A friend sent the link to a very fascinating online presentation of our solar system and the movement of the planets. You can change the view options, zooming through the solar system and view the movements of the planets as seen from the different planets being the centre or speed up their motion.

The grandeur of the universe inspires in us the feeling of the unlimitedness of consciousness and the grandeur of the soul. An Indian friend sent me this morning the link to this exceptionally beautiful video from the American Museum of Natural History: “The Known Universe” takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang and back to earth. Enjoy the journey.

Yesterday night the first snow transformed the surrounding nature into an enchanted scenery, covered with the pristine purity of the fresh winter. It’s like an outer reflection of the purity of the soul.

I was passing the day on the Gurten, the “house-mountain” of Berne, for a strategy workshop of our department, where I will be, from January onward, member of the management of the department. I took advantage of the occasion to take some shots.

Early morning in our garden: the street light has become a magical lamp, shining through the hedge.

On the way, passing by the seat of the South Korean embassy: snow shovelling

Over the Schönau-bridge, where in summer people are jumping into the Aare river for a swim

Inside the funicular uphill to the Gurten

The Gurten restaurant with an old ski-jump – like a fairytale castle

The restaurant terrace overlooking Berne

View from the balcony: Not just the time for a café

View into the valley. Somewhere right in front of the multi-storey-buildings you see our apartment building

Last autumn gold

A work of art, amplified by a snow-cap

A beautiful look-out, like the vertebral column with the kundalini

Inside the Gurten restaurant building: A beautiful Art-nouveau staircase, leading to higher realms of unfoldment

This morning there was an extremely beautiful sunrise, so I took a few photos from inside and outside of our flat.

Sunrise-view from the little garden in front of our apartment through the hedge now void of leaves

A little pentagram-sun with bells, on the terrace

The old castle of Muri in the background

Sunrise reflection in the living room windows…

and on the terrace

Two last roses in the autumn sky

Rose-hips in front of the fassade

The balcony of our neighbours above our flat, who enjoy our roses climbing up the fassade to their flat

Sunrise behind a leave…

and through the living room window

Inside the living room with an ironing board left from yesterday night’s work of my wife

Elephants on the piano, gifts from our teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar

Yesterday in my office I went through an online questionnaire concerning customer satisfaction with an agency and a Microsoft related product. I had to evaluate the quality of the cooperation and the introduction of the product.

When some minutes later, in a pause, I looked up my private e-mails, I saw an e-mail of an old friend who sent me the link to an online questionnaire: She is going to a workshop on personal effectiveness, where colleagues/collaborators should give a personality assessment with some 60 questions or so. I went through the questions. It was strange for me doing this profiling, an abstract form of evaluating my friend, not only about the chocolate sides, but also on more difficult personality traits in cooperation and organisation.

Two days before, at home, I had seen the assessment which the military had done about my son who at the moment is going through a lieutenant formation, and the profile showed his strengths and weaknesses in leadership qualities, very similar to our perception, giving recommendations where he should focus on… Somehow I felt strange reading this assessment without further reflecting on it.

My wife mentioned a talk with our homeopath yesterday, who said that the qualities of homeopathic remedies, when used to qualify an individual, are somehow simplifying and reducing the complexity of the individual. A plant or a mineral is much less complex than a human being, and so the way to find a remedy is an approximation to the problem of the person.

When we meet a person, we perceive him or her in his/her totality, in a split second (the so-called “first impression”). When we focus on specific aspects, we tend to narrow the individual down with our categories to see his/her aptness as per our expectations or needs. It is important to keep the broader perspective of the whole, to feel the other as a seed, his potential development through time instead of just the present form.

My wife and I spoke at noon about a young friend. Seeing in her the profound potential, which will unfold through time spurs the unfoldment. It is fascinating to feel this dormant power. My wife said, she had missed this view of her deeper potential in her youth, and that it is a great encouragement, knowing that someone sees the beautiful tree in the seed and believes in it, and also expresses his/her trust in the vision. This is much deeper than any personality assessment.

A work of art in Girona, Spain, symbolising stages of unfoldment

In the last weeks the topic of swine flu and prevention, information and disinformation penetrated strongly into my life. In my office you can feel it, not only through the business continuity plans for pandemia situations and the related communications. We now have disinfection devices in every toilet and since last week also at the entrance:

Vaccinations had been going on, and as a member of the job health committee, I was witnessing discussions on prevention and on an info event. I published news, I read articles, I decided already a longer time ago not to do the vaccination.

