a certain moment I left the church
Years later,
experienced this (joy).
From the seriousness that arises from figuring out your life by yourself and cope with it
I viewed that as a very tense and serious thing.
Moreover, during that time it was politically charged. We were anti this and anti that
Yes, banners, nuclear weapons, coffee, etcetera, ...
I was demonstrating at an evangelization conference with Billy Graham - a very old evangelist and
There I was demonstrating (and saying): this guy is fooling you
He's fooling you and he's selling you a cheap ticket to nowhere
Then we were expelled by the organizers of the event
That was still in Hilversum where they had this old hall called the Expo Hall
then, in spite of the expulsion, I still I went inside and listened. On the tenth row or something.
I was so annoyed! By this man? Yes, by this man.
He was talking about Jesus. That you could be saved, that you should jump of a ship and then you'd find yourself in a sort of life-boat
where Jesus saves you. And I thought: what will happen to the rest of the ship?
You know, with the world and whatever...
I found it unbelievably cheap and without any substance.
You demonstrated against the christian faith?
Yes, against the idea that I should jump off a boat to save my life!
But the funny thing was, he spoke one sentence
he said eh...
he could do that very well, this American: "You need peace with G-d" ; je moet vrede hebben met G-d.
And these words kept me busy for two years.
And in those two years,
I started to couple peace with humor.
Humor?
Humor. With joy, with being able to relativate yourself.
Godfried Bomans, the (Dutch) writer, once said: The fact that man is unable to laugh at himself is the biggest sin.
and, look at me.
I need something to take me home.
That teaches me to laugh about the craziest things in my life.
That's really -
I also have - Wait, most people become - one small thing. Yes, OK. A poem? Yes, small.
Do with it what you want
"Weary of atheistic heaviness, I became a christian for need of humorful lightness.
The cross I didn't comprehend, but I came to learn it was through him happiness was sent.
His night, a smile divine
His pain, a glass of wine
HIs loss, a joke on us
His final resting place, that gave us breathing space
This is the most idiot contradiction that I ever wrote -
This borders profanity
This ís profane.
Before I knew him, I couldn't smile
I was my own earnest chief, most often a slave without relief
Mock me not, for I was the Beginning and the End; my own G-d
Then I died the death of the water by Jesus' death
From the heavens came a laughter with might: lo and behold, now his ego has died!
Thank you Crucified One, that our laughter and dreams, through your tears have come.
so that is...
an enormous contradiction
You're the first person I've ever spoken to in my life I think, who came to G-d by virtue of humor.
I was jealous of people who could look at themselves and laugh about things of which I thought, well...
And I do believe that ultimately that....
Not sin, or anything like that
No, I was going to ask that
No, no no
No
The desire
The desire of coming home and be able to say: oh dear, what was I thinking?
You know?
I also read that you were afraid - which must have been during that phase - to leave your intellect at the front porch of the church
because believers
due to stigmatization, sometimes are people of which we think, well...
just let them leave their common sense behind, because, well...
I have never done that, no.
No, I think the intellect is fantastic of course - And you've also used it as a believer?
Always. Always studying, always learning, always thinking, always being busy
(with regard to) the society, the questions we have
No, the intellect is - I'd almost say - one of the foundations of joy, of humor.
By looking at the starry sky through an intellectual lense, you're able to experience the same relativity
Because of what?
You become so small, and I find solace in that. The world doesn't revolve around me.
I am a passerby, I am stopping by for a while, and because I realize that I don't have to magnify my problems.
That's maybe a sort of...I don't know
Maybe it's also my character, that's possible.
And while you're watching the night sky, doesn't your intellect ask the question: Where is G-d?
Yes, yes.
Fantastic, because as an 11 year old boy, I laid down in the hills of Slenaken, around midnight watching the stars with my parents
Shooting stars
somewhere around july, august
And I watched it and asked myself: who's behind all that?
such an essential question
it cannot be that people wouldn't ask themselves this question.
Later, when I was 12 or 13 years old, I started reading archaeology
the evolution theory, the whole idea about the formation, egyptology...
reading books about that stuff at age 12
I was a member of an archaeological team. For what purpose? Going back to the source of existence.
I found it fantastic. Amidst old men, who looked messy, like I am now.
I honestly have to say, I don't understand - well, OK, the last twenty years we are searching for the sake of searching
and I was raised during a time that we had to find.
Is that better? That we are now using words as 'mystery', 'quest', 'soul journey', 'assumption', 'visualization'?
Well, on the one hand you could argue it's nonsense,
You can also argue - I always say I have been found to do a lifelong search
So I am found
to spend my entire life searching.
But I am found.
That is a totally different starting point
If I say I am found than that gives a permanent security, but I cannot deny the fact that G-d has intervened in my life in a real, concreate way.
This is how I have experienced it, to phrase it in a modern fashion.
For you, it's solid as a rock.
