Part 1 of 2

The most incredible thing you could ever hear on radio is somebody claiming that you, the host, are not some extraneous being who is only there to turn your interviewee inside out. Most journalists are supposedly neutral. Yet they approach their subjects critically, trying to pin them down and exposing them to their lies or conspiracies. That is considered the task of a journalist. He cannot get involved personally. It is too dangerous.

So here I was interviewing an engineer from Belgium who specialised in control techniques. And he baffled me, telling me about the kind of knowledge he had developed. My body has a kind of steering system, he said-a system ensuring that I function perfectly; a system making sure that I am not some plant or animal but Willem de Ridder. It is a kind of computer or an instruction system. I did not understand a thing of it, and I said, "That is great! So you claim actually that you can give new instructions to this steering system and then my whole character will change-or at least have it remember its original state, before my parents began tinkering with it." He said, "Guaranteed. You know, when your character changes, your whole system alarms you through symptoms we call diseases. And as your character returns to its original state, the diseases disappear, too." It made me smile. I did not believe it. And I thought, "I'll get you."

I had asthma since I was two years old. Asthma is pretty hefty stuff. If you get an attack, you breathe like a man hanging from the gallows. You can barely catch air. You cannot lie down. You cannot move. You sit, needing all your attention for breathing. It makes you extremely tired. You cannot think. There is only one thing on your mind: surviving. That's all. And though no doctor says he can do anything about it, this man claims he can make it disappear, just like that. He says, "Yes. Guaranteed." I say, "Okay. Let's try it. We are doing this radio program, and a lot of people are listening. Why don't you try me out? If I get cured, everybody will know and you'll get a lot of people interested."

It was the first time he'd ever talked about these things on radio, he said. And lo and behold, I got some little white pills. I took them, one a day, for 28 days. It is two years ago now, and I have not had a single attack. In fact, I run up the stairs and am faster on my bicycle than anybody else. And indeed, I must agree, my character has changed, too.

Two years later, of course, his telephone is ringing off the hook. And now I am curious to know how he developed this remarkable knowledge, because the man is not a doctor. His name is Alfons Ven. He lives somewhere in the Belgian Ardennes, away from everybody, but right now he sits next to me.

- Willem de Ridder, 1996, http://www.willemderitter.com

Willem de Ridder: Alfons, welcome.

Alfons Ven: Good to be with you, Willem.

Willem: Since I told you about this incredible miracle, I discovered that many people have contacted you. All they really do is call you. You listen to them, you do not even have to look at them, and you send them these little white pills. That's all. Then things start to happen. How did you get involved in this, because originally you were an engineer?

Alfons: Yes. A control engineer. I was automating processes at refineries and all kinds of factories. I engineered control systems and I started them up. And one day, as I started one up, I was electrocuted.

Willem: Electrocuted?

Alfons: Electrocuted. Right. And it changed my life. I did not feel too much at all, so I thought it was not too bad. But 380 volts had crossed my heart and my brain. The following day, I began feeling kind of strange. I could not say exactly what I was feeling, but I felt strange. And the more this feeling progressed, the more I became estranged from myself. I became a stranger to myself. Engineers don't know anything about psychology or whatever, so I didn't know what was happening. I only knew that I was not functioning as I had. To start up factories you must be in excellent condition. It is a heavy job. It is climbing towers, engineering, planning, ordering materials, installing, etc., etc. I began functioning worse and worse until I thought, "This has to stop." I didn't dare to climb any more, I didn't dare to drive a car any more. And I said, "This has to stop." I turned to a psychologist and then to a psychiatrist, and before I knew it I was in the hospital, where they gave me shots and I passed out.

Willem: So you worked in a factory. Someone turned on the main switch and you were electrocuted. You didn't die, you didn't have burns or...

Alfons: No, that was just it. As an electrical engineer I knew exactly what was going on. I had no burns so I said, "It's rather okay". But I started to feel strange.

