A Gnostic Childhood
Part XVIII
Working
as a Fire Fighter Trainee
7350th Sup Sq, INST ENG,
Fire Department Operational Crews,
Tempelhof Central Airport, Berlin, Germany
1960 - 1962
On August 8, 1960, a hot
and humid day in Berlin, I reported at 8 am to the Airport Fire and Rescue
Department at Tempelhof Airport. Of course the place was already somewhat
familiar to me from my interview there in May. Mr. Gaertner had done his best to
show me the station and give me an idea about what my new job was going to be.
Nevertheless, as I approached the gate, showing the guard there my letter of
acceptance, and walking towards the open garage doors at the station, I had to
cope with mixed feelings of anticipation and apprehension. Would I measure up to
their expectations? Not being exactly the athletic type, I also wondered about
how I would do playing the mandatory volley ball and soccer games there. And how
would the other fire-fighters feel about me? Would they accept me into their
group, or would they reject me as not qualified for the job?
Herr Gaertner, I forgot his first name, was there to help me again. He
was the "crew chief" of our shift and I'm ever so grateful that I was so lucky
to have started on a day when his crew was on duty. He re-introduced me to the
other men in the crew and led me up the spiral stairway again to show me my army
cot and help me put sheets and a blanket on it in the correct, army, way. Then
he took me to the storage room to give me my asbestos outfit, heavy pants,
rubber boots and a heavy jacket as well as the "helmet" which covered not only
the whole head but also the shoulders and the face with a fire-proof,
see-through plastic window. Then we carried the outfit to the opening in the
floor with the center pole was and he told me to just throw it down, except the
helmet though, which he told me to put on and then slide down the pole. Thank
God, I still remembered how to get down the pole and thus I didn't have any
problem sliding down even with this contraption on my head.
Herr Gaertner then led me to one of the fire trucks and showed me a side
door where he told me to run to if an alarm was sounded. It was a small cabin
with one seat in it. I was to be a "hand-line man" and I would sit there in the
truck and help with whatever was needed to be done. Of course, there was more to
this job and I would eventually learn how to pull-out the hose which was located
right next to my little cabin and run, while pulling the hose out of the
compartment, towards the fire and spray it with foam. This sounds pretty easy,
but considering the heavy asbestos outfit, running while pulling the hose, isn't
all that easy. The truck, as one can see in the picture above, had also a
"turret" which looks like a cannon. This turret is operated from inside the main
cabin by either the driver of the truck, or by the "turret operator".... Another
thing I must mention is that the water-pressure in the hand-held hoses is
tremendous and one had to use all the strength one could muster to hold on to it
while spraying the foam-water mixture and keep it from whipping around like a
mad snake. But, of course, I would not experience this until later. At the
moment, Herr Gaertner told me just to put my boots and pants rolled up around
the boots on the ground right in front of my cab door with the jacket inside the
cabin.... Then we both walked to the kitchen where Walter, the cook, was already
serving breakfast to the crew. There was a lot of joking and small talk, jovial
bantering and announcements, while we ate a delicious breakfast of ham and eggs.
Some of the guys tried their best to scare the hell out of me by telling me all
kinds of horror stories of things gone wrong in the past. But I could tell that
most of it was just good natured fun and Herr Gaertner did his best to expose
the "tall stories" for what they were in order to keep me from exposing my
naiveté as a believer. Being by far the youngest trainee ever in the whole
department, I was of course no match to their cunning and would often fall for
their jokes and stories. But it was all part of the "camaraderie" and I didn't
mind it at all.
After breakfast the trucks were moved out of the garage and parked in front. I was shown how to clean, polish and wax the trucks and how to remove the hoses from their compartments and how to turn the water on, and then how to line-up the hoses and roll them up again. I was also shown how the truck's water tank was filled and how the foam tank was filled. The foam came in 10 gallon (I'm not sure anymore) cans and stank to high heavens. One had to open the can and dump the content, which smelled like rotten, decomposed flesh, into a larger hole on top of the truck. Water and foam was mixed automatically when the water was turned on and thus came out as white foam. When poured into the truck, the foam was just stinking black liquid. Of course, when I, for the first time, opened a can to pour it into the truck's tank, everybody was waiting to see and hear my expression about the incredible stench and they definitely had a lot of fun when I screamed: "Dit stinkt ja wie Scheisse"!
For lunch, our main meal in Germany, Walter cooked up noodles with goulash which tasted great. I remember somebody making an obscene joke and I started to laugh so hard, with my mouth full, that noodles came shooting out of my nose. Which, of course, was even more inspiration to the others to keep me laughing... Most of the guys at the fire-department were in their late thirties to fifties. Many had been "Front-Soldaten", soldiers fighting in battles, during the second World War. They were a tough crowd of battle-hardened men with hearts of gold. I was just a naive boy to them and they truly enjoyed teasing and, at the same time, coddling me. Without any effort of my own, I was the center of their attention and I enjoyed my "status" as such immensely. Having grown up without a father, I craved male companionship and I had now, even though a little late, found it. I liked them and they liked me, what more could I have asked for?
After supper we had to play volley ball for about one hour. I had never played this game before but was able to catch on pretty quickly. These guys were good at it and took the game seriously. In fact they played in tournaments against the U.S. Air Force teams at the airport gym on a regular basis. So I had to really get into it despite my aversion to "sports". Amazingly I did quite well and was even an alternate player at the tournaments. During one of the tournaments, I remember that the Air Force referee wasn't able to make it due to other duties and thus some of the Air Force players pointed to me and told our team that they wanted me to be the referee because I looked honest. I didn't know, at first, what they were saying in English and almost froze up in fear when Herr Gaertner translated "We want him because he is the only one who looks honest enough" and I realized what they were asking of me. At first I felt like just running away, but realizing my situation, I came down from the bleachers and took position to start the game. Still not knowing how I got through the game, I thanked God and my lucky stars for having guided me through this feat.
With P.T. finished, Herr Gaertner took me into the C.Q office to let me listen in on the conversations between the pilots of approaching air-planes and the control tower. My school-English being very basic, I couldn't understand very much of the garbled sounding babblings (at least, that is what it sounded like to me) and started to realize that I needed to quickly learn more English in order to be able to function during my eventually approaching night as a C.Q., where I would have to be able to understand alerts coming from the tower and pass them on through our loud-speakers at the station. How could I ever understand those messages coming from the tower? Herr Gaertner pointed out a short list of important factors which I would have to listen for and write with a marking pen on a plastic sheet. He explained that the messages which went to the fire-department, airport-police and the central German fire department dispatchers were always formulated in the same pattern. As I remember it, there was first the type of emergency (like, for example, DC 6 airplane with a "feathered" engine, which is a propeller blade that shifted in shape and had to be shut off), the location of emergency (like which building or most-likely which runway the troubled plane would come in to, something like A North or A South for example), and something else which I forgot. The message from the tower would be repeated several times which made it easier to catch up with a factor one might have missed in the excitement. Well, sheet or no sheet, this C.Q. business was the stuff of nightmares for me. I simply had to learn more English and resolved to listen to the Armed Forces Network radio station as much as I could stand it (most of the time they were playing "hit" music like "rock around the clock", with only occasional news or other spoken programs). Herr Gaertner, noticing my apprehension, if not fear, patted me on the back re-assuring me that it wasn't as bad as it looked,-or sounded. Having eventually been on C.Q., all alone in the office, with everybody else sleeping, laying on the cot, attempting to fall asleep and then suddenly to hear the sound of the emergency radio, I can only say that it was frightening beyond description (at least to me), no matter how many times one had previously gone through it. And then to quickly get to the receiver pick up the phone and hear at first only an incredible amount of commotion which somehow merges into a voice on the other end, speaking in fast English and me trying to make sense of the message, was an indescribable nightmare scenario which I desperately needed to accept as reality and pass on as a concise message to the sleeping crew. Trying to hear over one's amplified heart-beat, I finally did get the message and sounded the alarm, but then, the first time I did this, I forgot to open the garage gates with everyone in the trucks ready to take off to the runway. They tried to signal me with their hands and screamed until I finally got the message and pushed the four buttons for the gates and I felt like an idiot. It was just a "stand-by" and when they returned, Herr Gaertner re-assured me that this kind of stuff happened all the time and that I shouldn't worry nor let it get to me. But, nevertheless, I could never, ever warm up to those endless nights as C.Q..
After my introduction to the C.Q.
room, we worked some more on keeping the trucks polished and then proceeded to
clean the upper floor dormitories, shower room, pool and television room,
class-room and hallway. The hallway was waxed and needed to be wet-mopped and
buffed. I had never seen nor handled an electric buffer before and surely
enough, the monster-machine went out of control with me hanging on for dear
life. Just about everybody was watching in anticipation of my inability to
control the beast and their laughter went out of control with my jumping around
with this wild machine. Of course, there is not much to being able to use the
buffer, but it can be quite an experience for those unfamiliar with it's
operation. It looked so easy watching others do it, but, when this guy operating
it gave it over to me upon my begging for a try at it, I had to learn the hard
way to make it go correctly. I should have restrained my curiosity and kept my
mouth shut until somebody would have shown me how to do it, but thus is youthful
self-confidence....
At six pm, we had a hearty supper consisting of open-faced, German bread
sandwiches, which Walter had prepared, and soup. After that we were free to do
whatever we wanted to in the station. I was introduced to the American game of
"shooting pool" and enjoyed it immensely. Not that I was ever really good at it,
but it was fun and relaxing. Others watched television or played cards. We were
allowed to go to sleep after ten and most of us went to bed after eleven. Just
before going to bed, we had to slide downstairs and get our pants and boots
which had to be placed right next to our cots so that we, if an alarm was
sounded, could slip right into the boots and pull our pants up in seconds. Our
jackets remained in the fire-trucks to be slipped on while driving to the
location of the emergency. Thinking constantly about what I had to do if such an
emergency alarm was called, I didn't get much sleep, if any at all. Herr Gaertner had told me that sometimes there were night-drills also and I kept
on worrying about how I would perform without any experience...
But nothing happened during this first night, and we were "awakened" by a
loud voice over the loudspeakers to "rise and shine" at six o'clock in the
morning. After showering, shaving and picking up our "gear", we slid down the
pole and placed our boots and pants back by the fire-trucks again.-We had to be
ready to respond, even though the other shift was coming in at eight o'clock.
Walter had made a pot of coffee and we sat around drinking it and smoking
American cigarettes provided for us by a couple black Air-Force guys who were
attached to us in the day-time. I had bought a carton of Winston's from from one
of the G.I's for ten German marks, after Herr Gaertner mentioned this advantage
to me. There was a PX right at the main military terminal and these two air-men
were constantly shuttling between our station and the PX, probably just to get
away from the station and whatever their work was supposed to be.
The new crew arrived between 7:30 and 8:00 and we were then ready to take
our gear back up the spiral staircase and place it into our lockers in the dorm.
Sliding back down the pole, we said "Auf Wiedersehen" and "Tschues" and walked
out of the gate. Sometimes we, as a group, would go to a pub which was already
open, because they also served breakfast food, and had a few beers. Yes, we were
a tightly knit group and I liked that very much....
Pursuing The Spiritual Path
On the way home I got off the
street-car and went to a sporting-goods store to buy myself a pair of "keds"
sneakers in order to be able to move quicker playing volley-ball. Coming home
about 9:30 a.m., I told my mother all about the new job. She was weary of my
enthusiasm, as she had heard it all before, but, on the other hand, seemed to be
happy that I liked my new job. I had the whole day to myself, having to work 24
hours and then being off for 24 hours, was a good deal to me. I was off when
most people had to work and could roam Berlin in pursuit of whatever inspired me
at the moment. Religion and spirituality were always my main objectives and thus
I hounded used book-stalls and book stores in search of interesting books. One
occult book store near the Nollendorf Platz provided me with lots of books and
insight.
The store was located in the building where Rudolf Steiner had once lived
and worked out his theories. I knew that from a plaque next to the main
entrance, a commemorative plaque which told of Steiner having lived there. Books
were, and still are, expensive in Germany and I had to be careful with my
selections. Steiner's books and theories had a deep influence on me but seeing
his pictures, I just couldn't warm up to him on a more
personal level. He always
looked so sickly and sad which somehow didn't make sense to me. Shouldn't a man
with such immense insight and knowledge look more dynamic and healthy? Even to
this day, I have the same feeling about him, even though I should know better. I
always liked "Madame" Blavatsky, MPB, as she was called in her days. She just
radiated strength and psychic charisma to me. With her smoking cigarettes and
cursing like a man, she appealed to me very much. What others saw as "vulgar"
behavior, I saw as honest and forthright.-No pretense of saintliness or false
"religiosity". She was who she was, take it or leave it! Having read many of her
works and many biographies about her, positive as well as negative, I have come
to the conclusion that she was the genuine article, so to speak. Her main works,
"The Secret Doctrine" and "Isis Unveiled," are without rival in scope and
knowledge. How, in her time and age, she could have faked the immense
information in these works, I can not possibly imagine. No, to me, this woman
was all she claimed to be and more. Of course, I can not say that I understood
her material completely, perhaps not even 10% of it, but she certainly and
unknowingly had planted a seed within me and inspired me to, in my own erratic
way, enter the narrow Path in pursuit of Gnosis... Or, perhaps I should say:
"Uncle" Ali planted the seed and Madame Blavatsky nurtured it. She helped me
understand life, my own as well as ALL life, and gave me solace when the
"oddity" of my relentless drive to Know became, at times, too much to bear. I
was an "outsider" and I knew it. My quest was not the quest of my peers and I
couldn't control nor help that. What brought joy and fulfillment to most people,
things like going out, dancing and dating, had no appeal for me at all. I lived
and moved by a different drummer indeed. Perhaps I can say that intuition or
psychic insight was, and still is, the motivating factor of my life. While
others planned to have a family, friends and a good career, I was only content
when I could freely explore the mysteries of life, death and mind. That this was
not a conscious "decision" but a relentless inner drive, should be clear. I
would much rather have been like everybody else around me, since it is often
painful to be seen as an outsider, if not "eccentric oddball". But, this was and
still is who I am and what I am since birth and I could do as little about it,
as others would be able to find interest and motivation in my pursuits...
Vedanta and Christian Science
Another big influence was Vedanta
and Christian Science. When I first saw Mary Baker Eddy's work "Science and
Health", in a display case, near a train station, I was very curious about it.
Visiting a Christian Science reading room, I was very disappointed that they
were out of the book at the moment. Especially because I also liked that one
page was in German and the other in English which would help me in my studies of
the English language. Thus I ended up buying her "Prose Works" which also
featured the German - English text in the same manner as "Science and Health".
What struck me almost immediately, was that Mrs. Eddy's insight related so
strongly to the teachings of Vivekananda and Ramakrishna. Having already read a
book by Vivekananda, I could easily relate to Mrs. Eddy's "Prose Works". This is
not to say that I understood Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science nor Vedanta in any
appreciable sense, but only that I did gain an intuitive perspective. For
example, I had no idea, at the time, how one could be healed from a physical
disease through studying Christian Science, but I did understand something of
her reasoning dealing with God as All
there is, as basis of her theological
reasoning. Wasn't that exactly what was taught in Vedanta? Yes, Mrs. Eddy's
logical approach to religion appealed to me immensely. Didn't she manage to
teach in a logical manner what mystics and Gnostics had attempted to express
through the ages? Yes, she taught a Science indeed. Her analysis of words and
their meaning to the root-word, and her reasoning that God is All in all as
basis for her Christian Science was a western form of Vedanta to me.
Nevertheless, her reasoning and teaching was unique, because she made it
possible, through her scientific approach to religion, for anyone who was
willing to invest some time into this "science," to become attuned to at least a
higher understanding of God, Life and their own place in the universe. I have
always seen Christian Science in it's original, pure teaching, as a form of
western yoga of the mind. The daily study of her Science and Health, combined
with the study of the Bible, is a constant mental "yoga", which gradually
attunes the Christian Scientist into a higher realm of understanding and thus
into Gnosis. And why shouldn't Truth also heal the body? Should not our
understanding that what we perceive as being material and solid, isn't solid at
all, but only appears that way to our "agreed-upon" common understanding. As has
been proven, long after her death, that there are no solid, material objects
anywhere, but only solid seeming ones, her theories have been vindicated after
years and years of ridicule. "God is infinite Spirit and thus His creation can
only be spiritual". "God is Good and thus
can not know evil". "The evil we
perceive and experience on this earth is based on our false perception that
matter is real -- There is no reality to matter, because God being infinite
Spirit, could not possibly create gross matter". "All evil in this world, and
there is
a lot of it, is based on the false premise that matter is real and thus
has power over us."---I have paraphrased her teachings and thus am probably not
quite correct with every statement. But, nevertheless, I don't think that what I
stated as coming from Mrs. Eddy is that far off... And I can say, in all
honesty, that Mrs. Eddy, in my opinion, was one of the greatest spiritual
teachers ever, along with Madame Blavatsky.... Even though they seem
incompatible, they, nevertheless, are from the same source. What raises Mrs.
Eddy above Madame Blavatsky is, in my opinion, that Mrs. Eddy was able to convey
the mystical teachings of the highest Gnostic masters in a concise, structured
and rational manner, while Mrs. Blavatsky, despite her superb insight,
taught an
often confusing path which seems to me far too broad and all inclusive. Mrs.
Eddy taught the "high road", while HPB taught a more or less elusive goal after
a winding road fraught with danger to the unwary. I have always liked simplicity
in all things, spiritual or otherwise. The "occult", as such, has never appealed
to me because I have never cared to attain power over others or material things
beyond the necessities of life. And it is perhaps this attitude which has
protected me spiritually as well as physically through the course of my life. It
is abhorrent to me, in a very deep sense, to strive and compete. Having never
had the desire to "outwit" somebody, or to gain mental control over another
being, man or animal, I never, ever, cheated somebody knowingly. Perhaps it is
through Christian Science, that I always feel responsible for the other's well
being, derived from the deep intuitive knowledge that the other, man or animal,
is God expressing himself to me. Could I mislead, cheat, manipulate or exploit
God? Since God is All in all, isn't God communing with me through the other?
Of course I have done many things during my life time of which I'm not
proud, to say the least. I have often, in the spirit of the moment, done things
which I have later regretted. Sometimes I have hurt people because of my big
mouth in moments of anger, justified and unjustified. At other times, I have
been so appalled by people's ignorance and unwillingness to open their eyes to
facts, that I have resorted to name-calling and temper tantrums. I have lied to
protect myself and lied to get away with something, but I have never knowingly
done anything to gain an advantage over another, or profit from their ignorance.
So I never was, nor will be, a saintly person. My quick temper alone, if
aroused, would preclude such a possibility. Being a very open person, I
appreciate openness in others, more than anything. Often this openness has
brought me into deep trouble with others. From politics to spirituality, I
usually say or write what I think, expecting others to be as open minded and
even forgiving as I am. This not being the case, I have made many enemies who
were just "appalled" by my perception of things and the bluntness with which I
presented my views. Since most of my "views" are related to intuition, an
instant psychic understanding, I speak and write my "truth" with passionate
conviction and that doesn't seem to sit too well with many people who can only
relate to things by labeling the "challenger" as this or that, not understanding
at all that truth and facts are what they are, despite who or what the
"messenger" is.
Since I have, through the course of my life, explored so many ideologies,
philosophies and religions, there are really very few labels that wouldn't fit
me. But, I think what counts, is that I never "got stuck" in any particular
worldview! David Icke, a fellow traveler, has said to the same accusations: "I'm
me and I'm free"! And that goes for me also. Please don't put a label on me,
even though you might think that you have "pegged" me. You will always be wrong
though, because you lack insight. I always have and always will work on the
spiritual level, even though you might think that I'm this or that, promoting a
political worldview or philosophy. Never, I'm neither this nor that and at the
same time everything that you accuse me of, because I'm honest and travel a
different path and that path is spiritual! I simply trust my instinctive
knowing, my intuition and relate what I thus know...