Then you should continue in your modern thinking pattern and ask yourself the question whether you might have psychologized everything 35 or 40 years ago.
Then I wouldn't be for real
So much has happened in my life,
but also from day one it has been so unbelievably clear that the living G-d can work through a human being - his thinking, his character, in the way he's engaging in life,
I cannot deny this.
I mean, I cannot deny this and it would be cowardice and utterly wrong if I would dismiss this as psychology.
Psychology is involved.
And G-d uses that.
Would it be a betrayal?
It would be an act of self-betrayal, I mean, you cannot betray G-d, you cannot diminish his greatness
but I would consider it a betrayal of my life if I had to say: in retrospect these things I have to view as fiction, hallucination.
Although when I pray, I think 95% of my prayer is just psychological
Is that wrong? No!
G-d uses the phantasy, the thoughts, and also that.
Let it happen.
In what you say, is there room for doubt?
Yes. But not doubt for the sake of doubt itself.
It's the doubt that wants to lift the table cloth to see what's underneath.
That's more of a searching kind of doubt. What's an example of such a search quest?
If you say, I'm busy lifting the veil (here: tablecloth) on something?
Yes. The absence of G-d.
Oh. That's not something small. That's something big. Really big.
I find it embarrassing.
We're waiting 2000 years.
You think G-d is embarrassing, or your quest? Maybe both!
I don't know how to formulate it, but, Andries
there is such a distance between what has (spiritually) come in my life and
and where reality is. I mean, you become ill, you nearly die,
you ask things of G-d or pray for people. Not to receive, but just for the sake of other people
and they die, or the divorce is officialized anyhow, situations,
And I think: am I now all on my own here, and...
that question
is an enormous question that has not alienated me from G-d
It could be a question that, left unanswered, make you decide to quit
Or, that could make a whole generation, your generation (you are 63),
- and my generation, I am 61-
drove a generation away from the church.
At least, that's one of the reasons.
I think it's one of the reasons, but I believe that
if something hasn't fundamentally changed in your life, and in my life
then I can imagine very well that I might have said: well, it doesn't work for me,
or there's this incongruency between theory and my life's reality.
But I cannot say that, because my life has changed.
That's my point, because you are my guest here in Naarden, after a long series of conversation
and with most of the guests I received - without me having prior knowledge of that - something of major importance happened in their life.
A major shift, a major awakening, a voice - you name it.
So I am now, as it were, looking for guests who are extraordinary believers but who tell me: I've never had any lifechanging moments.
Well, they also exist.
They exist? Well, let me put up an ad then!
You understand my point?
Who, when looking for answers, under the table cloth so to speak, cannot fall back on
on some special experience like you have had.
But I think we live in a time
in which we have loosened the ties with major dogmatic principles, and (religious) institutions,
where people search their own path,
and where there are also possibilities - because every human being wants to experience something, I mean
there is no kiss without love and a relation without a kiss
in other words, there's always something going on (beneath the surface).
It would be too much to say: let's seperate faith from the (tangible and/or spiritual) experiences
I think that everyone who is into these things also has a desire, a feeling, a wish attached to it.
Because with an empty (contactless) heaven we cannot live.
No, then I think the verse goes "The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you, iron (meaning there shall be no rain/blessings from above) Deuteronomy 28:23.
A poet paraphrased: trading led for old iron on the earth. Which is an old Dutch proverb meaning: there's no profit, nor loss (so: no point to it)
In the beginning I mentioned you had difficulty walking. I knew that I could say this without offending you
Yes, no problem.
It's the story about your coma, right?
I told in the beginning of the program: 51 days in coma because of a medical mistake.
And I heard they were already preparing your funeral?
Yes, they had to rent a place, they had to write a eulogy, and all kinds of other preparations had to take place, and
there was even someone who said: pull the plug and that sort of stuff. I heard that later.
You haven't heard anything while you were in a coma?
No no no, then you only see hallucinations and images
No, that was a rollercoaster for 51 days, very strange.
But later, a year later, they told me.
They didn't tell me, when I woke up: hey, we've been busy with your burial.
No, the first word I ushered when I woke up was: surprise!
I could whisper that.
To whom did you tell that?
To my wife.
You didn't know you were gone for 51 days, I guess.
Well, I was called to wake up by a sort of luitenant-colonel-nurse
and he said: mr. de Bruijn, do you have any idea how long you slept? Do you know that?
I couldn't speak so I couldn't say anything
Then he said out load - as a matter of speaking - as if I was deaf: 51 days.
and...at that moment it didn't mean anything to me, but I knew I had been unconscious.
What is 51 days?
I mean,
time.
But when I regained consciousness and saw my wife, I only could think of one word: surprise!
And that became a very profound word for me.
Life is a surprise.
Everything has become a surprise, I mean
we are a surprise for eachother and
the surprise of life and
the time, and a glass of wine, and so on,
I'd almost call it one of the key words of my life.