At home the flood of e-mails with texts about the dangers of vaccination or, rarely, in favour, increased. about the political pressure and the profits of the pharma multis. I saw videos, read, replied to e-mails. I somehow felt an overkill of information. Nevertheless I followed the discussion. Some people asked me what our spiritual teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, said on the subject, so I wrote to him. He replied:

“It is helpful for people if they take this Swine Flu vaccine, to avoid the risk of the swine flu attack. The swine flu deaths are significant, though in many cases it is cured. Therefore the recommendation for vaccine.”

Some people felt irritated by his reply, the discussion went on. Then a few days ago I got an e-mail from a Canadian friend with a story about a bio-war outbreak in Eastern Europe disguised as swine flu. It was just spreading pure fear, with a mix of details where I didn’t look through. I don’t want to mention further details. I sent it to Sri Kumar and also discussed the matter with my superior at the Red Cross. We analysed the text and found several inconsistencies in it and came to the conclusion it must be a hoax, a very bad, even dangerous disinformation riding on the waves of disseminating panic.

Sri Kumar gave a very good reply to the matter:

“There is fear in humanity and there is business that attends to it. Much can be said on both sides. There are many topics of this kind. Swine flu is but one. There are people who take vaccines and come out of fear. There are people who are bold who do not take it. Nothing happens to them. There are others who follow the bold but are not bold enough; to them their negation could lead them to fatality. By taking a vaccine, you may loose a few coins from the pocket. Vaccines do not stay in the body permanently. It is therefore better for each one to decide. But when generally asked, considering the emotional nature of our groups, it is safer to say yes to the vaccine, than no. … In effect, we leave the decision to each one. According to their conscience they may proceed.”

Today I got a very intelligent and profound e-mail from a friend, a German homeopath with a very long experience, writing about homeopathic vaccination, prophylaxis and treatment in case of an epidemic, proposing Eupatorium perfoliatum C200, saying that an experienced homeopath can treat swine flu, bird flue and other kinds of epidemics with success. She later added about the homeopathic vaccination, that you take a double dose of 4-5 globules of Oscillococcinum C 200 with an interval of 5 – 10 minutes. That this is called a homeopathic vaccination, where you always take a double dose. This gives protection for about 6 months and would need to be repeated again after this time.

I found it a fascinating perspective, and so I like to share it.

These are times where high discrimination is needed to stand through waves of fear and irritation. I think it might still increase. So a steadfast anchoring in one’s higher self is of utmost importance.

Pig in the field – tired of Swine flu news?

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 when going with my bicycle to work there was a beautiful golden sunrise. So I stopped in the park next to my office and took a few shots.

Sun rising over Berne, with the Alps in the background

Autumn ambiance over the Swiss Federal Office buildings

Illumination of the statue of the World Postal Union – a globe with women from all continents dancing around

The golden globe and the globe of the planet Earth

Leaving my bicycle back, I went on the little hill in the park for a better panoramic view

A statue greeting the morning sun – a yoga posture?

Enchanted ambiance

Church and, at the left, part of the offices of the Red Cross. My office is just behind

A Buddha statue (at the right) on a balcony, with a spear-like top bearing a Dodecahedron – symbol of spirit penetrating through matter – scene just opposite of my office.

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

A friend forwarded to me the newsletter of SHARAN, about curing diseases through diet. SHARAN is an Indian “Sanctuary for Health and Reconnnection to Animals and Nature”, a  non-profit organisation initiated by Nandita Shah, an Indian homeopath. My friend said she had participated in seminars with Nandita and that she is a very modest and fine woman and teacher living and working in Auroville and giving seminars. There was a good quote by Victor Hugo (1802-1885) on their website:

“First it was necessary to civilize man in relation to man. Now it is necessary to civilize man in relation to nature and the animals.”

And another quote, by Ruth Harrison, says: “In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.”

My friend told me that Nandita is working together with an Austrian lady, Barbara Nath Wiser, a doctor leading a clinic of her deceased husband at the foothills of the Himalayas, working for the poor Indian and Tibetan people with ayurveda, homeopathy and acupuncture. She has founded a charitable trust called Nishtha to support the activities. The organisation says: “The main objective for which the Trust has been established is to work for the benefit and development of society as a whole by improving the welfare of families with particular focus on women and children… Our approach is holistic and our philosophy is based on an integrated approach that is inclusive of physical, social and spiritual growth of people and nature. ” A good work.

A cow in a small forest ashram in India