This morning an Indian friend forwarded me an e-mail with the following text. Very interesting…

Read the questions before looking at the responses.

Question 1:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?

Question 2:
It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three candidates:

• Candidate A: Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He’s had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 Martinis a day.
• Candidate B: He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.
• Candidate C: He is a decorated war hero. He’s a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks an occasional beer and never committed adultery.

Which of these candidates would be our choice? Decide first without peeping below… then see the responses.

Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Candidate B is Winston Churchill.
Candidate C is Adolph Hitler.

And, by the way, on your answer to the abortion question: If you said YES, you just killed Beethoven.

Makes a person think before judging someone.

Remember:
Amateurs … Built the ark.
Professionals … Built the Titanic

Dawn over the Godhavari River, India, January 2009

Yesterday evening I had a talk with my wife about subtle communication. I felt a bit empty or even irritated after having sent an e-mail to a friend, where I wasn’t sure if the thoughts would be received well. I also had re-written a letter in order to express thoughts more clearly, leaving away certain thoughts of the first letter.

My wife said that thoughts often get cleared through discussion, through talks, like we often have: “With certain people you can utter without problems your half-baked thoughts, while with others you don’t know what the other person can take. When writing a text, like for the Lunar Messenger, you enter into a dialog with the material and work out the thoughts, like with a heap of clay or a square block of a sculptor. You start forming it until it gets the right shape. It is similar when you play a song on the piano or work with an orchestra, where some instruments have to come to the fore and others have to stay back. What is important is the work with the from.

In relation with your friend you enter into a dialog in a chamber or your self which only you two have together, and this chamber up to now is still unknown, unfamiliar, new ground. There are things which you really have to explore. I know these situations where I know that there is something, but don’t know yet what it is. For your friend it is also difficult to orient in your chamber and to capture it, and it needs orientation like with you.

It takes you a lot of work to shape the texts of the Lunar Messenger, to work out the pearls. This is an artistic process, not just a working away of a heap, but a process of shaping. It is a very beautiful work, but it is also a work which attacks the nerves. This is how I feel it. There is the burning pulse of life. A friend of mine says: “You are leaving the comfort zone”, you aren’t at home, cannot relax, have to find it, bring it into life. It draws on your nerves. But this is also the sphere which takes you further. You are working on shifting a threshold, a border, in order to break open the Saturnian ring. This draws on your nerves, but also gives joy. Normally you only can afford it when the work is embedded in a stable context of life. You have to rest in yourself to be able to afford it. Otherwise it sweeps you off, even though it might be very beautiful.”

The response I got from my friend was full of a friendly understanding, and I felt that I also can share there thoughts in the process of clearing.

P.S.: A friend answered me about this post:

“I always carry with me the Mandra Scripture (An Aquarian Rendering of the Bhagavad Geeta, by Master EK). Today, I was re-reading  Book XVIII – The Book of Liberation, from the Scripture. ‘And the Lord said, the need of Mendicancy and sacrifice if we want to be free. Mendicancy is giving up of actions that produce desires, and Sacrifice is the giving up of the results of all that we do.’
This I think relates to your nerves, because you still look for results in what you do, and this draws on your nerves. The one who relinquishes the results of his work, is the one who has really given up. This book, also gives the five causes of a deed. ( page 262) Because the fifth cause is the activity of the whole creation and it is an impersonal cause, the whole thing is only instrumental. Let not any cause start from you as motive an end in you as the ultimate result. Then the whole burden of work is placed upon something we call God. Now you are only a worker, and not a doer. Do no be the owner, but be a steward of all your activities.”

I answered her: “I have read with the head many times about release from the results of doing, read the Mandra scripture a number of times but haven’t yet achieved it. I feel it is also a question of ripening… I stopped trying to ‘play’ a spiritual concept, like I did for many years, when I realise the gap between myself (My Self) and the concept, even a spiritual one.”

And when talking with my wife, she added: In a creative process there is full focus, and out of this tension might arise. Even Masters, when fully concentrating on a task ahead, go through a process of utmost tension. This doesn’t have to be accompanied by looking for the results, but ignoring this is like ignoring the great bow of a creative manifestation in a work of art.

