Back to India – Arrival at Bangalore
A gorgeous sunrise awaited us the morning of our arrival at Sadguru Tapovana, the centre of WTT Bangalore. The flight to India had been smooth, the group started slowly gathered during the journey – I met the first friend, from Mallorca, at Zurich airport, two others, from Colombia and Mallorca, at Doha, and five friends, from Germany, at Bangalore airport. The other members of our travel group to the Nilagiris, from Argentina and Spain, already were in Bangalore. We arrived just in time for the morning meditation – I enjoyed sitting there in the hall – and then fell asleep.
The Bangalore group members gave us a very warm welcome. We had nice rooms which now are above the lecture hall. A little later, Mr. Joshi, the spiritual head and the “master-mind” behind the Tapovana project gave us a little tour: Tapovana consisted until recently of 28 houses, now more houses had been built for around 180 permanent members, the householders mainly IT people but also a few bankers – and all together 37 children. They conduct joint activities for the children introducing them into spirituality. We saw the rooms where Master KPK (Sri Kumar) and his wife live during their visits to Tapovana – with a pyramidal roof and another, the consultation room with a glass top where you can see the moon during full moon meditations. Above the lecture hall they have a huge spiritual library with books in English, Telugu and Kannada. There, they also conduct homoeo classes. On the other side of the building, there is a fully soundproof room where they do registration of mantras and other songs with Sri Kumar – they recently did 12 hours registration which will be published next year.
In front of all the guest rooms there were little brass plates with the Sanskrit name of one of the seven rays and a short description of their quality. From the roof of the building you have a beautiful view around. And there is a water tank on which sat an eagle who was observing us for a while before it went up into the sky, circled a few times around some nearby trees and disappeared. Eagles are regarded as messengers of incarnations of sublime beings.
Near the hall there is a huge Audumbara tree (ficus racemosa), which carries the energy of Lord Dattatreya. And below it there is a “Mount Kailash” with a statue of Lord Shiva. And along the Tapovana road there are many trees like Peepal (ficus religiosa), mango trees and others.
Below, they have now placed panels with wisdom sayings and modern loud-speakers for transmission of lectures or spiritual music.
Next morning after breakfast we set out to our journey to the Nilagiris. Purushotama and Venkatesh, two very friendly members of the Tapovana group, joint our group of 13 westerners – we are the first group going there except those who had come for the inauguration and the Tapovana members who had worked for setting up the “Master Mountain Retreat Centre” (MMR). Before leaving Mr. Joshi presented to each one of us a beautiful brown woollen shawl produced in the Nilagiris and with the words “Agastya Rishi Bhagavan” around an image of the mountain, the goal of our journey. At this place in a natural reserve in the Nilagiris, the Blue Mountains, there is in the subtle spheres the ashram of Rishi Agastya, the eldest of the Masters of the Spiritual Hierarchy on earth – an energetic power place.
