Today I came across the site “Life through Time” (go to: start the journey) by the famous wildlife photographer Frans Lanting. The show Life through Time contains most sublime photos and is “a lyrical interpretation of life on Earth from its earliest beginnings to its present diversity.”

You can read more about him on his website, where it says:

“As a child he identified closely with the hero of two children’s books by the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlof, a boy named Nils Holgersson, who, after being shrunk by a magician to less than half his original size, joins a flock of wild geese and becomes an accepted member of the animal world. At one point the leader of the geese tells him, “If you have learned anything from this journey, Nils, you might no longer be of the opinion that man alone should rule the world. See, you people have so much land just for yourselves, so perhaps you could leave some marshy lakes and swamps and sea cliffs and distant forests to us. That way, we animals can live in peace. All my life I have been persecuted and hunted. It would be a good thing if creatures like us could find a refuge somewhere.” …

“He believes that, like Nils Holgersson, he plays the role of a “mediator” between humans and other species. “I stay with wild animals, and then I come back to my own people to tell them about life in nature,” he has said.

Since his pictures are copyright-protected, here is one of a cactus flower from a nearby botanical garden.

Today I came across the very beautiful website of the ongoing art project Ashes and Snow (English, Spanish and Japanese) by Gregory Colbert. Over the course of fifteen years, he has made more than forty expeditions to India, Egypt, Myanmar, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores, Borneo, Belize, and many other locations to photograph interactions between man and animals, which he calls “nature’s living masterpieces”.

The Ashes and Snow Project weaves together film, photographic works, art installations, and a novel in letters on the relationship between animals and man. The site is of a mystical, dream-like beauty, where people and animals seem to move in a cosmic dance.

Ashes and Snow was first revealed to the public at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, in 2002. To date, more than a million people have visited the exposition. It will open next in Mexico City in early 2008, and it will travel indefinitely to ports of call around the world.

Since the artist didn’t allow the use of a photo for the blog, here is a beautiful photo of a ruin in Mongolia (thank you Miquel).

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (New Zurich Newspaper, NZZ) reported today about a fascinating project of two Swiss artist who developed a method of overcoming the Chinese censorship in the internet. The site “picidae.net” was officially launched last Tuesday and is in English, German, Chinese and Arab. The name “picidae” comes from Latin and means “woodpecker”. The first holes in the Berlin wall were hit by so called “Mauerspechte” (woodpeckers) and gave the project its name: picidae (woodpecker).

They call picidae “an art project, that deals with one’s own horizons of imagination, the image of the world, communication and its hurdles and barriers.” picidae negotiates the firewall (Internet censorship) eg. in China or in the Arabian states. picidae delivers a complete, readable and even clickable image of the censored web sites.

The picidae site is not made up of text and HTML elements (tables, images etc.). picidae delivers a screenshot. The page is visible but not machine-readable. This means the text cannot be searched, marked or saved as a text file. That’s why internet censorship, which reacts on keywords (similar to search engines and correction programs), is not able to detect or suppress picidae pages. picidae is not a centrally organised system and is not be reachable via a centralised database. Every access point and every server runs independently and without description and naming – to prevent censorship and deactivation.

Their definition of picidae as an art project is very close to spiritual concepts of visualisation and going beyond the form, realising oneself as the observer, the I AM, which is not defined by the object he sees: “Art searches for new ways (repetition is in terms of Fine Arts just copying). The new images picidae provides are images of ones own horizon of imagination: images of a global communication and images concerning limitation and overcoming of ones own view. The images are generated in the head of the observer, exactly like in an image gallery. The point is not exactly what is displayed in an artwork but what is inspiring in the sense of Art history and reflection.”

I tested the picidae-server with our good-will website, and it is astonishing how the site is perfectly rendered, as an image. (I tried to put a link to the site, but the url changes, so you cannot link to the picidae-transformed view.)

Hopefully this approach is being used for expanding the freedom of expression and information, to further human relations and not to spread perverse and destructive ideas beyond any sense of discrimination.

By the way, the two artists have earlier launched a site called Zone*Interdite, “a test arrangement that serves as a starting point for individual exploratory tours” into the world of military restricted areas, which they are showing on an interactive map. “Individual imagination and the joy of discovering occurs, i.e. spotting, replacing the patriotic and pacifistic duty of a knee-jerk avowal, and undermining censorship, as well as the restriction of perception.”

Pecking through the great firewall of China and other totalitarian systems

Yesterday afternoon we went with our eldest son to the cinema seeing “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (see also the previous post). Though I found the film was better than the last one, my son said when leaving the cinema: “I had imagined it very differently”.

A book might give you strong inner images. A film is an externalisation of the imagination of the director, the producers and the public expectations. The Harry Potter-film contained quite an intense visual imagination work, elaborated in the high-tech studios.

Outer pictures superimpose themselves on your own imagining. This is what my son felt, and me too. If you get an overload of outer images, they can drown you and block your own process. But they might also be a stimulant, because they are a concretised visualisation. Visualisation is an important tool for the journey inside.

A friend yesterday sent me a link to the Maitreya Project. I had heard before about the initiative to build a 500 ft / 152m bronze statue at Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh in northern India. Kushinagar is the place, where Lord Buddha passed away, and it is one of the most sacred Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India.

The idea of a huge Maitreya statue for the project is from Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935-84) and its realisation is under the guidance of Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.

According to Buddhist scriptures, Maitreya is considered to be the next Buddha who will teach the path of loving-kindness to the world. “The very name ‘Maitreya’ means loving-kindness – in today’s world, we really need loving-kindness,” says the Dalai Lama.

