A Tribute to Gustav Meyrink in Memory
Born in Vienna in 1868 as an illegitimate son of a baron and an actress, Meyrink did not get the best and easiest start in life. He had to struggle quite a lot. First at school which he attended in Munich, then Hamburg, and from 1883 onwards in Prague. In 1889, together with the nephew of poet Christian Morgenstern, Meyrink established his own banking company, named “Meier & Morgenstern”. It did not go too well. Tired and disappointed he wanted to end his life in 1891. In his autobiographical short story “Der Lotse”[1] (The Pilot) he writes:
I will start this book by telling about some incidents from my own life.
Tomorrow will be the fortieth[2] anniversary of this Assumption Day for me; I sat in front of my desk in my bachelor’s room in Prague, put the farewell letter I had written to my mother in the envelope and picked up the revolver that was in front of me; because I wanted to start the journey over the Styx, wanted to throw away a life that seemed to me to be stale and worthless and of no comfort for all the future.
At that moment, “the pilot with the magic cap in front of his face”, as I have called him since then, stepped onto the boat of my life and snatched the steering wheel. I heard a rustling at the door that leads out to the house stairs, and when I turned around I saw that something white was sliding under the edge of the door over the threshold into the room. It was a printed booklet. The fact that I put the revolver down, picked it up and read the title was not the result of any curiosity or any secret desire to postpone death – my heart was empty.
I read: “About life after death.”
“Strange coincidence!”, a thought wanted to stir in me – but it hardly brought the first word over my lips. Since then I have never believed in coincidence, but surely in the – pilot.
I lit the lamp with a trembling hand – it hadn’t trembled for a moment before, neither while I was writing my suicide note to my mother, nor when I reached for the revolver – because it had gotten dark, and I read the notebook – obviously the delivery boy of my bookseller had pushed it in – from beginning to end with a racing pulse. It had a purely spiritualistic content and above all described the experiences of the great researchers in this field: William Blade, Crookes, Prof. Zöllner, Fechner and others with the mediums Slade, Eglingtone, Home etc.
I sat awake all night until morning began to dawn and hot thoughts, thoughts that had been foreign to me until then were circling in my brain; should such outstanding scholars as those mentioned have been mistaken ?! Hard to imagine! But what strange, incomprehensible laws of nature, which mock all known norms of physics, had appeared there then ?!
The burning desire to see such things with my own eyes, to grasp them with my own hands, to check them for their correctness, to see through the mysteries which underlie them, heated up in me that night to constant white heat.
Well he did not commit suicide but got highly interested in mysticism and the occult instead.
In 1891 he founded the theosophic lodge “Zum blauen Stern” in Prague. Karel Weinfurter, his companion there, writes about this time in his book Man´s Highest Purpose:
p. 43: After the establishment of the Theosophical Lodge at Prague, named ‘”The Lodge of the Blue Star, and founded in 1891, we used to have regular meetings at G. Meyrink’s flat. By every means we endeavoured to attain some progress in occult science, especially trying to secure a mystical leader […] that solemnity and zeal which prevailed in our small circle, though the membership hardly amounted to ten persons. But their zeal and enthusiasm overwhelmed all obstacles whatsoever. […] In our free hours we were meeting at a coffee-house where we exchanged our ideas, talking about books read, and making propositions as to the different practices each of us should carry through. It is necessary to mention that after having read the works of J. B. Kerning, The Key to the Spiritual World and The Way to Immortality, we presumed that for our further evolution we needed a leader and tried everything possible to find one…
p. 50: We then learnt that in fact some members of the Theosophical Society [in Vienna] had a leader. But it was a mystical leader and he led the Christian way. …
p. 52: To appease the curiosity of my readers, I must yet mention that the leader in question gradually accepted nearly all members of our circle for his disciples, having led them for long years.
We know that the theosophical circle around Gustav Meyrink and Karel Weinfurter did indeed find their spiritual teacher and his name was a Alois Mailänder.[3]
Gustav Meyrink portrays his experiences with Mailänder, lasting for 13 years, in his very personal account “Die Verwandlung des Blutes”[4] (The transfiguration of the blood). There he called these years a path full of thorns and says:
I have spent thirteen years day after day without missing out on a single one − that’s why I often put aside the most important actions that outer life had put in front of me! – practicing the “mantras” for eight hours a day: not a single event occurred. Whenever I complained of my misery, the Leader always looked at me long and earnestly and said: “You must be patient.”
