It’s a complex matter – best told in story-form. It is not so easy to understand, and when you read it on the web, it is very probable that you quickly scan the text but not read, and when you read, you might just take it in with your cognitive brain, maybe quickly putting a “like” on “social” media but not letting it in. No time! the mind runs like crazy…
Recent brain research showed that digital reading is good for cognitive reception but reading on paper is better for transformative knowledge, transforming one’s life. Enough foreword…

The pictures of mobiles in this article are no criticism but done with a smiling eye. I’m also photographing a lot – with a camera. In case of personality complaints, please let me know and I will exchange the photo….

An introduction

This is not a private story about an aspect aof my life, but I use this perspective as an intro for the main story, which comes later:

I stopped seeing TV around 9/11, in 2001, sometimes seeing a movie in a plane, very little YouTube. I prefer reading newspaper articles, going into what I read. I intensely follow what is going on in the world. Already as a child, I had very strong inner images which later led me to painting; when reading a book, I quickly “fell into it”. And when looking a crime story, the suspense frequently made me run out of the room.

In my former profession as head of web office of Swiss Red Cross, I was responsible for all digital communication instruments as per their content side – internet, intranet, central photo archives – until I was “set free” seven years ago, free for my way. There already, people used to run around with mobile. I felt, it would be too overwhelming for my perception, blurring my discrimination. As an excuse, I used to tell that my hearing was not good – it was only half true. I didn’t want to get into “digital morphine”, putting people’s inner side with hyperaction to sleep. Now they talk in the media about the need for digital detox, offering courses for managers about digital fasting.

During the last decade, mobiles made a triumphal march over the globe, entering into remotest corners. I could not escape, didn’t want to be a dinosaur refusing it. I’m extremely active with PC and, when travelling, with laptop. No quick photo publication – selected views, images cut-out and processed. Since some years, we have a family mobile, we just use it “immobile” at home, as a “modem” to enter into WhatsApp. My wife using it as a means for her trance therapy work, working remotely with people who don’t have a computer or don’t physically come. And me for interacting with family members and WTT. Since years, however, I’m studying the digital marketing tricks of big data business and follow the latest developments via a daily newsletter. So I came to see the big players as monsters, some of them massively manipulating, with a mask of innocence, elections and political decision. Making big money with little to no ethics. “Do no harm” of early Google is no longer at use.

No need for fear when reading the following passages, it will come to a good end of the story!

In Europe, governments and data privacy protection offices are trying to fight the supranational Hydras, often without success. The big players are very powerful. Especially the Mark Zuckerberg Empire stands foremost in the manipulation game, from the very beginning, – denying it in public, putting on a smiling face. And everybody uses WhatsApp – in WTT it is used especially in India for bringing plenty of pictures and information “for free” to the members, who need to join to “follow”. You cannot escape when you want to follow.

Nobody thinks of what is being done with the data – things which are directly opposite to the principles the WTT stands for:
Big scale image recognition, profiling people, targeting ads, delivering content individually tailored for the personality profile of the receiver to most effectively manipulate on a mass scale. Yesterday, the media reported: “Facebook policy chief Nick Clegg reaffirms the social network’s decision to continue allowing advertising with political content. Twitter and Google, however, have banned politically motivated ads on their platforms.” Not to speak of what China, the biggest player, does. Incredible “total immersion”, keeping over a billion people under central control – for the “well-being of the state”.

One of the latest developments is voice recognition based marketing, analysing all what is communicated via speech – for better targeting ads etc., combining mobile data with the behaviour portraits of the surfers.

About two years ago, while uploading photos to Google Photo, I saw a function for identifying friends. I wrote the name of a friend – and I got hundreds of photos with her in most intimous situations, at group lives, while travelling – often, I did not recognise her face at first sight, but Google did. And these were not pictures she had uploaded. Data protection, privacy? A joke. Digital profiling in a mass scale. Yesterday, the media reported that 3 billion photos were sucked off the web by a private Silicon Valley company with a big investor. We try to comply on WTT related websites with European data protection standards but these trends go directly against.

At the recent seminars in India – like at the last international group lives – the entire ongoing group communication was done via mobile and WhatsApp – when, where, what is happening – it is so practical, and all have a mobile. Except me, I think. I didn’t want to be washed away by an overkill of information, not only via this channel but by other people trying to contact me this way. They can do it via e-mail. The triage of relevant and irrelevant information needs time and energy and deviates the focus I’m trying to uphold. At the seminar, I told two friends to keep me updated. It worked fine. I even once spoke with my wife via mobile WhatsApp of a friend – my laptop didn’t get connection or only a very low one, for a week. (Later, I got a mobile internet connection from the group of WTT India for the communication activities, a great help.)

