I came across a very impressive video created by the Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, which has gained a special importance through the reactor accident in Fukushima, Japan.

Hashimoto has done a time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

The film is based mainly on the data of “Nuclear Explosions 1945 – 1998″ co-published by the Swedish Defence Reserach Establishment (FOI) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in 2000.

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto began the project in 2003; he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

Hashimoto says about his map:

“This piece of work is a bird’s eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second.  No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier.  The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted.  I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world.”

And this problem increases with the nuclear reactor accidents…

Hashimoto is currently working for Lalique Museum, Hakone, Japan as a curator.

Last weekend we went together with a friend to Ticino in the Southern part of Switzerland to visit another friend whom I had come to know via the web. The lady has been one of the first persons from the West to go to India in the early 1980ies to meet Master EK. She is now working with horses as a therapy of integration – besides her professional activity: “Ipsi-E, Centre for human-horse relationship and self-empowerment through the horse”.

She has three horses from the Pyrenees which never were used for riding, but for expressing their equine energies in the dialogue with humans. Thus they didn’t develop fear, but trust, curiosity and an intense presence. It was fascinating to touch and feel them, sensing their different qualities and observing their reactions. Saturday I only had little time with them, but Sunday morning I just stood for quite a while with two of them in silence, and there was an intense inner communication.

Later our friend took us to Ascona to the Monte Verità, the Mount of Truth, a very beautiful power spot above the Lago Maggiore, where in the early 20th century there was a “new age” community experimenting with new forms of life. Many artists, philosophers and theosophists had been attracted there. Our friend, who had lived nearby for many years and very often been at Monte Verità told us that also Blavatsky, Steiner and Hermann Hesse had lived there for a while and that a mayor with a theosophical background had attracted many spiritually oriented people.

We went through the Japanese tea garden to the Tower of Utopia, then followed the lines of a Feng Shui serpent leading to a colourful mandala, which Tibetan Buddhists had installed after a ceremony.

The Japanese garden

A little shrine

Stairways to the Tower of Utopia – leading into the light of life

Feng Shui serpent

The Mandala at the end of the serpent

Artwork in the garden

Beautiful Magnolia trees in full bloom

A house on the compound

Everywhere bushes with Camellia flowers

After dinner in the historic hotel / seminar centre our friend brought us to an old-fashioned b&b house, a villa in Art Deco style surrounded by a little park overlooking Locarno. The landlord gave us a warm welcome. and showed us the house with historical chandeliers and painted walls.

Sunday morning there was a splendid sunrise over the mountains and the lake. While I was meditating I couldn’t but open my eyes here and then to take a shot of the rising sun. Very special sounds of a nearby old pilgrimage church reverberated through the air.

A pine and a huge magnolia tree

Golden dawn

The old church looking through the palm trees

After breakfast I walked up the road along villas with their gardens, traversed by little stairways.

The road went along a little forest where a brook came down the hill with some waterfalls

I breathed in the fresh spring air – it was a great surprise to be at that place with so much natural beauty. We only had arranged to be there 24 hours ago…

Later we met again with our friend and the horses before, after lunch, we set out to our way back through the Gotthard tunnel and some pass roads back home.

Camillas in front of the house of our friends

A friend sent the link to the very impressive video “Home” by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The comment for the environmentally conscious documentary says:

“Shot in 54 countries and 120 locations over 217 days, Home presents the many wonders of planet Earth from an entirely aerial perspective. As such, we are afforded the unique opportunity to witness our changing environment from an entirely new vantage point. In our 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has hopelessly upset Mother Nature’s delicate balance. Some experts claim that we have less than ten years to change our patterns of consumption and reverse the trend before the damage is irreversible.
Produced to inspire action and encourage thoughtful debate, Home poses the prospect that unless we act quickly, we risk losing the only home we may ever have.”

I have earlier posted an article about photos of Yann Arthus-Bertrand: The Earth Seen from Above.

An inspiring initiative for creating a better future for mankind:
The Transition Towns Movement is a movement coming from England and Ireland and has spread over many countries. They say about themselves: “Transition Network’s role is to inspire, encourage, connect, support and train communities as they self-organise around the transition model, creating initiatives that rebuild resilience and reduce CO2 emissions.”

