While the rest of the family went skiing today, I stayed at home. Since the sun tinged everything in a soft, misty light and brought back a spring feeling after a few days of a winter backslide, I took my bike and went to the nearby Elfenau park in the afternoon. There was a beautiful spring magic around, which I tried to capture in a few photos.

Crocuses heralding the approach of spring

A meadow full of violet and white

The fish of a fountain – is he drinking the waters of spring light? – The right ambiance of the present Pisces time.

Statue of a maid in a meditative mood enjoying the rays of the sun

Statue of a child playing with a fish -another symbol of the Pisces time

Some elves playing in the bushes of the Elfenau (the name meaning meadow of the elves)

Promenaders enjoying the sun, with view of the Alps and the Aare river in the valley

A totally different magical world in the greenhouse of the botanical garden just 50 meters away.

Water dripping into a little pond

Fiery flames of vibrant life

Violet flames of radiant beauty

Depth of the heart

View into a cactus – creative unfoldment

Beauty is a profound expression of spirituality. In the beauty of nature you can discover depths of your own soul.

Today I came across a hint to the website about the “water footprint” and the “Virtual Water Project“. Virtual water means the amount of water used in the production of a good or service. The water footprint is generally expressed in terms of the volume of water use of an individual or a community per year. The concept has been developed in 2002 by Arjen Hoekstra from UNESCO-Institute for Water Education IHE. You can calculate your individual water footprint (or that of a nation), based on your country and your consumption pattern, to get an idea of how much fresh water you consume. Or you can see here, how much fresh water is being produced for the production of an apple (70 litres), a glass of beer ( 75 litres) or a hamburger (2400 litres.

Designer Timm Kekeritz from traumkrieger Gmbh, created a double-sided poster, where he visualised the findings of the Virtual Water Project, “to make the issue of virtual water and the water footprint perceptible”, as he writes. Have a look at his impressive visualisation, which you can also order online.

Poster (c) Timm Kekeritz, traumkrieger GmbH.

The Creative Review Blog has posted 4 images showing “The Bible According To Google Earth”. The pictures have been realised by the Sydney-based creative collective ”The Glue Society“, visualising scenes from the Bible as if captured by Google Earth. Four key Biblical events are portrayed as if seen from above, in “God’s Eye View”: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, Moses parting the Red Sea, and The Crucifixion. The Glue Society has realized the pictures commissioned by Pulse Art for the Miami art fair.

James Dive from the Glue Society says: “We like to disorientate audiences a little with all our work. And with this piece we felt technology now allows events which may or may not have happened to be visualized and made to appear dramatically real. As a method of representation satellite photography is so trusted, it has been interesting to mess with that trust.”

Noah’s Ark, by ”The Glue Society“, from (c) Creative Review Blog (extract)

Is really seeing still believing? There is so much “virtual reality” and “reality shaping”. On the other hand, many so-called “new” imaginations and ideas exist since long in the storehouse of the global mind, even from previous ages. Many of the computer games tap on these imaginations for their visual illustrations.

The Eastern wisdom knows a state of very refined inner perception, where an initiate can “read” in the Akasha. Akasha is meaning space or ether, and the initiate who can see the Akashic recordings is said to be able to zoom back and forth in time and space, to whatever location in the present and past, thus also to “Noah’s Ark”. Even if the authenticity of Akashic reading cannot be proven by objective science, being a “subjective” research method, the many different reports about it hint at its existence.

See also the Google-Earth related blog-posts “Looking from Space into the Garden“, “High Resolution Zooming – with Google Maps or Visualisation“, “Google Online Mapping Initiative against Darfur Genocide” and “An Atlas of our Changing Environment“.

In the morning after prayer there was a fire ritual in the retreat centre, conducted by Sri Kumar and Srimati Kumari. The mantric chanting accompanying the ritual charged the air, while the flames of the fire were growing high, invoking the presence of the Devas, Agni. After the ritual some flavoured rice with sweets was distributed to the participants.

At 10 o’clock the bus came to bring us to the Planetary Healing Centre Harmony, beautifully located near the road running along the seaside. Last year it was still a small road, now 4 ways were giving a much faster ride.