“Mogul emperor, Akbar, frequently summoned the court jester whenever he felt himself tense. Blessed are those who have a cheerful companion.” (Vaisakh Newsletter Capricorn 09)

Structure of the roof of a room in a friend’s house

We now enter into the hours of Scorpio new moon. Scorpio energies are always somehow mysterious. In a seminar in 2005, our teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar said: “Scorpio gives the message that the apparent is not real, because the real or the original is veiled by layers of illusion, and hence Scorpio offers illusion, Scorpio also offers initiations. It is a sign which is the profoundest among the zodiacal signs. Its secrets are unfathomable.”

This afternoon while walking through the nearby park of the Elfenau (Elves’ Meadow), I captured some impressions of the autumnal melancholy in the air, where nature withdraws and prepares for the deep rest of winter time.

View over the meadows to the old villa in the park

The villa seen from nearby

A pond next to the house with view down to the river Aare

“Sitting” on the bench

Reflections

A wooden woodpecker

Mushrooms on an old tree trunk – beauty of decay

Between the river and a lake of an old river arm

Swan reflecting on its beauty

The river Aare in autumn light

A little chapel in the forest, an ancient hermitage

Evening light

Flower elves dancing in the greenhouse in the park – timeless green

Colourful orchids in the greenhouse – messengers of a remote summer time

This morning I read an interesting section on the symbolism of the phoenix in the book “The Divine Plan“, by Geoffrey A. Baborka, a commentary on The Secret Doctrine. Googling this information, I found that the book is also now published in German. I bought it 4 years ago after a seminar of my spiritual teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, on the Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky. The book is part of my Saturday morning reading, and I just read 2-3 pages, so the progress is quite slow, but sure

Baborka writes that according to ancient Greek and Roman writers the phoenix represents the reincarnating Ego: Gathering twigs from spice-trees the bird fashions a nest. The next bursts into flames consuming the body of the bird. From the ashes a young phoenix springs into life, and when strong enough, flies to Heliopolis, the city of the Sun, dropping the remains of the nest upon the altar of the sun: From the ashes of the old personality springs the new personality. The fiery nest is of the same essence as the sun. The city of the sun is the citadel to which the divine spark of man returns when the old personality is consumed. When reincarnating like the new phoenix, the Skandas, the seeds of the personality, spring into life again. So the old personality isn’t lost, but remains a pearl on the Thread of Life, the sutratma (the thread-soul), which carries the imperishable records of the reincarnating ego.

A most sublime image. It made me think of the death and rebirth of the phoenix in the volumes of Harry Potter. In the last chapters of the 7th volume there is a great scene of near-death experience, when Harry is going through the sacrifice of his life on his way to the final overcoming of his bond with the evil Voldemort, a very occult scene.

The reborn phoenix Fawkes with Albus Dumbledore, from the Harry Potter Wiki (copyright note)

The present month of Scorpio is precisely related to the mystery of death and rebirth, of the fight of the eagle (the spirit) with the serpent. I found a picture on the web with a Scorpio and a phoenix, for copyright reasons I can’t show it here. But here are some other photos related to this myth, and a third one, a  nice one of Blavatsky, which I found this morning.

Painting of a phoenix by Barthélémy de Glanville  (”Le livre des propriétés des choses”, Manuscrit (Burgundy, XVth c. Bibliothèque municipale d’Amiens, France)

End of a fire ritual – like the nest of a phoenix

Blavatsky (photo: London 1889) calls the phoenix “the bird of resurrection in Eternity”. “The death and revival of the Phoenix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction of the world, which many believed to be effected by the agency of a fiery deluge.” Through the work of H.P. Blavatsky the eternal wisdom teachings reappeared to the world like a phoenix from out of the ashes.

Communication is a main topic in my life – establishing good relations through a fluent, transparent communication. It is not by chance that I’m working in a communication job.