Already at December Call celebration in Bangalore, Master Kumar said:

“The teachings of every hierarchy member shall have to be related to. You have no more time for mobile, for silly messages. They are all silly messages from people with experience. There are very silly messages through WhatsApp. You are wasting your time and wasting others time. It is meant to send a simple communication, not to use it because it is free. If they charged 100 rupees for every message, everything would stop. Calls also have become free with WhatsApp. So you call to America and speak for 30-40-50 minutes. Sheer waste of time and energy. Instead why can you not relate to this which is the higher dimension relating to Hierarchy. Hierarchy is the highest dimension relating to humanity and we think we are following some kind of discipleship.”

Recently, a scientist wrote in a Swiss magazine: “When you want to do something effective against global warming, stop taking selfies” – all the infrastructure behind consumes tremendous amounts of energy. Especially the endless Netflix etc. stream entertainment – an easy way to anesthetize your brain.

At the January WTT seminar in Visakhapatnam, things got more intense for me, utmost intensity. Most sublime teachings, multi-directional inputs from people, intense talks with key persons, developing ideas for future developments, for projects. At a question-answer session, I gave a strong word of warning to the group as per the use of WhatsApp etc. There was a good reply by Sri Kumar, here are my notes:

“In humanity there is always an abuse; abuse is common because there is ignorance. Men of knowledge are few, people are stuck by one side or the other. A roller-coaster situation, abuse is about to happen… Humanity is the only species which has discrimination. See what is relevant to us; whatever is relevant to us is not relevant to others. We might be in a huge jungle, we can’t change the whole jungle except by prayer. Immediately it will have an impact on us. It will take time from humanity.

There is some negative coming out of humanity, very few use discrimination. We see what is relevant and what is irrelevant. It is very well possible. That is why we need to grow with discriminative will. We get more guided by conscience, discriminative will.

Whatever Ludger said is in every dimension of humanity, not only in internet – gold invented, misused, slowly balanced. In the 2nd half of last century, the use of fertilizers, they did great harm to the agriculture. Sometimes we learn through ignorance, through foolishness, we make experiments, experiments settle as wisdom. We keep learning by this example, … health is gone from humans and animals, we realise, slowly there is a direction in the production into another direction. Now they have realised that smoking has a very negative impact on health, still some are smoking, smoking; non-smokers were more affected by smoking.
We need to change the planet to an understanding what is a right understanding. “I don’t use it” – not using is not a solution, right use is important.

The world offers many things, be discriminate, develop the conscience, don’t send messages of WhatsApp, when there is no relevance for you, don’t look at it. That is how we use discrimination, use meditation as means to calm down, to develop inner consciousness, the antaratma (inner self), that will help to eliminate certain activities in relation to us and to the group.

We don’t have to criticise, that is Aquarian. We get into the subtler side, it is Aquarian. Make an appropriate use of the right side and don’t get into the (wrong one). The more and more you are negative, judgemental about others – we don’t touch what is black – the more and more we discuss about it, we strengthen it. Don’t get into the path of ignorance, look for light everywhere and don’t get into darkness.

The black ones try to use the others to propagate them. The negativity in us is a deception. … We as students of goodwill see the light side of it, don’t criticise the dark side of it. … You slowly disassociate from people but do not entertain the negative side, if you entertain it it is in you. Be neutral to the negative and be attractive to the positive side. That is how we need to take to the positive side. Make a good use of the good side of the developments coming to us, it is contributing to human progress. In science there is open thinking, but the sciences are under the thumb of the barbarians on the planet who control the whole of humanity. We don’t have to deny the sciences; take the positive side of all the science. Let it be so with all of us.”

A member from Spain introduced me to Microsoft Teams, explaining to me how he uses it for his course organisation and interaction, the structure set up by a friend. Chat and collaboration instruments, file sharing, and video calling. And it runs on PC/laptop/mobile without being bound to mobile. I found it thrilling, thought, “what’s the catch for Microsoft to give the basic version for free?” I know that Microsoft is a much more integer player when it comes to dealing with data. I had several discussions with IT specialists of WTT. It seems to be a way out of the challenge of using digital instruments for group work, interchange and collaboration. Of course, there are also other tools. Plenty of ideas rushed in. It will take time to evaluate and test. I started testing the app but: “Take to turtle speed, not the speed of a rabbit.”

Last year, I had a strong warning as per my health with a brain bleeding. I realised, I have to slow down, take away pressure. This is most needed, especially in the present time and with the present challenges. I’m daily walking for a while in nature, ponder and observe. Keeping longer times of silence to centre inside. The inner guidance will lead through the times of rough weather.

