Birth and horrors of war
A better moment for his birth Max could hardly have chosen. For it was exactly the day war actually broke out in his native country Indonesia (then Netherlands Indies). The day when Japanese armed forces had come from the North of Borneo and invaded the country, trampling everything under their feet. All male family members on his father’s side living in West Borneo were killed. His grandfather, who was the sultan of the state of Pontianak in that region, together with his three sons, were tortured to death by the enemy.
Max’s father, the youngest son, escaped this fate as he had been posted at Malang, East Java, as a lieutenant in the Royal Netherlands Indies army, where he was made a prisoner of war a little while later.

Max’s father was born at Pontianak, capital of West Borneo and of his own state. Although of Arabic descent, he had received a western education at Singapore and had passed through Highschool in Batavia (now Jakarta) after which he completed the Royal Military Academy in Breda, the Netherlands.
Max’s mother was Dutch and the youngest daughter of an administrator in charge of a coffee and tea plantation. She was born in Surabaya and although she did not go to church, she called herself Dutch Reformed. “One doesn’t need a church to be a good person”, was what she said.
Max first saw the light of day in Malang. He hardly could have chosen a better moment because, with war all around, he hardly wasted any time in learning how to survive under very difficult circumstances and to withstand many ordeals.

Surviving
Part of the city of Malang, where Max was born, was vacated, surrounded with barbed wire and converted to a concentration camp. However, his mother, his sister Edith and Max himself remained outside the camp, where life was even more difficult. Still a hardly known fact. After the war his mother sometimes said: “People have no idea what it was like living outside the camps. Everything was taken away. With nothing left to eat you had somehow to keep alive. In the camps there had been some food at least.” For a mother with two young children this was a terribly difficult period. This period would take almost four years.

During this period Max had been exposed to many tropical diseases, such as viral and bacterial dysentery, hepatitis and malaria. Despite the lack of medication, Max had overcome all of them, even the much-feared “five-day fever”, which had nearly killed him. Only alternating hot and cold baths and a strong will to survive had finally kept him alive.

At this young age Max also learned to take responsibility. As a baby he had already sensed his parents’ forced separation and later, being the only male member of the family, he felt he was the head of this family. - In psychology this phenomenon, where a child or even a baby feels the necessity of taking responsibility for the family, is called “parentification”. - Responsibility was to become a major theme in his life as well as an important condition for performing with the utmost integrity the life-task of a trance medium, healer and messenger of All That Is.

After the war the family was reunited. It was then, that they learned about the horrifying deaths of Max’s grandfather and his eldest sons. Max’s father was the only son left. Because of his western views he was asked by the Dutch Government to succeed his father. After careful consideration he decided to accept and so, in October 1945 (Max was not quite 4 years old yet), his father was installed as Sultan Hamid II of West Borneo.

Max's father
as Sultan Hamid II

Departure to the Netherlands
During the turbulent aftermath of the war the family was dragged against their will into the country’s struggle for power. The Dutch Government, reclaiming its pre-war colony, had run into Indonesian nationalism. Due to anti-western propaganda this movement, with the help of the Japanese, had gained strength during the war. It resisted military means, and so, with international pressure the independence of the Republic of Indonesia became a fact.

The transfer of sovereignty was to take place at Amsterdam on 27th December 1949. As President of the Federalists and by virtue of his function, Max’s father was, besides Queen Juliana and the Prime Minister, Mr. Drees, expected to be present to sign the Declaration of Independence.

In that year the small family left for the Netherlands. However, Max’s father was only to stay for a short period of time. In 1950 he returned to Indonesia to reassume his responsibilities there. For safety reasons his wife and the two children stayed in the Netherlands.
On the eve of his father’s departure Max was lying in bed, trying to sleep, when suddenly his head began to sway from side to side until he heard a familiar voice say: ”Fear not, dear child, you shall see him again.”
This became true, but was to take place only sixteen years later.
For, upon his return to Indonesia, because of his pro-western views, Max’s father was arrested and once again taken prisoner.
This time not for four years as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, but for twelve years as a political prisoner of President Soekarno. 

                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                  Max's father as an officer

                                                                                                                                  of the Royal Netherlands
                                                                                                                                             Indies Army 
Freedom
And so it came to be the Netherlands where Max grew up and received his education. Although skipping grades at elementary school, Max has to repeat every single year at Highschool. He is expelled from three schools for unruly behaviour. He refuses to adapt himself, rejects authority and becomes an infamous street fighter and leader of a youth gang. At eighteen he sets out wandering through Europe. For three years, going from nightclub to nightclub, Max earns his living as a guitarist in a rock and roll band. He works as a grape picker in France, becomes a portrait painter in the streets of Spain and Italy and a sponge and coral-diver in the waters off the Greek Islands. During these years Max learns a great deal and experiences more than most people do in a lifetime. Having acquired the sweet taste of freedom, he will never let go of it again!

Atheist
All this experience has made of Max a richer and calmer person. He returns to the Netherlands and decides, at 22, to go back to school, which takes him only two years to finish. He then enrols at University. His interest in Third World issues leads him to study Social Anthropology.
Here he becomes rationally convinced that a Higher Power cannot exist. For how could a loving God permit so much injustice in the world?
He therefore calls himself an atheist and is irritated by those who claim the contrary and adhere to a faith or religion. What evidence is there? And if there is such a thing as reincarnation, how do you explain the population growth?
It shows of course his ignorance. And it is too premature for him at this stage to accept and embrace the Divine. Many learning processes are to follow before he will be ready for his mission which revelation - because of the extent and the many-sidedness of it - is not to take place until he is around 50. 

Crisis and Inner Search
When Max was 32, he experienced a personal crisis. A period of darkness follows. All the misfortunes of his life seem to come to the surface. So do the attacks of epilepsy, that he has suffered from since his thirteenth and which he has suppressed all this time. He has always regarded the disease as a weakness, which did not match his self-image of head of a family and man of responsibility. A period of inner search and reflection follows – a period from which he emerges as an adult.

           
             Max at the age of 32

A new path
Max decides a change of course. He enrols at the Academy of Arts where he feels at home. Nobody knows his background. The people he meets are authentic and act likewise. Most of them are not afraid to show their feelings; they create their own world and do not feel the need to uphold outward appearances and adapt to social conventions. Many are independent thinkers. Like Max.
Of course he chooses his friends carefully, because - as was the case everywhere - here too he senses people who are surrounded by negative energy and avoids them consequently. However, it is here too that people who are interested in spirituality cross his path. As a result of this, his aversion against spiritual matters decreases little by little, and helps to erase his prejudices gradually.

Max makes a modest living through the sales of his drawings and paintings and, when necessary, takes a job, though only for brief periods at a time. He mostly lives on a small budget, but he does not care. The material side of things does not interest him. This enables him to safeguard his freedom and to avoid being marginalized he works as a volunteer. But now and then he feels the need to withdraw to a solitary style of living however, thus subconsciously advancing on his journey of self-discovery.
And this, so he later comes to realize, is exactly what God wants from him.

For without being aware of it, Max has been prepared for his life-task from the moment he was born. All those years were in preparation of this work. Because of his independent spirit and free style of living; indeed never having lived up to general expectations, and living a seemingly loose kind of life instead of starting a family and striving after material success, Max is enabled to develop his own strength and energy, which finally brought him home.
The magnificent task, which Max took upon himself before birth, could not have been assumed without this development of consciousness. Nor could learning to sympathise with others in mental and physical pain have provided the groundwork of this immense task, were it not for his own personal suffering.

Transformation
It was on the fourth of April 1991 that the miracle happened. It was the day that Max had an overpowering Enlightenment-experience and received Grace, transforming him in one instant into a convinced believer in God. At the age of 49 (7x7) the time had come to assume his unimaginable mission.

Anda, Max' partner