Here are two links to very interesting YouTube-videos about the Transition movement: What is Transition? (with German sub-titles)

and Visions of Transitions (also with German sub-titles). Constructing new realities begins with visions of change.

A fascinating approach, which hopefully will soon be adapted all over the world:
The Japanese company Blest has developed one of the smallest and safest plastic-to-oil conversion machines out on the market today. It’s founder and CEO, Akinori Ito is passionate about using this machine to change the way people around the world think about their plastic trash. Read the article.

I today got the following letter from the Spanish mailing list of WTT, with a call for prayer from Japan, from March 12th, which in view of the urgency of the situation I publish here.

“Erika Sotoyama escribió:

Dear Friends!
There were big earthquakes and a lot of big Tsunami in Japan from yesterday and still continue as you watched the TV. Many people died and many places are destroyed so hard.
We are still alive here but we do not what happen in tomorrow, not only tomorrow, today also.
Please do deep meditation and send Ki to Japan, especially concentrate on the nuclear plant in Fukushima. It is the most important problem now!
The situation is very very dangerous now. The water to heat down the Reactor core did not work yesterday because of the lack of electricity, and the temperature became higher. If it explodes, we will die soon. Today some air with a Nuclear material was out from there…
And it is not a problem only in Japan but also all the world, at least half of the earth is polluted so serious.
In these days are very important for the destiny of the earth!
Deep meditation with tenshin, strong Kiai from Tanden, do not worry about everything, with the Ki of Universe will help you and us.
And please tell it or send this mail to the other nice people, seitai friend, your friend, please!
I believe your cooperation.
We do not fear about everything but we think we may do some more if we live in the earth a little more.
Best wishes with friendship and Love.
Kunio, Mutsuko and Erika from Japan”

While preparing the blogpost a friend from Germany just me the link to “A Letter from Sendai” published in the American Ode magazine.

A map of the nuclear power plants of Japan, from Wikipedia

PS (one day later): I got a link from a friend in New Caledonia about the effects of the fire ritual (Agni Hotra) in neutralising the effects of nuclear radiation, from the Spiritual Research Foundation. Whatever is the truth in it, the fire ritual is a powerful cleaner for the atmosphere.

A friend sent me the link to the website of a new film, ALUNA, which is being made by and with the KOGI, “a genuine lost civilization hidden on an isolated triangular pyramid mountain in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, nearly five miles high, on the Colombian-Caribbean coast. The Kogi are profoundly frightened by what we are doing to the world, but also well aware that we have no understanding of the forces which we are unleashing. They believe that the only hope of survival for mankind is if we can learn why they are so scared, and they know that we will only believe what we can see.”

The movie is not a work of fiction. It will be released end of 2011. Very impressive.

My friend sent a second link to another film: Connected. An Autobiography about Love, Death and Technology. The synopsis of the film says (extract):

“Between texts and tweets, memes and microchips, we’ve become great at breaking the world down into byte-sized bits. In the process we’ve stopped seeing the forest for the trees, never mind the root system that connects them all.

For centuries we’ve been declaring independence. With insight, curiosity, and humor, this film asks if it’s time to declare our interdependence instead. Connected is a journey through the interconnectedness of humankind, nature, progress and morality at the dawn of the 21st century.”

BBC has done a series on “Human Planet” with a number of trailers- though not visible everywhere, so in Switzerland all the videos are blocked with a remark “Not available in your area” … There is only the trailer of the official channel visible, but if you go to YouTube and search for Human Planet, you can see these videos, like “Girls Judge Boys in Desert Sex Factor“. It is, however, reminding the same curiosity of exoticism which made Westerners import indigenous people from other parts of the world and exhibiting them in shows some decennies ago. But you find also other videos…

The trailer is worthwhile seeing:

A friend sent today the link to a video of the Global Oneness Project about Elements:” Elemental – Three stories on three continents connected by water”, see below. Water is the basic element of life, it represents the etheric on the physical plane. There are cosmic planes of the Waters of Life, the vast ocean of creation.

This morning we were at a sublime exposition of orchids and ikebana art in the Elfenau Park, Berne, with a rare presentation of thousands of orchids and many exquisite flower compositions.

I arranged a powerpoint (10.1 MB) with a selection of photos I took there. Though the exposition was very crowded, the flowers radiated such an extraordinary beauty, delicacy and silence which may bring you inspiration.