The Planetary Healing Centre

Sri Kumar explained: “This Healing Centre is energised by a seer who lived here long ago and whose energy is present here and vibrates much healing energy. It is therefore an important place for healing purposes and healing meditations. The centre is perceived, conceived and constructed according to the solar principle which is the basis for all life, the Solar Lord functions with number 1 and 7. He bestows health, he bestows the light of wisdom, he is seen as the basis for the life and light to pay homage to this seer we gather once a year amidst so many programs, once in a year we gather.”

In the shade of the old cashed trees there is an old Maitreya statue, around which the group gathered for the lecture of Sri Kumar.

After the lecture (I’m typing my notes to make them available after the seminar) we moved into the healing centre. There are circles around an onyx globe where we gathered for singing 21 times the holy word OM and meditation.

After lunch we went to a nearby beach to enjoy the beauty of the Gulf of Bengal. I had a short swim in the ocean – a beautiful refreshing feeling.

Four days ago we went to the Simhachalam temple beautifully located on the hill above the village where the Guru Pooja festival took place. Through rows of shops and beggars we entered the temple, went through the outer and inner parts into the innermost, where in a dark room there is a huge lingam – an oval shaped stone representing the power of divine will – covered with yellow and orange cloths. The group stood around the silver shrine, in which a priest conducted a little ceremony for us: He waved some camphor light around the lingam and offered the light to us, as a sign of inner purification through fire. He gave some flowers and water to each one of us.

We then went around the temple, the walls of which are covered with sculptures with numerous lion-figures (Simhachalam means Lion temple, the temple of the Lion of the Heart, where the sign of Leo is located) and scenes from the 10 avataras of Lord Vishnu. When leaving the temple, some sweets were distributed as “prasad” – gift after a ceremony.

Afterwards we went down the stairs into the valley. The way runs along huge banyan trees with their air-roots hanging all around, little shrines and statues, and the air was filled with some rhythmic Indian music – a beautiful scenery.

Beggars on the way to the temple, waiting for pilgrims

In front of Simhachalam temple

The seat of the Lion in the inner court of the temple

The Narasimha-Avatar of Lord Vishnu – the Man-Lion, symbol of opening the heart centre

The way down to the valley

Yesterday an express parcel arrived from Venezuela. I was surprised, but then remembered: Friends of mine, a couple from Caracas had announced a week ago they would like to send me something. I had met them 2.5 years ago at the marriage of the son of our spiritual teacher in India, and it was a hearty meeting. Though they don’t speak English and I no Spanish, we had some contact from time to time and they like reading our monthly newsletter, El Mensajero Lunar.

The content of the parcel was a beautiful little work of ceramic art inspired by Latin-Indian tradition: A serpent-bird, made out of an involving and evolving line. I was deeply touched by this gift, for it is a profound occult symbolism for the descent of spirit into matter and of the ascent back to the spirit. The Indian symbol of the Feathered Serpent is depicting the same truth and is regarded as a symbol of an initiate. You might like to read here more about the “Mystery of the Serpent” from our Lunar Messengers. The serpent descending the tree in paradise and tempting man with the sensual experience (apple) is half part of the story. As long as we live in matter, we are regarded as creeping snakes. But when we start upon the path of return, we move up again and the serpent becomes a winged serpent, just as you see in the symbol of the Caduceus, the rod of Asclepius which is still used by our modern doctors as a symbol of healing (though the wings are unfortunately missing – a sign of the state of modern medical art?). “The tongues of the serpent become the wings of the eagle” it says in Spiritual Psychology meditations of Dr. E. Krishnamacharya, thus being the symbol of the unfolding Kundalini energy.

I put the picture of the serpent-bird on the wall at the entrance of our apartment, so that it might be a constant inspiration.

The serpent-bird of involving and evolving currents of energy

Asclepius, the great healer-initiate. Photo: Epidaurus, May 2005

I yesterday had the chance of seeing the draft of a website of another country’s group of the spiritual movement with which we are closely connected. It made me think of how different people express their spiritual stances. Whereas I feel more sober and, unlike in earlier years, prefer clear, unemotional and down-to-earth presentations, others have a more flowery or romantic attitude and also prefer for web-design a more baroque depiction (“web-baroque”). I remember times in my life where I myself was attracted to more devotional expressions, but these have faded away and given rise to what I experience as a stronger stringency or consistency.