Willem: Immediately?

Alfons: Yes. Pretty much so. Right after the incident I was dazzled. Then, in the first days, I took some aspirin and thought it would pass. Yet I felt worse and worse. I took some tranquillisers and hoped it would pass. Then I started taking drugs, and finally I found myself in the hands of a psychiatrist.

Willem: So you went to the psychiatrist and he gave you a shot.

Alfons: Yes, it was thirty years ago. And in Belgium, psychiatrists were, let us say, neurologists. They were just treating clinically. Without further notice, I got injections and faded out. I fell asleep. But the man did not examine me. I had problems with my heartbeat. I did not know that, either. But while I was asleep, those things became aggravated. And the doctor did not come to see me or ask, "How are you doing?" The minute I woke up a little bit, I got another injection. So I could not defend myself. I could not tell them, "I feel terrible and I'm going to die." I could not react. I was powerless. And the doctor did not come to my bed in eight days. So at the end of the week, I was really ready to die. And then, between shots, I gave my wife a sign to get me out of there. She was at my bedside and I said this was going completely wrong and she had to take me home. The doctor told her I couldn't be transported for even a mile.

Willem: You would die.

Alfons: Yes. So I kept making it clear to my wife to get me out of there because if I was going to die I wanted to die at home, not in the hospital which was such a terrible experience. The doctor kept saying, "No, he will die," and I kept insisting on being taken home. Finally I did get out, and the doctor said, "He's going to die in the car on the way home." We didn't live far from the hospital but he insisted that I would not make it. Anyway, we made it home.

I'd had experiences like getting out of my body. I saw myself lying down there. I saw the personnel of the clinic and I went into a light tunnel and had what they now call a "near death experience". Of course, thirty years ago nobody talked about that. So I thought I was the only person with such an experience. We hadn't taken any pills with us. So when I was home we just said, "Okay, from now on it is going to be like this." I had all kinds of hallucinations, delusions and such things. I found myself in the war, I found myself travelling in space.

Willem: So you practically found yourself dying in the universe.

Alfons: It was terrible. I thought, "Let me go; it is better to die than to be alive, because this is no way of living."

Willem: You gave up.

Alfons: I gave up. I wanted to go. But then, of course, the memories came. I saw my wife and children, and I knew I wanted to live for them. It was a struggle for life, and I was on the edge. I was going to make it or not. But the light game, as I called it, seeing things, rekindled my desire for life. I said, "I want to get well to take care of my wife and children." So I survived.

Willem: You did not take any medication, either?

Alfons: At first not. But then I said, "If I take nothing, I will certainly die, then it will be over and done with." And later, when life came back bit by bit, I had to take medication because of the delusions and hallucinations. I had to come down to earth again. Our family doctor, who was also a close friend, began treating me very gently with great doses of medicines and he made me survive. Years later he told me that, as he began working on me, he was sure I was going to die. So, professionally, he was doing the best he could. But anyway, we made it. We survived. Of course, this changed my whole life. I found myself without a job. I couldn't work. I didn't know much of my existence. The estrangement came straight from myself. I felt strange to myself. I had an almost complete loss of identity.

Willem: You felt like a kind of vegetable.

Alfons: Almost; close; not complete, but almost. And of course, all the drugs they were pumping into me made me a kind of zombie.

Willem: You existed, yet you didn't exist.

Alfons: Right. This went on and on for many, many years; injections, living and not living, fears coming up, images coming up, and so on.

Journey into Homoeopathy

Alfons: Then, one day, a lady told me about a good homoeopath she knew. That was new, thirty years ago. Nobody talked about homoeopathy; at least, very few did. I lived in Antwerp and there was a homoeopath. The man had long waiting lists. But the homoeopath this lady knew was the president of the Homoeopathic Society and very good. "The man is retired," she said, "but he can probably help you a little bit." So I tried to contact him, but since he was retired there was no chance for me to reach him. His nurse kept telling me, "No appointment, no appointment." But I kept calling. And one day, when the nurse had the day off, his wife picked up the phone and she gave me an appointment right away-"...because," she said, "this is a sad story and, though my husband is retired, I want to give you a chance. So much misery."

