Winter has the country in its strong grip. Through a snow and ice-storm we arrived two days ago in North Germany, and all the roads are covered with high snow. Walking into the town of the place where I spent my childhood I helped three times pushing cars to get running. Today, Christmas morning, I will meet an old friend with whom I lived together a number of years during the times of my studies. We had “wild times” together. In the meantime he has become a professor of literature, but somehow he remained young in his heart. Whenever I meet him we have a long walk and exchange what has happened over the years.
The two last weeks in Switzerland I took a few winter pics with enchanted impressions.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas tree in the evening sun

Artificial solstice – a black sun hanging between the trees of the park

Villa Mettlen with a christmas tree in the park

Snow balls and black sun

Sun on a stone pile

Enchanted garden

Fountain of light and black sun

Sinking gardens (work of art)

Donkeys in the snow

Setting sun over a farmyard

Christmas scenery at a farm entrance

Santa Claus at the farm entrance

A beautiful hymn, though it probably is a modern interpretation.

Yesterday morning the sun was rising behind the bushes in our garden, and quite a strong wind had swept away most of the leaves. I put a vase with amaryllis flowers onto the grass, to take a photo against the morning sun. However, the wind blew it down several times, so that I fixed the vase with a stone. Here you see the pics.

Morning sun behind the vase with Amaryllis flowers

Red sunrise

A titmouse in the bush

Muri Castle behind the bushes

Withered sunflower in the pale sun light

A last rose in the pale morning light. The strong wind made it dance up and down. It needed a number of shots,

Sun reflection in the window of the living room

Some more autumn impressions from a walk through the nearby park, this and last weekend. There is an art exposition along the river, a playful exchange between man and nature.

View over the trees to the Alps

A mobile in the trees

Small chairs for animals to observe the humans passing by 🙂

A smiling branch

Deep rooted

A mobile with a bridge in the background

Sculpture of a squirrel

The Aare river

The Bodenacker farm house

Who is living there?

Sculpture in front of a house

A friend sent me this most beautiful Islamo-Christian composition that was created as a song to religious co-existence by a Christian female Lebanese singer named Tania Kassis, accompanied by two Muslin male singers, Mohammad Shaar and Maen Zakaria who, in addition, frequently sing Christian songs at the mosques and in front of the Sheiks. The arrangement is inspired of an Ave Maria accompanied by the Adhan “Allah Akbar”.

Some time ago I came across the Poem of the Soul series of the French painter and poet Louis Janmot (1814–1892). It is a cycle of 18 paintings and 16 drawings, with verse and it occupied him for 40 years. In the series there is a number of pictures with angels and hovering souls. Here are three nice paintings from the Poem of the Soul.

The Ideal

The Flight of the Soul

The Golden Ladder

At the moment there is an art exhibition in our village along the Aare river called Art at the Water (Kunst am Wasser). Over a distance of about 20 km there are different art installations. (The photo book about the Aare has also been realised in the context of this project.) Here are some impressions from this afternoon.

The Aare has plenty of water at the moment

On the old wooden bridge in the background there are some posters with poems

A mobile of driftwood at a waterfall next to the river

A red “lotus” in a pond

The magic flower

Some bubble installation in a pond

Metal tubes floating above a river producing sound with the wind

The floating tubes

Visitors of the exhibition

Quotations from a poet on straw bales along the river

A beautiful little restaurant, “Jägerheim”, where we had a cup of tea

A well at the river

Thistle flowers

Last weekend a new painting came, called “Lotus of the Soul”. You can download here the high-resolution version or see it in the gallery “Images of Synthesis”.

The symbol in the middle is Sanskrit for OM, the primordial sound. The picture is inspired by lines of Sri Kumar from The Teacher, N°. 46:

“In the previous attribute the spiritual permanent atom was spoken of. It is the centre of the electric blue beyond which there is the seeming nothingness which expresses as the subtlest point. This subtlest deep blue point expresses like an electrical blue. Beyond this is the Absolute Existence and this blue point is the primary emergence. A Self-realized one anchors in this point and remains blue. Sound and light remain its attributes. This is the threshold between seeming nothingness and apparent something. It is the point of emergence of Existence as awareness. It is the trill, the first spur that emerges from which all apparent existence comes through. In scriptural terminology this is called the cosmic centre. It is from this centre, from out of the deep blue, other manifestations happen. After this blue there is the manifestation of red and yellow. As explained earlier when man enters into subtle fields he first encounters the golden-yellow light followed by orange and later aquamarine and then blue.
All this can be experienced in the heart lotus which is four-layered. The heart lotus is but four triangles placed one above the other in different directions. It appears like a twelve-petalled lotus. The four triangles appear with their angles as a twelve-petalled lotus. The outermost triangle carries the light of golden hue. The one interior to it carries the light of aquamarine. The next interior triangle shines forth with the colour of blue. The finer, the most interior triangle carries the colour of deep blue.
All these four triangles are connected through the centre like a rosary. Through the centre of the final triangle it leads to seeming nothingness which is everything. Through the central channel the energy beyond flows and takes to different sound notes and colour notes.
When one enters into this central channel he listens a naturally vibrating sound which is like OM. It is OM unuttered (Anahata). Uttering OM is only to orient to the unuttered OM. The culmination of all utterances is into deep silence, and in that deep silence the eternal sound is to be heard.”

Yesterday I came across a very beautiful contemplation on Buddha – photos and photo-collages by H. Koppdelaney: My View of Buddha. And I also saw a nice collection of photos from a Thai person, entitled “Shangri-La”. Enjoy.

Tibetan relief of Buddha – photo of a friend.

A beautiful video by “Iran Hope” – floral images arranged with human bodies – obviously done by Iranians in exile, using for their channel the old Persian flag with the Lion. One blog says: “…fantastic visual garden where the flowers are people.”