But he also says:
If I had learned nothing more from the man than the knowledge that the body had to be involved in the transformation of man through yoga, I would already be obliged to thank him for the whole life with this knowledge!
And something very important he tells further on:
I have mentioned that of all the students of the man in Hessen, along with my friend L., I was the only one who did not experience the transformation of the body in the direction which was the intention of the “leader” and at that time also my intention. His consolation that I had to wait patiently, made me languish for thirteen years in the fire of hope; Later, after his death, … one day L told me: The Leader had confided in him that my infusibility in the fires of the exercises was due to the fact that in my innermost being I strove to achieve completely different goals than these Christian ones taught and preached by him. He saw it as a task to get me on the “right” track.
So in reality, in the end, Mailänder assisted and somehow caused Meyrink’s transformation from a somewhat failed banker to a great novelist and writer of fantastic occult stories! Mailänder´s relationship to Meyrink in all those years was “fatherly, listening, advising and supported by a great trust in God”.[5]
Meyrink´s started publishing already in 1901 and 1903, but his greatest stories are:
- The Golem 1915
- The Green Face 1916
- Walpurgis Night 1917
- The White Dominican 1921
- The Angel of the West Window 1927
In 1893 Gustav Meyrink married Hedwig Aloysia Certl, the one that was also accepted as a student by Mailänder and was to be called Maria by her “spirit-name”. While Gustav Meyrink’s “spirit-name” was Ruben, later Ruben-Juda. This marriage did not go too well and they probably separated already around the turn of the century.[6] Already 1896 he got to know his future second wife, Philomena Bernt (called Mena), a relative of another Austrian poet: Rainer Maria Rilke. Yet they did not marry before 1905, when Meyrink finally got his divorce. In the meantime more drama developed in his life: he got quite a severe spinal cord disease that plagued him for a few years, his banking business went bankrupt, he came into custody and was briefly imprisoned, an acquittal followed – all these dramatic events about disease and imprisonment are touched on in the letters from Mailänder to Meyrink (Mailänder died in 1905). Meyrink moved to Vienna, in 1906 with his second wife to Munich and in 1911 the couple ended up in Starnberg. In 1906 their daughter Sibylle Felizitas was born and in 1908 their son Harro Fortunat. Meyrink had success with his writing, they bought a house in Starnberg … Yet there was more drama awaiting towards the end of his life.
In the winter of 1931 his son had a skiing accident, suffered an incurable paraplegia, was confined to a wheelchair and in 1932 he took his own life.
Meyrink kind of got reconciled with this death and in July the same year, shortly after the suicide, he writes a letter[7] to a friend where he gives a description how to get in touch with the diseased.
Gustav Meyrink
Mr. Oldrich Neubert
July 25, 1932
My dear friend!
I found my son and I am united to him. But this union is so very, very different from what I previously thought it could be. If I had been told earlier that it would come about in this way, I would have been very sad in my earthly blindness, because I would have thought it was not enough. In reality, however, it is terrific when you experience it, that you think your heart is bursting. I can’t sort it out here on paper and have to write without proper context.
I want to write it down in a muddle, if only for the reason that you can see how you can get in touch with your dear wife in the same or a similar way. I cannot say that I was told in words from over there what I should do, but it came over me like a awakening knowledge that I had possessed for millennia, but had only forgotten. At first I woke up in the night and felt like I needed to drink a glass of water. I was not thirsty at all, and yet it was thirst again, but very different from the way one usually feels thirst. I drank a glass of water, but I had to force myself to do it because I didn’t like it at all. Then I suddenly realized: my son is thirsty and I drink for him! And then it suddenly became clear to me that the connection with him was initiated by this, nothing more! The elementals that are detached from his corpse and that were connected to him as earthly components in life are thirsty and not he is thirsty! The next morning I suddenly knew that I had to put on his hat, just as Pernath puts on the other hat in the GOLEM. I did it with the idea: now, in a sense, I am my son and he is me. I immediately learned the most important key that is needed to come into true contact with the dead: The motive must be the right one! Our human longing to find the dead and to be together with them is not pure and selfless enough, that is why our plea is not heard, because only a wish is heard from the SPIRITUAL if its fulfilment is truly spiritual. And so this motive must be: I must help the dead. He shouldn’t help me, no, I want and have to help him. But how am I supposed to help him? I asked myself desperately, I don’t know how to do it. You don’t need to know that, was the answer: your mere, ardent wish to help is enough, he