About 2 weeks ago I started publishing the “Images of Synthesis” on Facebook and Flickr, commenting how they were done (you find them on the Good-Will website up to the recent month, I try to keep a rhythm of publish one new picture per month).

These images started in November 2009, after a painting pause of 19 years, after the end of the “Early Paintings” in 1990, where I thought I would never paint again. You can read here how the Images of Synthesis started from out of an inner opening during a deep crisis. I will go on re-publishing the pictures on Flickr and Facebook with comments over the next months.

“The Hidden Flower – Born Nine Months Later”, 18 Dec. 2009. You can read here and here more about the origin of this painting.

Yesterday we had a brilliant spring day. My wife was visiting an old friend, my eldest son was clearing and cleaning his room with a friend – he just moved out to live together with his girlfriend – and I took my camera to go for a walk in the nearby Elfenau park (Elfenau means meadow of the elves and that’s how it is…).

I somehow felt my senses turned on to high reception, at the beginning even irritatingly intense. One beauty drew me to the other – colours, shades, silent celebrations of new life – all around. For a while I sat on a bench, observing the people walking by. And when listening to the inner side, there was like and orchestra singing a choral in the air, deva vibrations penetrating the atmosphere carrying me away. There is a selection of pictures I took during the walk – enjoy the colours of spring.

A superb video!! Read by Thich Nath Hanh, chanted by brother Phap Niem. Let the sounds and images transport you to another dimension…. You can download the audio here as MP3.

The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

On Saturday December 11th, 2010 over 1,000,000 children gathered at Dhammakaya Temple, in Thailand, and sang a song, “Let’s come together to change the world”. At this occasion the children took a pledge to do good deeds and to be virtuous leaders. The gathering was in the context of a project for the moral revival of the world was created and initiated by  Phrarajbhavanavisudh, the abbot of Wat Phradhamakaya. An impressive assembly. A real good will initiative.

For over 3 months I had been publishing the 106 pictures I did from 1981 to 1990, about one picture a day. I restored them from photos, since the originals had nearly all been dissolved in 1997. Artefacts of the scans had to be removed, the faded greyish colours of the photos revived and some other little mistakes corrected. Now they look fine, as good as possible.

I wrote comments for each picture, explaining the symbolism of the painting and sometimes also in which situation it was created. For me the editing was quite an adventure. Many inner pictures rose up; I again saw situations like through a telescope. And with this long distance I could much better put into words what I had expressed 25 to 30 years ago.

I sometimes hesitated before publishing certain images, they still were very close to me, and to unclose them by publishing was like opening inner windows into parts of my life hitherto hidden. The presentations in Flickr and in Facebook reminded me of an Advent calendar with many little doors into subtle worlds.

It was also very nice to see the “likes” in Facebook that “friends” took notice of the pictures; some were regular visitors or gave comments, which was very encouraging. Thank you, also for the mails. A quote from one of the mails a friend from California wrote me: “I tell students we must praise and appreciate everyone’s gifts (which helps everyone evolve) and we must bring forth our gifts into the Light. It takes courage and it takes Love to do this.” And: “Your paintings are an expression of deepest Love & revelation. This is not given as a compliment. Your essence is in the paintings. Thank you for showing them to the world.”

The story of these paintings has now been told and they are “set free to sail to distant horizons”. I think I will soon begin to tell also the story of the new paintings which started in 2009 and reveal a bit of the backgrounds. It is still an ongoing story.

Part of the “Flickr Advent Calendar” with the Early Paintings.

Yesterday afternoon we were blessed with the visit of the Master of Bhimili, Sivananda Murthi Garu.Normally he comes to give his blessings at every Guru Pooja, since 1972, but this year he could not come. So we were happy to have him with us for a short stay in the retreat centre.

The silent energy of his presence filled the whole room when he entered, and it was very beautiful to witness the two masters together.

I couldn’t follow typing the words he was saying, I just noted a few sentences I give here as a short extract:

“The Jagad Guru (World Tacher) has so many forms, yet one guru, one God, one form. The worship is to every form. We don’t know where we go, from where we have come. But man is not his body, man is not his mind. Jivatman is in the body. Together we are here for a while. We meet in truth. God has to be experienced. Is it my experience? No, we are with God. He is in air, water, earth, fire, ether. Each one of us we should be conscious that we are beyond the body. I have passed through many births and lives. The light shows you the path, that is the Guru. There is no language, no classification. His silence is , he is our father, protector. That is behind, the Sat Guru. Mind is talking too much. Mental silence makes you get out of the noise. Silence is there, we call it pranava, OM. God is not man-made. Think of one Guru in many gurus, one God in many forms. What is not truth is not the light.”