Suprise, and wanting to be surprised
and the desire to receive (surprises).
And don't you feel like you got extra time?
Yes.
Yes, I have the feeling that I -
look, the last night before I died,
I say,
because I had a NDE (near death experience)
I had a nurse next to my hospital bed
and a second one who said she was leaving because she didn't find it calm enough
but the first one said she wanted to stay for the honor of Jesus.
A nurse right, but as clear as glass.
Then I saw four angels at the corners of my bed,
in bronze, like guards , back to back, tall postures.
And then a voice came from above that said: your neshama is safe with G-d.
And in that moment I knew: this is the end.
That's maybe something I told myself.
Then I slipped into unconsciousness
in a sort of very deep relaxation, I imagine, and the next day I woke up,
and that's why my first word was: surprise.
I am safe. And it's not about me, but about the honor of Jesus.
As for the angels, you may forget about them. They were also very special but, well, that's just something that happened.
And I tell about this with some reservations, because some people will just focus on the angels of course,
but for me these two words count:
It's about the honor of Jesus in my life. A recap of my life.
And I am safe.
So, what are you worried about?
My question was actually: do you feel like you are living on borrowed time? You got your life back as it were.
Yes, but I still live on a borrowed time.
If I get ill now, it will be serious, you know.
I mean,
my life expectancy is lower. I mean, I'm
I'm overall weaker, and there's all kinds of contributing factors
Your head is OK, but your body is unable
Yes, it was about my head
If I had been a street maker, or sailor, I would have had a problem. Or sportsman.
But I always lived in my head.
So speaking, writing, painting.
Don't you have this kind of urge, like: I'm living on borrowed time and
and maybe I only have left - who knows how long?
and I still want to tell something.
No, no.
I do have projects, of approximately one year.
so you are living in a different time span.
You could say like, well, these two three or four quarters I want to get a certain amount of work done.
Writing a book,
I built a chapel complete with paintings, so
that was a special project.
Those sort of things.
So your horizon is different,
and the day is different.
And every day is one extra.
That's what you keep holding on to.
I mean, I spent one whole year paralyzed in bed,
a whole year - afterwards?
Afterwards.
After one year I could stand upright for 15 seconds with two people beside me.
And the day after that it became 16 seconds.
One second,
is then what you count.
17 seconds, 18 seconds.
Learning to walk the first steps,
the first things - I mean, learning to talk. I could talk, but my voice was gone, so
well,
so every millimeter is big, and every day is enormous.
And that stayed with me.
Because living day by day, that's an expression of course which we use now and then, and us healthy people think we live by this saying
but living by the day is for you really living by the day.
Yes, absolute. Attentive living, every day. And during that day really overthink: is what I do valuable?
It sounds heavy, I know, but in the end of the day I do ask it.
Was this worth it?
Was it a good day? I ask myself then. Was it a good day?
And what is a good day?
A good day is two things:
Not to much.
But two, at least two good things.
The rest is sometimes sleeping, resting, doing nothing
Wasted time, also possible.
But two things, at the end of each day I can name and say: this was good and that was good.
And what kind of things are those? Can you give me an example?
A good conversation,
A good conversation
like this
that's very important for me.
I count this evening: this is one.
And, then I often have a story I write,
or I am busy with preparing a theater peace or a talk or whatever. Or a painting.
If this creative process is running, then it's good.
One and a half hours, two hours. You know.
And these are two very beautiful things.
And in between, well...
I understand you are grateful.
I mentioned that in my introduction; he's thankful for every day he lives.
Yes, but the choice to be grateful is a choice I've made shortly after I woke up in intensive care
I've been there for three months, and
the second day that I woke up
I knew that if I wouldn't choose gratefulness right there and then,
then I'd become a nasty, disappointed, tedious, isolated human being.
So it's a choice for survival
If I'm grateful, my road will go up
so I very, very consciously said right there: I choose gratitude.
So I started thanking the doctors
while somebody, who medically trainwrecked you
Yes, in the beginning that was true, but afterwards they saved me. They can do a lot these days.
Yes, but it started out with a medical mistake.
Yes, but I am also very grateful for the wonderful things they've done,
afterwards.
But the choice for thankfulness is unbelievably fundamental, to rehabilitate, to continue
to climb higher
and
I also think that not only psychologically, but also from the perspective of my faith
I have an address to thank somebody
I mean, if you don't have an address, then -
but I have an address.
I can thank someone.
And I don't have to thank the lottery, or chance, or fate,
I thank a person who created me and wanted me
and who came into my life
so loving
that person I thank.
And that is also the basis for the fact that gratitude is not some sort of a psychological trick from me,
but thankfulness has a fundament in the relationship.
And that is a big difference.
So, well, that is a small step in the way up.
And thankful for this day.
Yes, yes absolutely.
I am thankful for this conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Otto.
Thank you.
And well, thanks to life, right?
Yes, surely.
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