My Childhood

It is not irrelevant to solemnly testify that I was born with enormous spiritual longings. To deny this would be an absurdity...

Even though some will look at this as unusual and incredible, the concrete fact is that there are those in the world who can completely remember the totality of their existence, even the event of their own birth. I want to affirm that I am one of those who can do so.

Following all the well-known processes of birth, very clean and beautifully dressed, I was gently placed on the maternal bed close to my mother...

Approaching the sacred bed was a certain very gentle giant with a sweet smile who was contemplating me. He was my father.

It is important to clearly and plainly state that at the dawn of any one of our existences we originally walk on four legs, then on two, and finally on three. Obviously, the latter indicates the cane of the elders.

My case cannot be in any way an exception to the general rule. When I was eleven months old I wanted to walk, and it is evident that I did it by firmly sustaining myself upon my two feet. Still, I plainly remember that marvelous instant in which, by interlacing my hands over my head, I solemnly executed the Masonic sign of help: “Elai Beni Al Manah.”

Since I still have not lost my capacity for astonishment, I have to state that what happened to me then was marvelous. To walk for the very first time with the body that Mother Nature grants us is without a doubt an extraordinary prodigy.

Very serenely, I directed myself towards the old window from which I could see the varied conjunctions of people who were appearing and disappearing here, there, and everywhere in the picturesque little street of my town. To hold myself by the bars of such an old window was for me the first adventure. 

Fortunately, my father, who was a very prudent man, greatly conjured beforehand any danger by placing a screen of wires on the balustrade, for the purpose of stopping me from falling onto the street. 

Such a very ancient window from that high floor... how well I remember it! Such a big and old centenarian house where I walked my first steps....

Certainly, at that tender age I loved the enchanted toys with which children enjoy themselves, but this was not in any way interfering with my practices of meditation.

In those first years of life in which one learns how to walk, I trained myself to sit in the oriental style in order to meditate.

Then, retrospectively, I studied my previous reincarnations. It is clear that many people of ancient times were visiting me.

When the ineffable ecstasy concluded, I then returned into the normal, ordinary state, in order to painfully contemplate the old walls of that centenarian, paternal house, where I, in spite of my age, looked like a strange cenobite....

How small I felt before those rough walls! I cried... yes, as children cry... I lamented by saying, “Once again in a new physical body! How painful life is! Woe! Woe! Woe!...”

My good mother always came in those precise instances with the intention of helping me. At the same time she exclaimed, “The child is hungry, thirsty,” etc.

Never could I forget those instances in which I happily ran through the ancestral corridors of my house.

Then, unusual cases of transcendental metaphysics began happening to me. My father called me from his bedroom. I saw him in his sleeping clothes, but when I tried to approach him, he vanished, disappearing into an unknown dimension...

Although I sincerely confess that this type of psychic phenomena was very familiar to me, I simply entered into his bedroom to directly verify that his physical body was sleeping within his perfumed, mahogany bed. I told myself the following, “Ah! What happened is that the soul of my father is outside, because his physical body is sleeping in these moments.”

In those times, the silent movies had just been introduced. Many people gathered in the public square at night in order to distract themselves by watching movies. These movies were in open fields on rudimentary screens made by a very tempered sheet nailed onto two sticks properly separated...

In my house I had a very different movie. I closed myself in a dark room and I fixed my sight on the wall or fence. After a time of spontaneous and pure concentration, the fence definitively disappeared and the wall became very splendidly illuminated, as if it were a multidimensional screen. Then, from the infinite space surged a living landscape of Mother Nature, with playful gnomes, airy sylphs, salamanders of fire, undines of the water, and neraides of the immense sea. These are fortunate creatures, infinitely happy beings who played with me.

My movie was not silent; Rudolph Valentino was not necessary in it, nor was the famous Vilma Banky of those times. My movie was also with sound. All the creatures who appeared on my special screen sang or uttered very pure lores in the divine and primeval language, which as a river of gold runs through the dense, sunny jungle.

Later on, when my family multiplied, I invited my innocent little siblings to share this incomparable joy with me by serenely watching the astonishing astral figures on the wall of my dark bedroom...

I was always a worshipper of the sun, and as much at dawn as in the evening, I climbed upon the roof of my abode (because in those times balconies did not exist). Seated in the oriental style as an infantile yogi upon the roof tile made of baked clay, I contemplated (in a state of ecstasy) the Sun King. In this way I immersed myself into profound meditation. My noble mother was always very frightened upon seeing me walking about on top of our home...

Whenever my elderly father opened the old door of the wardrobe, I felt as if he would give me that unique coat (a purple diplomat’s coat) upon which golden buttons glittered.

It is an old garment from the apparel of the age of chivalry which I wore (in an ancient reincarnation) with elegance when I was named Simeon Bleler. Sometimes in my mind I imagined that within this old wardrobe could be found hidden swords and fencing foils from such ancient times.

I do not know if my father understood me. I thought that maybe he would deliver the objects of that past existence to me. The elder only looked at me, and instead gave me a long narrow cart to play with, a toy of innocent enjoyments for my childhood...