Sri Kumar honouring Sivananda Murthi Garu with a shawl and touching his feet

The Master of Bhimili, Sivananda Murthi Garu

We immediately afterwards left for another beautiful concert with Dr. Balamurali Krishna and his musicians, it was very impressive. Again Sri Kumar led a short meditation before the concert and afterwards honoured the musicians.

This morning Sri Kumar told us some interesting points about what he had said yesterday to the musicians and the public, for all was in Telugu. Again my notes are not complete and might contain mistakes:

“Balamurali was asked to sing some things from the book, but it was not good. That he did 50 years ago. Now he is in a kind of creativity, he is so far away into creativity, you can’t make him do things which are so much back. I spoke to the public, you should learn of such persons to be creative. It is only non-creative minds that go by structures. By 7 years he knew the musical system. He did not learn music in this life, he came back to give music. He is different from those who learn and accomplish. He has accomplished in previous lives and has come back. I also said, he is chosen by music, he did not chose. I also said, there are people who chose wisdom and try to follow, there are some others whom wisdom chooses. He belongs to the second category, not the first. Some people are born, even by birth they have not to learn, they cannot be compared with others.

He once was given 10 minutes time to sing in French (before members of the French government), he went back, looked to the language and music, came back and sung to the astonishment of all. This would be impossible for a normal mind. He was always very humorous, even yesterday. He said, there is a beautiful young lady by my side, I cannot sing. He is a very humorous person, very simple. He always says, I don’t know music, music knows me.

He comes from Andhra Pradesh, he has been given 14 doctorates all over the world, doctorate of letters. It is an honour. Outside India he has many awards, but not here. I said yesterday that no prophet is ever recognised in his native land. Yesterday I spoke of him, he told me he felt happy about what I said. He wants to come to my bureau now at 10 o’clock, so I wait for his phone call.
Our honouring him is nothing for him, it is honouring ourselves. He is above such things.”

At Guru Pooja an Indian friend sent me a newspaper article which I was able to read only now. It was from The Deccan Herald of 23 October 2011 about the Russian artist Svetoslav Roerich (23 Oct. 1904-30 Jan. 1993), the son of the famous mystic and painter Nicholas Roerich and of Helena Roerich, also a profound writer and mystic. Svetoslavand his elder brother George had been born in St. Petersburg, but had been living nearly all of his life in India, mainly in Bangalore where he died 3 February 1993.

The occasion for the article was the close of a long legal fight, a drama over the legacy of the Tataguni estate owned by Roerich’s wife, the late actress Devaki Rani, niece of Rabindranath Tagore. The litigation had started right after Roerichs death and only now came to and end with a decision of the Indian Supreme Court entrusting the State government with the responsibility of maintaining the estate, which contains numerous paintings by Nicholas ans Svetoslav Roerich. However, the paintings have suffered fungal infestation with many of them flaking. Experts are now chemically treating each of these affected paintings, a process that might take over a year.

I was happy to hear about this news, for I love Nicholas Roerich’s paintings very much and have blogged about him already at several occasions. There is a website of the Roerich and Devika Rani Roerich Estate Board, which gives paintings of Svetoslav and Nicholas Roerich – though it hasn’t been updated for years.

I had to think of Nicholas Roerich yesterday evening when two items were distributed to the group which members from the Littoral Group, Santa Fe, Argentina, had brought: A red sign of the Agni Yoga society founded by Roerich and his wife, with the 3 red dots in a circle, and a photo from the highest mountain of the Andes, the Aconcagua, shining in blue like Roerich’s paintings and saying – From the South of the South,with love – thank you Marta!

Newspaper clippings from the Deccan Herald

An incredible shadow play presentation form Calcutta – “Let Calcutta Surprise You”:

A week ago we entered into Sagittarius – my birth sign… I’m trying to paint an annual cycle of the female aspects of the divine in relation to the signs of the zodiac. When I pondered upon the qualities of Sagittarius, Jupiter, fullness and expansion came into my mind. The animal related to Jupiter is the elephant, and the Indian goddess of wealth represented with elephants is Lakshmi. The two lotuses in her hand stand for the unfoldment into the subjective and objective light. So I thought it must be the divinity related to Sagittarius. I painted the following picture. In the upper part I visualised the descent of blessing energies from higher circles.