Willem: And no one else could help you.

Alfons: No. And I tried everything. As an engineer and scientist, I believed in science and regular medicine-those men are the best; they know what they are doing. So I went to see the homoeopath with little faith. I knew this wouldn't work. Homeopathic medicine is diluted. There is nothing in it. I knew all that. Yet I went and the man was very honest. He checked me thoroughly and said, "I cannot help you." He said, "Your problem is beyond my competence. All I can probably do with my homoeopathic medicine is make you feel a bit better." And that's what he did. He gave me preparations and I got a bit, a tiny bit better. If you are real down, a little bit means a lot.

Willem: Yes, that's true.

Alfons: That's true, right. So I felt a bit better but he told me, "It is not going to cure you; it is not really going to help you; it is just a little help." I was grateful for the help. Then he told me, "You are a very intelligent man and still alive. Maybe something else can help you, something like psychiatric homoeopathy, but nobody knows much about it." This was completely new, certainly thirty years ago. There had been two French doctors in Lyons, France, and they had been experimenting with this psychiatric homoeopathy. Father and son. They had had a small clinic where they treated these kinds of cases, and also drug addicts. They had had some kind of success. But all they had left was a manuscript. He said, "If you need that kind of homoeopathy, try to find this manuscript and use it yourself. It is probably something." But I was not in the condition to travel. Everything was too much. I had phobias and fears of travelling. I had no business travelling. But I kept pushing friends to help me, and finally I got the manuscript. I read it, tried things out and, again, made a little progress.

Willem: So, you started using it.

Alfons: I began using it according to their prescriptions. I couldn't go to the pharmacy myself, so I had people go and have this and that preparation made for me. Again, I made a little progress and I was very grateful. I said, "It is not what I expected from it, but it is better than nothing." I still rejected the homoeopathic stuff. You see, as a scientist, I had to believe in it. Though I was not convinced, I saw results. So when my children got ill, I gave them homoeopathic remedies and they were cured. And before I knew it, people began consulting me because they had heard about me. They saw me making progress bit by bit, and they heard about all the things I was using. They thought, "If it is doing something for him, it might do something for me." And soon I had in Antwerp the first therapeutic centre, which we called a kind of a biological centre, where we used applied homoeopathy administered by a regular doctor.

Willem: Because, of course, you weren't a doctor yourself.

Alfons: Right. He did the clinical side. He examined people. I had learned, if you do not examine people, if you do not approach them in a really professional way, sooner or later you are going to go wrong. With him being responsible for the clinical side, I had always a correct diagnosis, and I did the homoeopathic prescriptions myself. It was a fine combination. We had real success, yet Alfons himself was not much better. My quality of life had improved a bit because of the recognition I felt from the people I helped, but I was not really feeling good.

Willem: You were sick yourself, but you were helping other people.

Alfons: I was helping more and more people.

Willem: With some incredible results.

Alfons: Yes, the results were rather nice, remarkable even. We treated psychological problems and such things. At the time, I was also reading a lot of books and what I myself practised was a technique called "direct counselling".

Willem: Direct counselling?

Alfons: Right. It means that within a few minutes of talking, the patient enters a kind of pipeline leading straight to the root of the problem. You do not beat around the bush but you say, "Here is your problem." And then there is no way back. That is direct counselling. Then you have two possibilities: either they know who they are, or they get cured-almost instantaneously. Direct counselling achieves healing results no psychiatrist will in thirty years. You come to the point and do not turn around. You nail the problem, and...

Willem: And once they recognise it...

Alfons: Recognising the problem is 80 per cent of the cure. Because, once they know, they say, "Aha! Okay!"