One of the new year’s greetings I received yesterday was from India, showing 3 photos of white statues covered with flowers from a ritual. I try to keep the stance of an observer to what, in the critical part of my mind, goes into the category of kitsch or overladen imaginations. But I know that judging closes the doors of perception. I have participated in rituals which on the outside seemed to be thus pure devotional emotions, but where for the inner eye there was a strong spiritual energy present magnetizing the whole atmosphere.

How to give an expression to beauty? How to express most sublime energies? Much certainly depends on your own cultural background and / or your projections. If you see just the surface, you easily get lost in your own superficiality.

Angel silently meditating in a shop window

The Million Book Project, an international venture led by Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, Zhejiang University in China, the Indian Institute of Science in India and the Library at Alexandria in Egypt, has just completed the digitization of more than 1.5 million books, which are now available online, as a press release communicated on November 27.

The project was initiated in 2002, and now anyone who can get on the Internet now has access to a collection of books the size of a large university library. The Million Book Project represents the world’s largest, university-based digital library of freely accessible books. At least half of its books are out of copyright, or were digitized with the permission of the copyright holders, so the complete texts are or eventually will be available free. As per the countries engaged in the project, most of the books are in English or in Chinese. However, more than 20 languages are represented among the 1.5 million books, a little more than 1 percent of all of the world’s books.

Though the long-term goal of the Universal Library is to make books, artwork and other published works available online for free, about half of the current collection remains under copyright. Until the permission of the copyright holders can be documented, or copyright laws are amended, only 10 percent or less of those books can be accessed at no cost.

“Knowledge is structured in consciousness”, says an old Eastern wisdom saying. Digitalising is an important step of making books virtually accessible to all, but only what you have integrated into your live becomes part of your living – no matter how many books are the outflow of the mental activity of mankind over the centuries.

A bookshop in Berne. In a virtual library you can’t just take a book into your hands and start turning the pages.

A friend sent me some days ago a powerpoint presentation about a huge beautiful temple in India, near Delhi, which has been constructed from 2000-2005. I forwarded it to another friend in the States remarking that it is better to construct temples of the heart than of stone.

He replied that he had seen the temple last year and that the presentation does not do full justice to the scope and grandeur of the “Swaminarayan Akshardham”, called a spectacular, thematic symbol of eternal life. He added a saying of H.P Blavatsky, from one of her Aquarian axioms, “You cannot build a Temple of Truth by hammering dead stones. Its foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the solution of Life.”

Another giant temple called “Sripuram“(: see pictures) and made of 1.5 tons of pure gold has been constructed near Vellore and inaugurated in August, 07. It is now the biggest structure made of gold. You find a description with some photos here. It reminds me of the megalomania of the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, the biggest church of the world at Ivory Coast.

The urge of man to idolize God to aggrandize himself and his own belief-system is much more powerful than the urge to work for silent self-transformation and selfless service for the needy.

For copyright reasons there is no picture of the temples, the picture here is from a friend, of a palace in Northern India.

Today I came across the website of a film called “Mystic India – an incredible journey of inspiration“. The description says:

“Mystic India rediscovers India, a land of many mysteries and fascinations, the one land that all desire to see. Home of the Himalayas, the tallest mountains, India is our world’s largest and oldest democracy, and contains an amazing wealth of wisdom, culture and spirituality. And within this earliest civilization known to mankind, lie hidden mystical secrets. It lies hidden in India’s silent spirituality, making her a mystic land of meditation, contemplation and enlightenment.

From 1792 to 1799, Neelkanth walked alone, barefoot and barebody, 8000 miles for 7 years through the length and breadth of India. Carrying no maps, no food and no clothing, how he crossed the roaring rivers, faced ferocious animals and survived the freezing winter of the Himalayas, is still a mystery. It is a story of struggle, of kindness and of courage even when face to face with a man-eating lion….

Neelkanth became one of the greatest spiritual leaders of India. His lessons continue to inspire millions. His vision, work, and wisdom echoes the essence of Indian culture – its unity in diversity. This is the greatest gift India can offer the world.
Mystic India is an epic journey into the land and soul of India…”

You can see a trailer or hear soundtracks from the film.

Photos: (c) Mystic India