Today a friend from Califonia sent me a link to a fantastic video (8-9 min.) of a pantomime/puppet act, if you can call it that. It is an art that leaves you wondering like a good magic show, but it has the beauty and awe of Cirque du Soleil. The artist is Jerome Murat, from France, also called “The Man with Two Heads”.

Pantomine is acting in silence, thus focussing on the action, and often like here masks are used to sharpen the focus. In the show Jerome Murat even reduces the colours and uses only white. This reduction to the essential is something very much needed on the spiritual path. Though here it is a pantomine “show”, it is showing very basic elements, playing with illusion. Enjoy and keep aware.

I just got a link from a friend of a beautiful animated short film (7 min) called “The Potter“, done by the young animator Josh Burton and a team of friends. The film was Josh Burton’s final senior thesis project for Savannah College of Art and Design completed in 2005.

The Potter is an ancient creature who gives life to clay. In his care is an apprentice who wants learn how. It is a story full of magic, about how to learn using the heart. Here it goes directly to the film.

I yesterday read in the Swiss Coop Consumer magazine – which is publishing besides theirs ads some contents of general interest to attract the attention of consumers – an article about the restauration of the papyrus of the Gospel of Judas (for details see the National Geographics article). In five years of a crazy detail work Florence Dabre and others have restored 66 pages of the old codex dating back to the 3th or 4th century a.d. which was about to decay. Part of it is now in the Bodmer Foundation near Geneva, where many original manuscripts are kept.

According to the canonical Gospels, Judas betrayed Jesus to the Jewish authorities, who then turned him over to the Roman authorities by whom he was crucified. This newly discovered Gospel portrays Judas as acting at Jesus’ request when he hands Jesus over to the authorities. Wikipedia says: “Like many Gnostic works, the Gospel of Judas claims to be a secret account, specifically ‘the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot’.” And: “The Gospel of Judas describes Judas as being the favourite disciple of Jesus, just as the Gospel of Mary describes Mary as the favourite disciple, the Gospel of Thomas describes Thomas as the favourite disciple, and as the Gospel of John describes its author as the Beloved Disciple.”

This discussion reminds of the feeling of most of the jealous religious believers that their belief is the best and only right one and the others are wrong – an attitude which has to be overcome on the spiritual path. When seeing things from a synthetic point of view, you can discern what is right for you and respect what is right for the others without judging what is wrong and right. And you accept a multitude of different points of view as the many facets of the one reality.

A friend sent me a link to a beautiful video on YouTube with Chinese female dancers representing in a performance the Thousand-Handed Goddess of Mercy. It is the female representation of the Buddha Avalokiteshvara, known in China as “Kuan Yin” and in India as the Boddhisattva of Compassion. All 21 dancers are deaf-and-dumb. Inspiring !

Yesterday morning before work I made a short detour through the old town of Berne in order to look for a subject for the Christmas picture of our newsletter. In the last days they had installed the Christmas illuminations in the streets and I was looking for a subject with a 5-pointed star, because of the subject of the Lunar Messenger of Capricorn (to be published around Dec. 20th). It is about “The Secret of the Dawn” – the awakening of self-consciousness, the 5th principle of man, and the symbol is the 5-pointed star.

At first I took some shots of illuminations in the lower old town, then I went to the cathedral. There I saw that the road next to the church was decorated with nice large 5-pointed stars. While some workers started preparing the stands for the Christmas market, I used one of their lorries as a “tripod” for my digicam, and also some walls. However there wasn’t the “shot” I was looking for. Then I made a few shots from the middle of the road – and yes, there it was: The stars looked like descending from the sky. In the afternoon at home I could cut out from one shot just the right part. Though it was quite a number of photos, only one proved to have hit:

You can click on the photo to send it as a Christmas card.

We pass by so many situations without realising the difference between the normal and the extraordinary. Messenger of the higher world often reveal in a second, the door might close again right away. People were passing over the street on their way to work, looking downward to the ground. May some also look up and see.