Willem: If they do not recognise it, it gets worse.

Alfons: Normally they recognise the problem, but it depends on the person who does the counselling. Someone who cannot get to the heart of the matter probably has to come back. If he cannot get to it after two or three visits, he doesn't have to come back because either I cannot help him or he isn't willing to open himself up. But it worked really well. And I got assistance also from doctors and other people willing to help me.

Willem: So you were a sick doctor helping people.

Alfons: Yes. A sick man curing other people. And I could not help myself. I only got myself a little better under control. You see, at the time I had the centre I was not on normal drugs. I helped myself with homoeopathy which, of course, was much gentler and with fewer side effects. So there was progress on that part, but not too much on the level of identity and quality of life. I could not reach the deeper levels of my problem, the core where it all began.

Willem: Your character was out of whack, you might say.

Alfons: Yes.

Willem: You had lost your identity.

Alfons: Almost. I was estranged from my identity. I was like a stranger to myself.

Willem: A condition in which you cannot imagine your identity?

Alfons: Right. It is terrible. If at the time somebody had said, "I'll break your arms and legs, and you will be well within eight weeks and you won't have any more problems," I'd have said, "Break them right away." Without any hesitation I would have said, "Break them." Because I would have known that within eight weeks it would be gone. Whereas my prospect was: this lasts forever; it will never go away.

Exorcising "Demons"

Alfons: So as we were working on all these things, one day a couple stepped into my office and said, "We are here for our son." The son was six years old, and two psychiatrists had declared he was "possessed".

Willem: Two psychiatrists saying the boy was possessed. By what? By the devil?

Alfons: "Possessed" implies "by the devil".

Willem: Psychiatrists?

Alfons: Yes. And I had it checked. I told my doctor in charge of the clinical side, "Check this story. I don't believe it. In this time and age, I don't believe a story like this. What's going on here?" He called the two psychiatrists and they confirmed, "Yes. We are doctors at the Catholic University and we have been taught that man exists of spirit, soul and body. The soul is our domain, but the spirit-as in this case-is for a minister or a priest. And we both aim for a priest. The boy is possessed."

I told the parents to bring in the boy. They came and, indeed, the boy climbed the curtains, tore everything down, smashed everything. At one moment he stood before me with wide-open eyes. His pupils did not react at all. I took a light from my drawer, shone it into his eyes and the pupils didn't even move. They stayed wide open. Light had no effect whatsoever.

Willem: Scary.

Alfons: I could have thought the devil was looking me straight in the eyes. It got me all chilly. It was terrifying. I told the parents, "Take your son home and I will think about it. This is new to me." I had never dealt with such a thing. I knew a priest who was officially ordained as an exorcist for the Catholic Church.

Willem: The Catholic Church has official exorcists?

Alfons: Yes. In fact, every priest is ordained to perform exorcism. They do not do it because it is so special. They leave that to the specialists. And the real men are instated by Rome.

Willem: So every Catholic country has its official exorcists?

Alfons: Two or three. Not many. They not only have a degree in divinity but also in psychology. They are the top of the bill. I do know that now, but at the time I knew nothing. They are experts in esoteric matters. In Rome there are fantastic libraries where you can read everything about every spiritual and esoteric subject. They are really well-trained people.

Anyway, I went to see him and I told him about the boy. And he asked me, "What are you going to do?" I told him about doing a kind of homoeopathic psychiatry at my centre. And he said, "Oh, interesting, interesting." He kept listening and listening, but he himself did not say a word about the topic. And I said, "We have now been talking for hours. You know all about me, and I know nothing about the way you look at possession or such things." He said, "It is none of your business. We do not talk about it. It is taboo. Taboo. Do not talk about it." I said, "Why did you have me come and talk to you?" "Because I wanted to draw on you." "Nice," I said, "nice. It was a long journey. Okay. I am going back to my office." But he said, "No, let us make a deal. If you cannot calm down or heal the boy with your method... How long will it take you?" "Fourteen days-it works or it doesn't," I said. "Okay," he said, "call me in fourteen days. If it didn't work, I will come and deliver the boy my way." "Okay," I said, "that's a deal."