About the purpose and vision behind the project they say:

“For thousands of years the world’s enduring monuments have provided powerful symbols, reminders of society’s most treasured values. During the 20th century most of the world’s great buildings and public development projects have been ‘monuments’ to commercial interests: high-rise business buildings, airports, shopping malls, theatres and theme parks. The Maitreya Buddha statue will provide the world with a much-needed and enduring monument to spiritual values, a reminder of the benefits of creating peace at every level through practicing loving-kindness.”

The Maitreya Buddha statue and its throne-building will provide the public with temples, exhibition halls, a museum, library, audio-visual theatre and hospitality services. All will be set in beautifully landscaped parks with meditation pavilions, beautiful water fountains and tranquil pools. The buildings and grounds of the Project will contain a remarkable and inspiring collection of sacred art.
Thus the vision of the Maitreya Project combines charitable, educational and medical facilities along with the enduring spiritual focus of the Maitreya Buddha statue, to directly and indirectly foster whole-community economic and civic development,
both now and for generations to come.

The statue is designed to stand for at least 1,000 years, supporting the Project’s spiritual and social work for at least a millennium. So may the people be guided from seeing a huge beautiful outer statue to experience inner beauty, beyond decaying forms.

(c) Maitreya Project

You might like to read about Lord Maitreya as seen from the wisdom teachings coming from the Puranic tradition, in a booklet from Sri K. Parvathi Kumar. See also the beautiful Maitreya-statue at the Planetary Healing Centre near Visakhapatnam, India

Friends of mine from Spain had been in Mongolia, for the second time, in search of places of power. Some days ago they sent me a powerpoint-presentation with pictures showing scenes with motives of the paintings of the famous Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), whom I admire since long. He had been on an expedition to the Himalayas, Tibet and Mongolia in the 20ies of last century and brought back a rich treasure of most beautiful paintings. They can be found in several famous museums, such as the Roerich Museum in New York.

Here are some of the photos of my friends (thank you, Rosa and Miquel!) alternating with pictures from Nicholas Roerich (Courtesy Roerich Museum), showing similar motives.

Arriving at Eeijkairkhan (the Goddess Mother), silhouette of the Sacred Mountain

The Song of Shambhala

Eeijkairkhan (the Goddess Mother), silhouette of the Sacred Mountain

Star of the Hero, Cave-Temple

Cave-temple

Ascension to the rainbow

Inside the Roerich-Museum, New York, April 2000

The “Song of Shambhala” at home in the bookshelf

Shambhala, the mystic place now on the etheric planes, is also called the “White Island”. You can read more about it in the extract of book presentation of “Wisdom Buds” by K. Parvathi Kumar. And you find some of Roerich’s photos as e-cards on the Good-Will website.

On driving through the City of Münster, Germany, we saw a red stop sign at a crossroad, and on the bottom of the road sign somebody had written in white letters: Voldemort – “Stop Voldemort”. We had to laugh: The world of Harry Potter was invading the outer Muggle world.

News about the publication in “Der Bund”.

The morning of the publication of the 7th and last volume “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, I had bought two copies, in order to avoid family conflicts. It was a great dive through the book, I was fascinated not only by the dense, brilliant story, but also by the deep occult knowledge interwoven and hidden: The voluntary “death” of Harry and the description of the out-of-body experiences, the offering of his life to save his friends and the community, his dealing with enemies and friends will impregnate the minds of the readers with deep spiritual truths of a preparation for the inward path. Whether the author, Joanne K. Rowling, did it consciously or whether the series of 7 volumes was received by unconscious impression permeating her imaginative creativity doesn’t matter in this. There is a huge impact on the minds world-wide.

In his “Book of Rituals” – written 1967, published 1990 – Master EK (E. Krishnamacharya) wrote: “For this purpose (: a slow and proper understanding of the nature of the mysteries by greater masses of people) some novels will be written by certain induced minds of a Master or a disciple himself directly. Readers of the most materialistic levels will be allured and attracted by the sense of mystery and wonder that surround such plots. They read these books only as imaginary stories, positively disbelieving the truth of the existence of such a line. The impressions that are made upon their mind will work through their subconscious nature and bring the recollection of the past associations of these souls (many of them are necessarily Atlanteans) and prepare the path either in this life or the next. Thus there is a conscious well planned scheme on the line of literature and fine arts.”

We yesterday had a walking-tour with our little local meditation group to the Kien valley, a beautiful alpine valley about 30 miles from here. Following the river there were some art sculptures dispersed between the rocks and bushes, forming a beautiful accentuation of the natural ambiance. Like nature spirits they were hiding along the river.

After a lake we arrived at the valley basin where waterfalls were coming down from different sides. We went up the “white water way” along some roaring rivers and cascades. At times the water went through very deep gorges where you could bridge the gap from one side to the other, but didn’t see the river below, because it was lost in the depth.

Above the cliffs we arrived at the Griesalp, where a few houses at the foot of still higher mountains. One of the houses built in the traditional chalet style was decorated with calligraphic decorations of wisdom aphorisms, which reminded me of Paracelsus or of Eastern teachings like those of the Bhagavad Gita:

” The purpose of action is not the result, but to become the eternal bliss of God.”

“Everything perfect in word and deed comes from the depths of eternal silence.”

“Everyone of us has still a million lives on earth ahead – so why this haste, this noise and this impatience.”

“In God’s providence there is no evil, only good and its preparation.”

Sunday we had been at a floral art exposition in a nearby park, the Elfenau (elves meadow). Colourful tropical flowers, fruits and spices were arranged by floral artists to delicate charming displays:

There was a lightness in the installations, which resulted from very diligent work. Nature’s richness combined with the skill of an artist’s hand.

Today a friend sent me a link to a video with a unique morphing and blending of expressions of women portrayed in paintings and drawings over 500 years, condensed in a three minute video. You can regard the morphing images as the multiple faces of the female principle, the expression of the veiling nature of the Mother of the World.