Communication is not just speaking to others, but to be open-minded and inclusive, and trying to eliminate blockages in the way of a good flow of energies. I yesterday came across a situation where insufficient information caused wrong ideas in my head and shed a wrong light on the situation. I observe this again and again. It can only be cleared by asking and speaking about your perceptions.

This morning I found a beautiful passage about communication in the book “Uranus – The Alchemist of the Age“, by Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, which I would like to share:

“Men tend to be islanders, they build walls around them and do not let others transmit energies nor do they share their problems and sorrows through communication. … From telegraph to telephone, from telephone to cell phone, from cell phone to e-phone there is a progressive invention for most rapid communications. To feel lonely in an age of communication is to fall into a loophole. Try to be communicative and be sharing. …

Men of ego who are highly individualistic and full of pride suffer from self blockage of energies by not communicating adequately with respect to various aspects of life. Catharsis is the need of the hour especially at the emotional and the mental plane. Through the so called privacy and secrecy man built unhealthy but strong forts which do not let even air or life from without to within. Jumping out into the common stream of life, coming out of the fetters of pride and separativity is the true solution of this age. If one tries to sit on the top of the pyramid, the stream of life that flows at the base cares not. Such a one has to climb down to quench the thirst of life. It should be so with a teacher of wisdom, it should be so with the rulers, with the healers, with the specialists, intellectuals, aristocrats and the like. Support of the group though seemingly not strong, is the strength. Uranus drives one towards it.”

In order to get beyond the barriers and fix ideas in your mind communication is of utmost importance.

When listening to the inner, there are sometimes tunes coming up from encounters with people. Qualities assume shapes stimulated by the impressions given by these friends. With some of them I am in an actual present exchange, and the subtle impressions reflect thoughts stimulated by these contacts. But there are also exchanges with persons, where for the time being there is no outer exchange, but nevertheless an inner exchange is going on. I call them my “inner circle of friends”.

It often takes to the form of qualities these persons represent to me, like subtle echoes of encounters. This is mostly not in form of mental articulations, but in form of qualities or feelings associated with the persons. Often they have touched certain strings in my inner and the thought of them causes a resonance of feeling linked to the experiences with these persons.

It reminds me of an Aeolian harp where the wind blowing across the strings produces sounds. The resonances are sometimes linked to undissolved emotional situations, where there seems to be no way to dissolve them in the present. Some I have gone through myself, some I have just witnessed with my friends. The echoes of their processes, often only hinted at but not clearly expressed, leave these imprints resonating from time to time. It gives a melody of a certain mood.

When inner light streams through these forests of resonances, there is an upliftment happening. It reminds me of the beautiful sentence from “Occult Meditations” by Sri K. Parvathi Kumar (Meditation 31):

“Vena, the Gandharva, is wiping off the pictures of the subconscious mind on the walls of my nature with the hieroglyphs of sound from his seven stringed lyre.”

Gandharvas are the musical intelligences beyond the creation. They are the blissful ones and bestow the bliss causing the muse of the souls with the Super Soul.

Here are some autumn impressions, which the last weekend brought:

A wall near our house

View from a hospital window

Autumn scene on the table of the hospital’s visitors room

Lamas – since several years new guests on Swiss farms

Curious calves

A goblin greeting from the wayside

A playful farmer’s tree monster

The last times were full of intense processes, which I tried to reflect in the form of poems I wrote on my observations. I try to translate two of them:

Unsettled thoughts,
kept back and unrecognized
in their haze of interwovenness,
block like stones
the stream of life
pressing forward
and form dangerous rapids,
which threaten to carry away
the swimmer of consciousness
and to drag him under the waters.
The passage between
Skylla and Charybdis
is difficult
and every word surfaces
like a whirl in the current
to be steered around
so that the boat of the freeing idea
doesn’t get dashed
against a rock
and emotionally charged spindrift
doesn’t obstruct the view.
During such transits
utmost vigilance is needed and
a calm eye of the steersman,
who sees the shallow depths and,
navigating with a firm hand,
brings the boat
nearer to the next harbor,
knowing about the distant goal.