So I went back to the centre, told the parents that I had made some inquiries and that we had two possibilities. They were Catholics, and I said, "I have found this exorcist and he can do it. But I would rather do it myself. It is up to you." They said, "You do it." I gave the boy some homoeopathic preparations, sent them home and told them to come back next week. They did. You should know that the boy acted strange not only in my office. At home, he couldn't be left alone for one second-not on the toilet, not in bed. And when they left him alone for one second, he turned diabolic. He smashed and crashed everything. Terrible things. At night he did not sleep, except in the car, in the back seat of the car. The father and mother had to take turns driving all night to give the boy eight hours of sleep.

Willem: They had to drive the boy in the car, otherwise he wouldn't sleep?

Alfons: Right. It was the only way to give him some rest. And they had to avoid traffic lights, because when they stopped for a traffic light...

Willem: He woke up...

Alfons: ...he tore everything apart. So you understand the terror these people were living under-around-the-clock terror. Terror! Of course, he wouldn't be left alone with me, either. But after one week, he said, "I want to be alone with Mr Ven." So that was a change.

Willem: A big change indeed.

Alfons: I asked the parents to leave my office. Then the boy stood in front of me, cried and said, "I have to tell you something. It is about this big, huge monster." "What kind of a monster?" "Well, it is on the cover of a book." "Where is the book?"

Willem: So he saw a big monster.

Alfons: He saw a big monster, a terrible monster trying to eat him up and devour him and doing bad things to him. He said, "That's what I see and what I am so afraid of." He had been unable to confess this to psychiatrists or psychologists. He had kept it to himself. And now he confessed, and that in itself was his delivering. "When did you first see the monster?" "In the shopping mall. I was shopping with my mother, and I was a little boy of two or three." His mother had parked him in his little trolley in front of a bookstand. And at the bookstand he had seen this monster on a cover. And there he had this terrible fear programmed into him, which he could not overcome. So I said to the mother, "To clear your son's fears completely, go back to the same mall, go back to the same bookstand and give him a nice, nice book. Make sure it is a very nice book with a nice, lovely cover." So she did, and one week later the boy went back to school.

But it is not the end of the story. I had forgotten all about the priest, this high-ranking clergyman. I did not call him. It was very busy at the centre and I forgot. The boy was fine. For me, that meant the end of the story. So the exorcist called and asked, "How is the boy?" I said, "Fine. He is back in school." He said, "Impossible." I said, "Why impossible?" He said, "With everything you explained to me, it is not possible. I got a clear picture that the boy probably was possessed. How can you have him back in school with these little preparations? Can I come to see you this time and talk about it?" I said, "Okay." He came, and again we talked about my method of work-not his.

Willem: He didn't tell you anything.

Alfons: Nothing. But finally he said, "I think you add something to your treatment. Without knowing it, you are performing a kind of ministry on the spiritual level, of which you are not aware." I said, "Okay, let us put it to the test." He said, "I'll bring somebody for you to heal or to deliver." I said, "Fine; the centre is open to everybody." He brought in a lady. And once more, I did my job. This lady, who for decades had been under the spell of some entity, was healed. And then he brought two persons, and four, and ten. It did not end. Then he said, "Alfons, I want to induct you into the spiritual world."

Willem: A Catholic priest said that?

Alfons: Yes. I said, "Why me, because I'm not all that Catholic. I think very liberally about life. Why me?" He said, "You may not know it, but you are very gifted, naturally gifted. And I want to teach you everything I know." I considered it and did not say no. So he said, "Go home and close up your centre." He was asking a lot.

Willem: Why did you have to close your centre?