Yesterday morning I took some pictures from an installation with loudspeakers at the entrance of the Kunsthalle Berne (Art Gallery) of Pavel Büchler, a Czech born artist living in UK:

I was fascinated by the “silent loudspeakers”, overlooking a noisy square. On the website of the art gallery I then read about the artist:

“Summing up his own practice as “making nothing happen”, he is committed to the catalytic nature of art – its potential to draw attention to the obvious and revealing it as ultimately strange. His subtle interventions and wry texts are concerned with revealing the accepted and everyday as ultimately bizarre.”

“Concerned with the distortions of language, he gives a critical attention to the gaps in communication, fascinated as he is with the limits of the communicative properties of visual language. He often addresses the question of the legitimacy of communication in addition to its ephemeral and long-lasting nature.”

So the artist is searching along the threshold of the spiritual, which is “beyond the communication”, of the word, which is beyond sound, beyond form, even beyond manifestation, which is also called the “soundless sound”, or, in relation to communication, the “communicationless communication”. You might read our Basics of Spiritual Life on Working with Sound (PDF).

By the way, the exposition of Pavel Büchler is called: absentmindedwindowgazing. When the mind is “absent”, by wide awake, there is a chance of perceiving glimses of the suble worlds.

Today I got the latest newsletter of “The Soul Journey“, from friends in the States, this time on “Wabi-Sabi”:

“Beauty in simplicity – that’s what wabi-sabi is. In Japanese, wabi means humble and sabi suggests the presence of beauty in the natural progression of time. In short, wabi-sabi can be seen as an aesthetic appreciation of all things, no matter how humble or simple. Or it can be seen as connecting with the essence or soul of all things, especially in their lack of adornment.
Soulful wabi-sabi is about appreciating the form that naturally occurs such as in the weathering of wood, the shape of landscapes, the colors of rocks or flowers, the flight of a bird, and other natural appearances. The wabi-sabi mindset also uses recycled materials, often in ways that are creative and unique, for waste is contrary to this aesthetic approach. Hand-crafted items are also present in a wabi-sabi environment, because of their frequently found soulful characteristics.
When the form is appreciated for what it is without the compulsion of changing it, then we can be at ease in our environment. It also encourages us to create comfort and to enjoy the experiences of our senses. It has something to say to us about simplicity and clutter as well. Simplicity has a Zen way of evoking the soul within us all since it shows the soul of things when we do not surround ourselves with excess. There is now a movement in house design based on this wabi-sabi idea. It is more than a fad since it reflects a growing soul consciousness among people.
Wabi-sabi is also about appreciating time, as having something to enjoy and value in each moment. When we do not try to cram as much as possible into the shortest amount of time, we can perhaps savour the riches, the beauty and the insights that each moment offers. This is when we can access soul naturally and spontaneously.
Let the ordinary speak to you in new ways, revealing its soul, and evoking yours. Remind yourself to live in the moment, open to inspiration and the joy of being present to your life and soul.”

Another e-mail from a German friend brought a link to a German website on the great Russian artist Nicholas Roerich (the site of the Roerich Museum in New York), where you find a short Quicktime movie about the pictures of Roerich. Roerich is for me really an example of Wabi-Sabi, beauty in simplicity

In the last two days I got two beautiful powerpoint presentations from friends in Spain, one with photos from a journey to Tibet (3 MB), another with most delicate motives from China (5.9 MB). Have a look at them, if you like to make a journey in your imagination.

A beautiful new photo of the Hubble space telescope looking like a modern painting shows the Orion nebula in an explosion of infrared, ultraviolet and visible-light colors. It was “painted” by hundreds of baby stars on a canvas of gas and dust, with intense ultraviolet light and strong stellar winds as brushes.

This morning I saw in the customer magazine of the “BKW Energie” an article about the Swiss artist Urs-P. Twellmann, who is creating beautiful artworks in nature – circles, spheres, spirals… He is working mainly with wood and ice. You might like to have a look at his website: