An autistic person's experience of Christ in our time

Erik Osika

Cardboard - 192 pages

My name is Erik Osika and I can't speak. When someone supports my arm, I can write like this.

I learned the letters from milk cartons and other things that were on our dining table.

When I was over thirty years old, my mother taught me how to support my hand so that I can now write on the computer or on a letter board.

I could understand a little of everything that was said around me, from the time I was a small child. But I could never show it. It now makes my life meaningful that I can talk to the people who can support me or who I can talk to, while someone else supports me. It is not easy to support myself because on the one hand I have to feel my hand through a certain pressure and on the other hand the person who presses my hand is not allowed to control it. But now there are several people who can do this.

I wanted to write about Christ because I discovered that you ordinary people do not experience Him as clearly as I do. Instead, you know so much that I cannot. Now I hope that you can enjoy my book and become as happy as I myself become through the encounter with Christ.

Erik Osika

Among the aids for people with developmental disabilities, there is a special method that makes it possible for people without language to communicate with speaking people, on the same level as ordinary people speak to each other. Until Erik and I started writing together, his face was very swollen around his right eye, because there he would hit himself with all his might with his fist when he “couldn’t make himself understood , ” as he later wrote. Before we started writing with support, we all thought he didn’t understand or comprehend anything. Erik has had questions about Christ as a special interest from the beginning. He was the one who had a lot to say about this theme. He knew more about the subject than his support person, who was then me – his mother.

Hilke Osika

Excerpt from the book:

Erik's foreword

Christ is in us all the time. But we do not perceive it with our daytime consciousness. But with our subconscious we are always in connection with Christ. We can all feel that we can respect other people, and we want to help others and we want to be honest basically. These are Christ forces in us. But our good daytime consciousness does not always want to know about this, but uses it when it does not interfere with our purposes. We can all be in tune with Christ when we honestly listen to ourselves and reflect on what we really feel. Then we can follow this and feel much better even if it is to our disadvantage in the short term in outer life. My mother can do it sometimes but not always.

My mother does not want me to reproach anyone, but I must. It is Ahriman I reproach, that he is constantly trying to seduce us into becoming selfish. It is not Christian to be selfish. But Ahriman knows the art of imagining us to be selfish – “it is human”.

It is not human, but rather short-lived, adversarial. Ahriman is the force for which we owe everything that is technical. But he also inspires us to think only of today's tasks and not of our great future as Christian people in a warm and loving world. Ahriman wants us to serve only him and a completely technologized world without feelings. My task is to show that we have Christ who does not intrude like Ahriman. My task is to convey what Christ wants to say today to us who want to seek his kingdom.

We can all experience Christ in every moment when we are loving. And now my book begins; with my words and with my way of writing.

(Ahriman was the god of darkness in ancient Persia.)

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