Alfons: He said, "You have gifts. Gifts which you received gratis, you share gratis. I'll send people to you and you will have a ministry." That's what happened. Of course, the people with whom I worked in the centre, the doctors, weren't happy. They said, "Alfons, it is going great and now you are going off to do something else." I said, "If it is true what the priest says, that I can achieve on a spiritual level something that nobody else can, or at least he can't, why shouldn't I do it? After all, better is better." And I thought, "Probably my own problems are on a spiritual level. Who knows? So by learning a lot about these things, I can help myself a step further. Or I can say, 'It didn't help me at all.'" And indeed, being aware of the spiritual world and all those things did not help me a bit.

Willem: What did you do? You travelled around with him?

Alfons: First he came with all these people to my centre when it was closed. Then he sent me people at home. And we travelled through Flanders and encountered all kinds of situations: poltergeist manifestations, various forms of possession, obsession and torment. We encountered all sorts of things, but always dramatic; nothing simple, everything extreme. And again and again, I took things he could not solve, and they got solved almost automatically.

Willem: But was he not able to help people, too?

Alfons: Sure. I saw him doing things such as praying over people. He laid hands on people, he delivered people who believed in his religion. I saw them changing. But after time, it all came back.

Willem: It was not permanent.

Alfons: Most of the time it was not permanent at all. For instance, the priest got people off drugs, but when he came back three months later they were back on drugs. Or people saying they had some entity in their house. He expelled them with his rituals and they were gone. But after a while it was worse. And he said, "With you it is different. They leave without rituals and do not return." He knew right away this was something special, something new for him. But as we say in Flemish, you do not walk in a sack. Our activities had not gone unnoticed. The priest was notified by the cardinal, the highest Church authority in the country, not to deal with me any more because I did not profile myself as a Catholic. I was a kind of heretic. I think they were afraid of me; they obstructed because I did things they could not do. And that was not good for their business.

Willem: Right. So you were banned from the Church.

Alfons: Yes. The cardinal wrote a letter to the bishops, saying, "This is a heretic; do not deal with him or ask for his assistance." I was not supposed to know that I had secretly been excommunicated. They wanted to get rid of me. I was a nuisance because I did not turn people to Christianity or Catholicism.

Willem: You just cured them.

Alfons: Yes. I cured them, delivered them, helped them. Just like that, almost automatically. I could understand that I undermined the clergy's authority, at least that they felt that it was coming to that. The priest received strict orders to cut all ties with me. And so our ways parted.

Willem: And you had no more centre...

Alfons: No more centre; still not feeling good... Right. I was the great homoeopath of Antwerp. Everybody knew me. I cured people. I was the exorcist. I was everything. But I myself felt no improvement. I did not feel good. It is satisfying to help people, but I had asthma, I had allergies, I had heart problems. I had all kinds of problems. I had a lack of identity. Of course, being busy with matters spiritual and homeopathic, I became more and more aware how things are interconnected, how they coincide, how all coincides.

Alchemical Homoeopathy

Alfons: And while I was practising all of this, a man came to me. He, too, had heard about me. His name was Jan. And Jan came to me with a spiritual problem. Jan was a member of the Rosicrucians. "Alfons," he said, "I am highly initiated. But it is not a blessing. It is killing me. It drove my wife away and my children. It only brings misery and I want to get out from under it." I said, "I know of other people who are Rosicrucians and do not have these problems." "It is all a matter of initiation," he said. "Can you help me?" I said, "Let me try."

Two, three months later he was "re-programmed" from his false beliefs and living a normal life again. I had never asked what his profession was. All I knew was his first name, Jan; John in English. And Jan asked me, "Can I do something in return?" I am a pragmatic mind, I am an engineer, so I said, "What are you? What can you do?" He said, "What do you want from me?" I said, "Well, I have this homoeopathic talent and this spiritual ministry. But the problem is that I am not getting better myself."