In all of this, I had to think of the story from Puranas of Aghasura, the enormous serpent-demon which wanted to devour Krishna and his friends. The cowherd boys innocently entered its mouth, mistaking it for a mountain cavern. After seeing this, Krishna then came to their rescue, killing Aghasura. In a way, the mobiles look like the many heads of a serpent devouring the attention. But help comes, when you turn inward and stay strongly aligned to the soul.

At irregular intervals, I share via a “Friends List” some “digital gifts” – things I have come across on the web over the last months. In time for Christmas – here are some digital gifts found in the last 5 months:

Best Christmas Campaigns 2019 – some commercials are really well done (only if you want to spend time…..)

The little baby dragon named Edgar.

Give those who give from the heart…

Cookies! … nice

A sweet little bear (Bärenmarke)

Samsung Galaxy 🙂

Homesick (Ikea)

Amazon: Singing parcels

Zalando – Christmas – being together

McDonald – playing with a reindeer

Christmas for young and old children

Mimi the owl learns to fly – Migros Switzerland ;-))

The most important ingredient is Love (Edeka Germany)

Other things:

Very nice: Bird Song Opera – Mozart’s Magic Flute ‚Papageno/Papagena Duet‘ as an audiovisual bird song aria.

Infinite Patterns – a short Animation by Cristobál Vila
See also his website and the Lux Eterna (Eterna Light) – excellent

Interesting:

There’s Growing Evidence That the Universe Is Connected by Giant Structures

Something mysterious is syncing the movements of galaxies across the universe.

If you like Hang music: The Secret Kissing of Sun and Moon

For old Beatles fans: Jimmy Fellon and Ringo Star playing with classroom instruments: We are all in a Yellow Submarine…

Photographer removes our smartphones to show our strange and lonely new world

Yesterday, a friend from Germany rang me up and enthusiastically told me about Ecosia, a free search engine that uses its profits to plant trees. Their business model: “You search the web with Ecosia. Search ads generate income for Ecosia. Ecosia uses this income to plant trees.”

I first was a bit sceptical – it sounded interesting but what is behind and how does it perform?

I looked up in Wikipedia: “Ecosia is an Internet search engine based in Berlin, Germany, that plants trees by donating 80% or more of its surplus income to non-profit organizations that focus on reforestation and conservationism. Ecosia considers itself a social business, is CO₂-negative, claims to support full financial transparency, protects the privacy of its users, and is certified by B-Lab as a benefit corporation. The website maintains a running total of the number of trees planted. According to their website, as of 14 August 2019, the search engine had been responsible for the planting of more than 64 million trees.”

I wondered how they can manage to present a search engine powerful enough in the competition with the big data octopus Google, which has gone far away from their earlier motto “do no harm”. But they have a strong partner- the search results for Ecosia are provided by Microsoft Bing, the second largest search engine in the US, after Google, enhanced by the company’s own algorithms. By the way, when you search on Ecosia “xxx #w”, it directly gives you the related Wikipedia article.

Other questions of mine were answered in their FAQ section: Ecosia’s servers run on 100% renewable energy, and every search request removes 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere (also Bing is carbon neutral). They don’t sell the user data to advertisers, have no third party trackers and anonymize all searches within one week. They even publish their monthly financial reports, so you see exactly where the income from your searches goes.

So, I have now changed to Ecosia in my browers and bookmarked it. If you are using Android devices, you might have difficulties of setting Ecosia from 2020 on, as Wikipedia informs:

“As of 21 August 2019, Search Engine Land reported that Ecosia will not participate in the “search-choice” auction to appear on Android devices led by Google. This means that in 2020 European Android phone users will not have the option to set Ecosia as a default search engine. Christian Kroll explained the boycott decision saying: “We’re deeply disappointed that Google has decided to exploit its dominant market position in this way. Instead of giving wide and fair access, Google have chosen to give discrimination a different form and make everyone else but themselves pay, which isn’t something we can accept.” Applications to participate in the “search-choice” auction are due in mind-September.” (2019)

I yesterday witnessed a strange and moving story of light and darkness:

In a previous blogpost, I mentioned a friend from Germany originally from Belarus. Two days ago, she told me that a friend of hers had contacted her “with the wish and courage to translate the English text of the biography of Sripada Srivallabha into Russian. She is a nun, and the Avatar Dattatreya is the main deity in her ministry… She is a pure soul and also speaks both languages well in the spiritual direction…”

I was thrilled that another step in the direction of the prophecy in the book that some hundred years after it was written it would be translated into many languages and go over the world.