doesn’t need your help at all, but as someone who wants to help you should send him such thoughts, other thoughts do not even reach him. And from then on I didn’t think or do anything else. The other thing happened by itself. Then suddenly a hot inspiration came: pray with all fervour to the All Mother ISIS, the Egyptian Mother of Gods, of whom it is said that she respects neither earthly nor heavenly laws, she does not see right and wrong. With her love she breaks every rigid law, every karma and everything. And then I turned my face to Egypt, screamed inwardly: All mother Isis, do a miracle, an incomprehensible miracle for my son and my wife and my daughter, the sister of my son! I don’t want to know how this miracle will be and if I should be shattered by it, I don’t care, just do a miracle! And the miracle set in soon afterwards, it is far from over, it goes on and on. Such a flood of tremendous knowledge and understanding suddenly struck me that I no longer recognize myself compared to yesterday. It is as if my yesterday’s person died and a new person was resurrected. The grief for my son has disappeared without a trace. If I could undo everything with one wave of the hand, the fall while skiing and everything, I wouldn’t, I’d rather burn my hand in the fire. A tremendous feeling of happiness has seized me. A feeling of happiness that I never suspected before, that something like this could even exist. The thing is this: in life on earth you are not united with someone you love! It is as if two bottles were standing close to each other, one filled with red liquid and the other, say, blue. These two liquids can never combine, because the glass walls of the bottles always stand in the way. Only through death can the two liquids unite and then become a single colour – in this case of the example (which is of course only a bad example), blue-red = violet. In my case, this unification does not need to be permanent and I don’t even want it, because the feeling: my son is over there and I am here, but when the longing comes, we are immediately one single being – is a lot more blissful…
I know that it will get more and more beautiful and in a way that I can of course not even imagine today.
… The dead are exactly where we are, they are just vibrations that are not the same as we are – and that’s why we believe we are spatially separated. When the vibrations become the same, then we are united.
With my daughter – although I haven’t spoken to her about my son at all, the same condition has already set in as mine. She said to me yesterday evening, I don’t know what happened suddenly, I suddenly feel as infinitely happy as never in my life, I no longer mourn him and am so happy that he is dead – I am afraid of myself, because that sounds like dreadful brutality. My son-in-law was sitting there and turned pale with horror, because he naturally believed my daughter had gone mad. I had to think of the place in the GOLEM where Rabbi Hillel smiles blissfully at the death of his beloved wife and of the place in the GREEN FACE of the switching over of the lights in the Lazarus Eidotter. I just wonder: how did I know when I wrote these two novels that there was such a thing? …
With my wife, the miracle is yet to come. So far she’s quiet, but the big picture has yet to come. I have the feeling that it will be something very special with her.
Your
Gustav Meyrink
Half a year later Gustav Meyrink died himself.
About Gustav Meyrink´s death his wife Mena Meyrink writes[8]:
The death of my husband, I call the greatness of this dying resurrection, was a High mass of religion and greatness for us. – Since the shattering death of our beloved boy, Gustl no longer had the will to live, his face had long been seeing yonder; his eyes became more and more radiant, his body less and less. – During this time he didn’t speak much, he always sat so other-wordly and looked into the distance. – On December 2nd at 11 a.m. he told me literally: I’m going to die now. Please don’t talk me out of it, the detachment is far too great and important, and if I yet should suffer much, please don’t give me any anesthetic – I want to walk over straight and conscious. And so upright, clear and without complaint, without whimpering, he awaited death. His eyes became more and more radiant. At half past six on Sunday, December 4th, he took his last breath. There was a shattering joy in us that his great spirit had detached itself so harmoniously. His body is left behind, like a larva – the butterfly has soared. – As upright as he died, so uright I remained. His death and also the death of my boy, he went so elavatedly, almost with joy – are an example to me that there is nothing terrible about death. – Despite the great shock, I’m so rich! – Nobody can take away the inner wealth that Gustl gave me. I am so strangely happy to be connected to them ‘over there’ and am happy because I am getting closer to them every day. – Gustl died a love death out of longing for his child – he would have died after each and every one of us – he loved us too strongly. – This great love of his will perhaps illuminate the way for you more than other examples.
Mena Meyrink outlived her husband by 34 years. She died in 1966 at the age of 93. All three are buried at the graveyard in Starnberg. And on his gravestone you find written the word VIVO = I live.
Indeed.