Expansion and Fulfilment

I sent the picture to Sri Kumar, and he answered that the divinity related to Sagittarius is Lord Narayana. I thought, oops, this is neither the female aspect nor is is possible to change the picture. I took the challenge and looked in the transcriptions of seminars Sri Kumar had given on topics of spiritual astrology and I found that there were other Gods related to Sagittarius as well: Lord Dattatreya, represented in Indian mythology with three heads of an eternal youth, the higher potency of Lord Maitreya, and Ganesha, my favourite, the one with the elephant head. The tree related to Sagittarius and Dattatreya is the Ficus Religiosa. Lord Narayana stands for the descent and ascent of the waters of life, the great cycle of creation.

So the following picture came about:

The Tree of Wisdom and the Waters of Life

You see Ganesha reading at the bottom of the tree, representing the Tree of Wisdom, through which you see flowing the waters of life, and the heads of the youthful Dattatreya are looking down. It says, that Ganesha is representing Dattatreya on the physical plane. The eyes above symbolise the cosmic Lord, Narayana. You can download a high-resolution version at the gallery “Images of Synthesis“.

Two weeks ago I started to publish the paintings I did from 1981 to 1990, on Flickr and in my Facebook account, one picture per day. I take them in a random sequence and give short comments.

Though the beginning of this phase of painting was quite sudden – I experienced a tremendous inpour of energies 6 September 1981, when I first came into contact with the Great Invocation given by Master DK, using it in meditation – I had painted  already since my school-days in the early 70ies, first influenced by drugs and psychedelic art as well as surrealism. I dissolved all these pictures in the early 90ies – feeling that they were too imperfect and chaotic. I realised only some days ago that in these early images there were colour elements and motives which still appear in a transformed form in my recent paintings.

The pictures are all expressions of a long inner spiritual search for light and an oscillation between eastern and western expressions of wisdom. They reflect inner experiences and phases of growth. Being entirely autodidactic, I felt that my technique was always far from being perfect, just an outflow of creative expression and a search for manifesting light / fire on paper.

Many of the pictures of this cycle came out with a great inner intensity and a desire to “paint in fire”. Often they were done quite fast and in a kind of rapture.

During the 80ies and 90ies I hardly met an understanding from the persons to whom I showed the pictures and I wondered what they were good for – just filling the basement. In the spiritual group in which I was during the 90ies they were considered with distrust, as an expression of personality. So my wife and I dissolved nearly all of the paintings in 1997, only photos of the originals remained. I kept the photo documentation in a diary. But also this book carried for me some kind of a stigma. I wanted to throw it away and told Sri Kumar about it January 2003 in India. He said, don’t destroy it, give it to a friend for safekeeping. And this I did.

It was only in January 2009 again in India that, for the first time, a young lady showed a deeper interest in the pictures, and  I told her that I’ll give her the diary as a present. I asked the friend who had it to send it back to me – after 6 years of safekeeping. But before I could give the book to the young lady a strange violent confusion made it impossible. So I started scanning the photos and presented a selection of them at the 100th May Call celebration in Engelberg, Switzerland.

November 2009, the young lady gave me some deep hints as per the paintings. This first appreciation opened my inner doors to a creative expression which continues since then – a restart after 19 years of pause. The contact, however ended a short while afterwards, again with some strange violent confusion, so that the diary with the pictures is still with me, but no longer belonging to me.

The pictures of the “Early Paintings” are from scans of the photos. I tried to work on them a bit, but some weren’t very sharp. I’ll continue to publish them over the next time, not more than one per day. It is an “appreciation” 30 years later.

Choir of Angels, 10 Nov. 1981 – 30 years ago. A4, liquid glazing paint

P.S.: I only realised this morning (27th Nov.), after having slept on it, that there is a pattern behind the paintings: Like Brahma, the Indian god of creation, destroyed various of his creations because they weren’t perfect, I destroyed the very early paintings because they were too dark, filled with expressions of anguish and inner strives – though inner seeds remained, silently continuing to sprout.

Also the next series, which now are being published, was destroyed, but there remained outer seeds in the form of photos, from which these pictures now got restored. The first (I think 18) pictures of the present series, Images of Synthesis, I gave away to the young friend immediately after having painted them, just keeping the digital version. Since the contact with her broke down, I then kept on putting away the paper versions into a folder directly after painting and worked on the digital version. So the digital image became for me the “quinta essentia”, the end-product of an alchemical process of refinement, where the matter undergoes a process of fiery destruction to  later get distilled and potentised to the final perfection.

I also realised that after the close of the cycle of “Early Paintings” there were some intermediary and very ephemeral images drawn on a blackboard and wiped out a short time later. Below you find one of these drawings, which mostly I didn’t even document with a photo. You find a detailed description of the symbolism on Flickr. See also on Flickriver.

Globe Chains – Incarnations of the Earth. Blackboard painting, 1991