And then something struck me: the idea that if I could control myself, things would go better. Because, in fact, saying I am not completely myself is like saying I am not in control. So I told him, "I have always been controlling things, factories, automation, everything. Control is my speciality. If I can control myself, I think I will make real progress and find myself again." And he said, "This is complicated stuff."

We talked for a long time. And it turned out that he, too, was a fully qualified homoeopath. And not only that: he was also an alchemist. He told me, "Those things you are talking about can never be achieved by homoeopathy." He was also a PhD in chemistry-and a very brilliant one, for that matter. He had been a director of nuclear plants. A very keen man. And he said, "As far as my knowledge of chemistry goes, it is not sufficient. I think alchemy can help you. That's what you need."

Willem: Alchemy. He knew about that, too.

Alfons: I said, "You know about that?" I thought my life had changed by hitting on the knowledge about possession. And here was someone with mediaeval talk about alchemy. But I listened intently. He said, "Yes, I'm a doctor of chemistry and an alchemist, too. I have practised it for many years and I have seen many nice things happen."

Willem: And as director of a nuclear plant, he could not be a nitwit.

Alfons: No. Later I learned that alchemists from all over the world meet once in a while. There were ten or twelve, all PhDs. They were doctors in physics or something else. Some had two or three doctorates. They weren't just anybody.

Willem: And practising alchemy on the side.

Alfons: Yes. On the side. Jan had stopped his involvement in alchemy because of its esoteric side. He said, "Let us talk about it." And it was not just "let us talk about it". He stayed with me for almost five years. It was a long talk. Sometimes it was three or four in the morning when we stopped talking.

Willem: He lived in your house?

Alfons: Well, we had a little shack in the garden and that's where he lived and had his laboratory. So we lived separately on the same property. He told me a lot about the philosophy behind alchemy, particularly something fundamental to my present work with the VEN28 preparations. He said, "In all material matters we deal with spirit, soul and body. Let me give you an example: a glass of wine. We only see the liquid, the wine. It is the body which only came into being through fermentation of the grapes. Yet in the wine there are two subtle bodies which we do not see at all: spirit and soul. Everybody who can distill can get the spirit out. If you distill the alcohol out of the wine, you separate the spirit from the body."

Willem: That's why we call alcohol "spirits".

Alfons: In German it is Weingeist, spirit of the wine. In Dutch, "alchemy" is alscheikunde, Jan told me, which means "the art of separating all things". The first thing you do in alchemy is separate all things: spirit, soul and body. The body you can see readily, but you do not see the invisible things which determine the quality. You do not see the alcohol in the wine, which is the spirit. Neither do you see the soul which, too, contributes to the wine's quality.

Willem: So if the alcohol is the spirit, what is the soul?

Alfons: He gave an example. He showed that you may begin working on it only after the alcohol is separated from the liquid. The soul still is in the body. How do you get the soul out? It's a very complicated, refined procedure. You heat the wine very slowly, and you start working it with the four elements-earth, fire, air and water. This alchemic process takes a long time and it results in crystals which are so pure and white that the effect is dazzling. Really special. And that is the soul of the wine. So there they are: the invisible spirit and soul. And actually, it is these invisible things which control the visible.

This sounded very familiar to me. It seemed obvious. The invisible controls the visible. That is what happened when, as an engineer, I automated processes. In the early days, these processes used pneumatic technology, compressed air. You do not see the air, though it is pushing and moving things and opening valves-the invisible controlling the visible. Later, we got the now widely used electronic systems. Again, you do not see the electrons; you see the workings...

Willem: You perceive it is there, but you do not see it.