Christine Eike
———————-
[1] The German original of the Pilot can be read in Meyrink’s bequest here:
https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/BV035117590
[2] Every version on the Internet says twenty-forth. But the original says quite clearly: ”Ich will dieses Buch beginnen, indem ich von Begebnissen asu meinem eigenen Leben erzähle. Morgen jährt sich für mich der Tag ”Maria Himmelfahrt” zum vierzigsten Male.
In other words he is writing this 40 years after this happened. Some say it was 1892, probably because they all think he was 24 years old at that time, due to this misreading of the original. I think it must have been 1891.
[3] See Richard Cloud’s article about Mailänder on pansophers here:
https://pansophers.com/alois-mailander/
The 44 letters from Mailänder to Meyrink were published and commented by Erik Dilloo-Heidger this year. See: Alois Mailänder: 44 Briefe an Gustav Meyrink, herausgegeben und kommentiert von Erik Dilloo-Heidger, Norderstedt 2020. Erik Dilloo-Heidger also intends to publish Mailänder’s ”Seelenlehre” and a fragment of the ”Formenlehre” from Hübbe-Schleiden’s bequest in German later. Sam Robinson will publish this in English.
[4] In: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Meyrinkiana VI; 14. Printed in ”Fledermäuse. Erzählungen, Fragmente, Aufsätze. Hg. von Eduard Frank, München-Wien 1981
[5] Erik Dilloo-Heidger ibid p. 35
[6] Ibid p.120
[7] The letter in German I found here: http://literatten.bplaced.net/ap/m/briefe.php
[8] The German text I found here https://www.yumpu.com/de/document/view/58545911/meyrink-vita
Wonderful article on my favourite initiate. I was wondering if anyone knows the date he wrote his Transformation of the Blood. In 1927, same year he wrote Angel of the West Window, he is said the have converted to Buddhism, and identified as belonging the Northern School, which is a reference to the gradual path towards enlightenment of Chan Buddhism.
I ask this as I wonder if he gave up the practices hinted at in the West Window and his other works, derived from Kerning and Mailander.. I imagine not because of his reference to his subscribing to the gradual path of enlightenment rather than the sudden enlightenment which has similarities to the Indian jnani path of Advaita.
The Transformation of the Blood is found in his bequest and there undated as far as I can see. It was printed much later. But I have seen a date somewhere: around 1928. Yes he converted to Buddhism in 1927. In a text Erik Dilloo-Heidger found (also in Meyrink’s bequest) dated 1930 Meyrink tells about a sudden deep insight: ” ..We are not supposed to change ourselves through yoga, but we are supposed to build a god, or in Christian terms: we should not follow Christ, but take him down from the cross …” He also calls tantric excercises, as any asceticism, there for false. And he says that the old man he kept seeing all his life, is the “Christos” whom we have to untie and make powerful …” He also says there he cannot call it an error and a failure what he did throughout a long time with yoga, but that was necesseray to come to his deep insight on August the 7th 1930! So he was a searching soul throughout his life!
“he got quite a severe spinal cord disease that plagued him for a few years, his banking business went bankrupt, he came into custody and was briefly imprisoned, an acquittal followed – all these dramatic events about disease and imprisonment are touched on in the letters from Mailänder to Meyrink (Mailänder died in 1905).”
Interestingly enough, I remember reading in regard to his spinal cord disease, that Meyrink made Mailänders Exercises responsible for this disease. Regardless, Meyrink continued exercising, but I am not sure in what way exactly. This is supposed to be mentioned in a letter exchange between them. Is there anything known about this?
He mentions the spinal cord disease himself in his “Transfiguration of the blood”. And that he somehow blames Mailänder’s excercises for it. He says there: “In 1900, to celebrate the turn of the century, I had suffered from a dreadful spinal cord disease. I still believe today that I had to ascribe it to the exercises of “J …” . J is Mailänder. And he says also that at the bottom of his heart he was against them because he could not believe in Christ as Mailänder did. This seems to be touched upon in a letter from Mäiländer to Meyrink Octobre 13, 1900. In this letter Mailänder writes to Meyrink: ” … Why do you not believe in Christ? Just because you do not recognize him. If you took the trouble to look for him in the truth, you would soon come to believe that he is in you and you in him…”. The excercises will be described closer in Sam Robinson’s upcoming book.