Iguaçu, Argentina 2008

Towers crumble,
when the time-ground
lets its eroding movements
work slowly.
Even the plates of the continents
dance on the fragile ground
of the rhythmical movements
of the Great Mother.
It is the love towards new life,
which makes the old one
collapse
to give way to
virginal striving.
However, change gives pain,
if we hold on to stones falling down
or
seek stability
on the wavering ship
at times of tempest.
But where shall I
cast my anchor?
How can I
offer you a supporting hand,
when the dark clouds
seem to hide for you
the rays of the sun?
Dancing with firm steps
the rhythm of unbridled change
gives joy,
when the hold
in the salvaging silence
is the anchorage
and gives protection
in the deep ground.

Iguaçu, Brasil 2008

A friend from Spain sent today the following wisdom thoughts in Spanish, which my automatic translation program got over into English, with a little manual polishing:

Although you don’t write books, you are the writer of your life.
Although you are not an artist, you can make of your life a work of art.
Although you don’t understand anything of cinema, your existence can become a successful and extraordinary film.
Although you sing out of tune, your existence can be a beautiful song.
Although you don’t understand music, your life can be a magnificent symphony.
Although you have not studied in a school of communications, your life can become a model report.
Although you don’t have great culture, you can end up being a great sage.
Although your work is humble, you can transform your day into a master teacher.
Although you have 40, 50 or 60 years, you can be as young as you want.
Although the wrinkles already mark your face, you can have an extraordinary interior beauty.
Although your feet bleed in the obstacles and stones of the road, your face can smile.
Although your hands conserve the scars of the problems and of incomprehensions, your lips can be grateful.

An old Mongolian man in his tent drinking tea. Photo of a friend, 2006

The last weeks, even months, had been a time of deep inner and outer processes, where not much time was left for reflection in the blog. The work in my office brought some transitions: Last Tuesday I presented to the management board the final report of the introduction of the new intranet, after over two years of work, and at the same time the proposal for the next big step, a pilot project for the new document management system. There were some intense discussions in the board – but in the end I was given discharge for the first project and green light (and money) for the new pilot project…

There had been a lot of work beforehand, not only in preparing the papers for the presentation, but also setting things in a good way: Though the launch of the intranet had been already in December 08, there had been a number of technical troubles in March and April, and though there is quite a progress with the new Sharepoint-based system, some adaptation works are still causing some problems. When two weeks ago I had been talking things out with the head of the agency who had done the implementation of the system, I came to know: on that very day they had fired their project manager with whom I had had problems from the very beginning… Their new project manager is a very competent person from their management board. Two days ago I cleared all the open points with him to set a good basis for the future collaboration.

A second agency is involved, who are delivering a software for the document management system. In my office I had a number of talks to explain the questions facing us at to set up the new team. It is quite a complex matter and not so easy to “translate” the different aspects into a form which can be understood by the persons concerned.

In a way it is a very spiritual process: Weaving together all the different aspects of a complex matter, which will deeply affect the way of working of all collaborators in the house, is a very fascinating process. Many things are still hazy, but planning, meditating, asking questions, putting together the information from different sources and trying to construct the “final view” is building a way into the future. Never before I was left so much left to my own pre-decisions and laying down the structures, taking responsibility for the process. Others, the “decision makers” followed the prepared path, supporting the indicated direction. At the same time I feel that it is not “me” doing this weaving, but that there is an underlying “process intelligence” which has to be discovered and brought to manifestation. So from my viewpoing things sometimes take a sudden turn, but seen from the thread going through the “tissues”, a deeper sense is unveiling.

A friend just sent me this remarkable article about the touching speech of a father who lost a daughter at the Columbine High School massacre, the 10th anniversary of which will be on April 20th:

Guess our national leaders didn’t expect this, hmm? On Thursday, Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful.

“Since the dawn of creation there has been both good & evil in the hearts of men and women.. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

“The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.

“In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA – because I don’t believe that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent.

I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy — it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.

Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question “Why?”
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!

“Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.

“As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA — I give to you a sincere challenge. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone!

My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!”

Old daggers. Photo of an exposition by my son.