Alfons: If you put the plug in the socket, you do not see the power. Try to convince a child that there's something there. You may try as long as you can, but it sees nothing. It has to put something in the outlet to get a little shock. And not readily seeing the invisible doesn't mean the control is not there. At the time I told myself, "Now I have something to go by. This is my profession. Controlling things, pneumatically, electronically; telemetering used to be my job." And I felt good about it. If I could get this invisible thing into me to control the visible, the physical, let us say, then I could do nice things. I could find myself again, get control again, get hold of my life, restart. And as an engineer I knew the formulas, the cybernetic correlations, the correlation techniques. In 1973, our family business was already building process computers. We used our own computers, so I was pretty good at things on that level. Now I thought if I could put control into myself, that would be a different story.

Willem: That would be different indeed.

Alfons: I knew I would be able to get back to myself and start functioning more and more optimally. We talked a lot about alchemy, Jan and I. He made preparations, I tried them on myself and did not really get any better. I'm not saying that alchemy is not effective. For some it does well, for others not. So it lacks systematic results.

Willem: You can't really rely on it.

Alfons: No, you can not trust it. And when you try to talk about it, you meet with resistance, people thinking, "Those alchemists are magic sorcerers." Anyway, it brought me to the crucial understanding that the invisible controls the visible-something I knew from my profession. The question was, "How can I transpose and take this invisible information into me so that it might control me?" To make a long story short, I found the answer after many trials and errors. Trying this, trying that, I discovered how it works. And when I say "I discovered", I mean it is not new, it is not an invention, not even a finding. It is right there. It is a matter of picking it up. In order to pick something up, you have to be ready to pick it up. You must be prepared and think about it, assimilate it, boost yourself up to the level of "I want to find it, I have to find it".

About the Interviewee:

Alfons Ven was born in 1939 in Belgium. He is president of the non-profit Evolution Vision Foundation in The Netherlands which he founded in 1996. He maintains that everything that emanates from the invisible is controlled according to "the 12 aspects": sound, space, fire, light, elements, matter, organisms, plants, animals, men, communication, order.

He has developed his insights into a "cybernetic" health and lifestyle system, incorporating his 28-day "Ven-Cure" program.

Mr Ven can be contacted by phone at +31 30 233 3188, by email at info@alfonsven.com or via his website, http://www.alfonsven.com.

About the Interviewer:

Willem de Ridder is a renowned Dutch multimedia artist, storyteller and radio broadcaster. He recorded this interview with Alfons Ven in 1996.

For more information, visit his website at http://www.willemderidder.com.

Editor's Note:

As president of a legal Dutch foundation, Evolution Vision, Alfons Ven works pro bono. He advises that the payment of 64 euros for a 28-day Ven-Cure covers the cost of subcontracting the practical work, and a small portion is invested in spreading the message. He conducts telephone and email consultations for free. A standard session by telephone takes 15 minutes.

Mr Ven states that most people require only one 28-day program to experience improvement. In the case of auto-immune disorders, he recommends two consecutive cures. He suggests that Ven-Cures be taken for the duration of any chemotherapy treatment. For constitutional disorders, he advises taking Ven-Cures twice a year. For terminal cases, Mr Ven provides special pellets for free, to help patients experience an optimum quality of life. He says that most mental problems are dramatically improved with one cure.

Every day, Mr Ven receives expressions of gratitude, but he is regarded by the Catholic Church as a persona non grata, by the medical world as a quack, and by the media as a crook. He was recently gagged by the Dutch Ministry of Health, which publicly attacked him and forced him to downgrade his website and revamp his product information at considerable cost to the foundation.

In early 2007, a Dutch national TV station, in cahoots with the Ministry and the cancer establishment, he maintains, presented an interview with him as if he were a charlatan, but Mr Vens has received many positive reactions and heartfelt support from users of his products.

Alfons Ven's mission statement reads: "By means of the 28-day Ven-Cure, I want to give people a chance to evolve. To unlock their personality. Boost their awareness (identity-consciousness). Free their spirit. Restore their soul. Improve their health. The Ven-Cure offers possibilities on these five levels. It is not meant as a therapy per se, although the therapeutic effects are often amazing. Wonderful are the positive changes in life and the getting back on track."

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/AlfonsVen1.html