From digging a little I think his Transformation of the Blood was first published in 1916 in the book Fledermäuse (Bats). I think he attributed his spinal cord injury to a variation of the Kerning exercise and something he read from an Indian hatha yoga text on pranayama, involving extended kumbhaka, breath retention. Meyrink at one point had made the statement God is in the spinal cord, so I suspect he was trying to awaken the kundalini.
His later works, The White Dominican and Angel of the West Window all hint at the Kerning exercises. So I believe he was still doing these esoteric practices of Kerning until the end of his life.
His reference to his sons departed elementals hints at this as it implies his son hadn’t individualized, united his spirit to his body, so these elementals, constituent parts that were not united, attached themselves to Gustav Meyrink to accelerate their evolution.
The reference to gradual path of enlightenment, i.e. the Northern School of Chan Buddhism implies he was still doing exercises to achieve his goal. He often hints at an exercise in Angel of the West Window in reference to a Drukpa monk, which has a connection to alchemy.
The northern school is an early school of Chan that went extinct and the closest existing path today would he something like the Vajranyana system of Tibetan Buddhism, whose highest teaching is dzogchen, which has definite similarities to Chan (zen), with its focus on rigpa or awareness.
Hi there Jason,
The info from Meyrink’s final diary notes about his path is that he abandoned all the eastern mysticism, contrary to popular belief.
In the finish he went back to the mystical Christian way and went so far as to call yoga tantric exercises as black magic.
I’ll try get this one out in future too,
All the best,
Sam
I found the confirmation in Mike Mitchel’s book VIVO:
Today, 7 August 1930, at 10 o’clock in the morning, after a long, most harrowing night, the scales suddenly fell from my eyes and I now know what the purpose of all existence truly is. We should not change ourselves through yoga, instead we should build a god, so to speak or, to put it in Christian terms: ‘We should not follow Christ, but take him down from the cross.’ I should therefore crown the Old Man I always see in the distance, clothe him in purple and make him lord of my life. Now I do see him crowned and wearing the cloak of purple. The more perfect he becomes, the sooner he will help me. So then HE is the adept and I will only participate inasmuch as he will at some future time merge with me, for basically he is my quintessential self. ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ – that is the meaning of the words of John the Baptist. (Latern, 346) So did Meyrink convert back to Christianity? No. ‘Christ’ and the ‘Old Man’ have a similar function to the ‘Pilot’, perhaps also kundalini. They represent one part of him, ‘his quintessential self’, and the goal is still union. The insight seems to be that until then he had assumed his inner double was perfect and it was his ‘everyday’ self he needed to transform to achieve union, but now the transformation is focused on his spiritual self. Ursula von Mangoldt, reporting Albert Talhoff, suggests there was a deathbed converconversion. As he was dying, she says, he suddenly had a vision: He called his daughter and said to her, ‘Dying is hard. Death is the most transitory part of life. But see, there is only one God: Christ!’ Then he lay back, smiling, and died.4
‘The Transformation of the Blood’, written in 1927–28
No, the Transformation of the Blood was not printed already in 1916 in “Fledermäuse”. The 1916 edition of “Fledermäuse” does not include “Dei Verwandlung des Blutes”. See here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32014/32014-h/32014-h.htm
It is first included in Eduard Franks edition 1981. The text of 7 August 1930 is much longer than what you quote here. It is a German text, typewritten, found in his bequest. And there he indeed calls the tantric excercises for black magic, as Sam says.
Now this death-bed conversation, did it really happen or is it just a suggestion?
Yes I realized that, thats why I quoted Mike Mitchel from his Meyrink biography VIVO of the 1928 date for the Transformation of the Blood, as you shared earlier.
As for the death bed conversation, its quoted from Ursula von Mangoldt: Auf der Schwelle zwischen Gestern und Morgen, page 100. Quoting Albert Talhoff, who is the source of the deathbed conversation statement. Mike Mitchel then states: This is not mentioned by his wife, in her description of his death. If something of the kind did in fact happen it was surely not a deathbed conversion, but a development of the insight of 7 August 1930.
Christine, The Transformation of the Blood is available in full in Mike Mitchel’s translation of some of Meyrink’s short stories, The Dedalus Meyrink Reader.
Very nice Jason. A fine hint for English readers who want to read some of the texts in full. And it is really wonderful if this blog sparks some more interest for Meyrink in the English world. Because he is such a fascinating person. (I myself prefer to read the German originals, whenever possible).
And thank you for this quote of Albert Talhoff. I would guess he said that some time before his death, as you say.
Gustav Meyrink is really very “close” to my heart, also because he is an Austrian (my old home-country) of the old school. Born in Vienna. Lived many years in Prague. Was a contemporary to and frequenting the same milieus there as such world-famous writers as Rainer Maria Rilke and Franz Kafka. If anyone reading this blog has not read anything by Gustav Meyrink before, read at least The Golem. Or the White Dominican. Or The Angel of the West Window. All three easily to get hold of in English. In the “Angel” he describes the underground alchemical laboratories of Emperor Rudolph II which the Englishman John Dee was led to. Meyrink wrote this in 1927. But these very same laboratories were only discovered almost 100 years later! The webside for the alchemical museum in Prague wrote around 2014: “The newly opened alchemical laboratories were discovered during the reconstruction of one of the oldest historical buildings in Prague on the street Haštalská number 1. This building is listed by UNESCO and by miracle this one has been preserved after the demolition of the Jewish quarter at the end of 19th century.”
Now can anyone explain this?
Is something known about the eastern lineage Meyrink was initiated into, or the Lama at least? Id like to know the fundament of his argumentation. Greetings
@mylenious89, I’ve studied the Northern School, the best scholarly book on the subject is The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism by John McRae, or perhaps the Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma translated by Red Pine, he was an Indian master who travelled over to China and taught what is called the mind transmission, the highest teaching of the buddha.
This Northern School lineage teaches that enlightenment is achieved gradually, via practice and study, primarily through Dhyana, a sanskrit word for meditation which is where the word Chan came from, and the Japanese Zen.
Meyrink I can guarantee was not initiated into Northern School Chan Buddhism as this branch went extinct very early on after its introduction into China and there no other offshoots. The closest to it would be the tantric Vajrayana system of Tibetan Buddhism, which is a graduated system of practices, dhyana, mahamudra, deity visualization, leading up to dzogchen, which is the highest teaching of this Tibetan system, which is essentually non-dualisitic, like Chan, Zen and the Indian Advaita.
Meyrink likely had access to the early Pali Canon and the works of Max Müller, which is where he likely received his self-initiation.
There really is very little literature on the Northern School and he only used it as an indicator that he belived the non-dual state of Self-realization is achieved through practice, i.e. dhyana and Kerning practices.
As far as I can see, Meyrink never had come into possession of an authentic eastern lineage transmission. It is not possible to “self initiate” oneself into a lineage of Dzogchen or Mahamudra without a Guru, therefore, despite all his knowledge on the western mysteries, his view on the tantras of the east must remain amateurish and purely speculative. However, if he had a authentic transmission, it would be interesting to see which one.
About the Buddhist teachings: two ways 1) Bottom up, the gradual route most people follow, has come from India to Tibet.
2) top down, which is the Chan or Dzogchen method of meditation.
Concerning 2: One can be initiated spontaneously or officially (like a ceremony) by a master. The spontaneous way is a mental transmission on any moment the teacher sees a possibility to do so. Like one sits in a crowd of students, often more than 150 present, and in the middle of something else being said or going on he may catch his chance to suddenly mentally initiate a student into the nature of mind.
Then 3) Yes it is possible to self initiate! This can feel as if an invisible person gives one this experience, for instance a deceased relative or developed person who is imagined to be in the spirit world, or even a god or spiritual being. If one does not have a Buddhist frame of reference one may interpret this in another frame, like Christian or spiritualistic frame (when people seek advice from dead people in seances).
It seems to me Meyrink did not have much of a Buddhist frame of reference to order his genuine individual experience, so he interpreted it as a revelation by his son.
What is described here at first sight does not fit into any Buddhist teaching lineage. Buddhists do not have the existence of the dead any longer than the bardo of death and becoming lasts: 42 days. After that another incarnation has started. The individual has gone, is reborn elsewhere. Of course in our own mind we can still remember the deceased and “talk” to them, our personal memory can remain.
From a Buddhist perspective such self initiatory experience is a break through of knowledge one had in a previous incarnation. One remembers suddenly. what was already achieved in a previous life. After such spontaneous initiation people may seek a master to catch up. Nowadays we have the relative luxury of eastern teachers having come to the west. The knowledge and understanding of yoga’s and Buddhism has grown in the west compared to the times a century ago.
The talking about Christ, God in the frame of the Kerning route and Mailanders method and yoga methods impresses me as (back then) lacking a good teacher to guide the practices. it sounds like a do it yourself route by many students, therefore al the more remarkable when people achieved their purpose!