When I read that this Russian lady is a nun related to Dattatreya, immediately images of Russian websites came to my mind where some years ago – it was in August 2016 – I had seen pictures of a beautiful ashram east of Moscow with a big golden statue of Dattatreya and other saints. (If you have the Google Chrome, go to the following pages -Russian- with automatic translation – I only use this browser for such cases…. you can download it here). I am not putting the images in this blogpost but please do see them.

They had done 108 sculptures of mahasiddhas and gods, they wanted to create a mandala of one hundred eight temples of unity of all religions. For this, they had created already a beautiful Avadhutta Dattatreya Temple, a Rishi Vasishtha Temple, a Temple of Seven Rishis and planned to do a Temple of Refuge. See here about their spiritual head, Swami Vishnudevananda Giri.

And here is another website about this Center of Vedic Culture ‘Divya Loka’ as a community of Russian-speaking followers of Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma).

When I told my friend of my findings, she sent me a picture of the destruction of the ashram by Russian autorities… I googled for images of the ashram – and found a Russian TV report of NTV.ru entitled, in English translation, “The temple of Nizhny Novgorod sectarians razed to the ground”. And: “The bailiffs decided to demolish three so-called churches at once in an abandoned village in the Nizhny Novgorod region, where members of a strange religious community have recently settled. Services were held there by the newly-minted and self-proclaimed guru. He is known in the world as a former political officer of the Ukrainian army. Regular trances, hypnosis, and cruel punishments for the smallest offenses drove adherents crazy.” See here the printscreen of the Russian original website and here with English translation. You can read more background information on the original site. See also the page about a series of suicides related to this place in 2014.

Fact or fabricated story? I had to think of persecutions in the name of state and religion in present and past and of spiritual aberrations. In the Indian scriptures, there are many stories about how the king of the devas (the beings of light, of spirit) became proud (behaved wrongly) and so the asuras (the forces of matter) attacked and destroyed the world of the devas. Only after turning to Narayana (the highest God or the pure existence) for help, they found the way back to the rightful path…

My friend wrote me, “Nothing new for Russia. The Roerich Museum was also closed.” (I had blogged about the museum before, see here and here.)

Thoughts came to me what Sri Kumar had repeatedly told us, that outer forms can be destroyed but the inner truth will manifest where time and space demand. That we do not build much outer structures to remain “light” and that we should try to live “normal temperament”, not creating special attention: “Much working can be done in silence provided there is ‘Normal Temperament’.”

I had a little exchange with the Russian lady. She is at the moment living in Nepal. She started reading the biography of Sripada Srivallabha and is willing to translate it. May the endeavour be blessed.

P.S. from February 2020: The lady told me in December that the book is already translated (wow!!!) and they are about to print it.

10 days ago, I was invited to a summer party of the WTT group of Lake Constance. It promised to be a warm but not hot weekend. I took the highway via Konstanz (Constance) to cross the lake via ferryboat to Meersburg – a little holiday feeling.

A quarter of an hour later, around noon, I arrived at the home of my friends in Heiligenberg (‘Mountain of Saints’), with a castle overlooking the vailley. Manfred had to do some errands in preparation of the garden party and he invited me to lunch in an anthroposophic restaurant in Überlingen.

When we returned to their home, Sabine, his wife also had just arrived from school – she is a language teacher. Manfred is a retired industrial engineer and now an enthusiatic herbalist and wisdom teacher. (We had recently met at the May Call seminar in Mount Shasta.) He is focused on promoting knowledge about the healing power of plants. He has developed a huge network and is organising workshops on making herbal products for home use. And since both are also profoundly related to the wisdom teachings, another network of meditation and study developed. Over the years, I had participated in some of their group meetings. It is very inspiring to see how such a “flower-garden of seekers” can grow when it is well and regularly nurtured in a spirit of openness and synthesis. As an outer reflection Manfred has developed a beautiful lush garden with many different types of plants, especially with many different species of fragrant roses. He told me that he is inwardly relating to the plants and they grow there in all glory.

Friday evening around sunset time Sabine and I went swimming in a nearby beautiful bathing lake – summer fulness. The couple had already done quite a lot of preparations and I helped with some final arrangements. Saturday around 3 pm the group arrived, around 20 persons. We started with a meditation and some exchange and then the group went into the garden.

There were sprightly conversations – you could feel that the group connections had grown over the years. I enjoyed talking to various friends and especially exchanging with a new person and her daughter originally from Belarus but now living since many years in Germany – they had visited me the weekend before at our home in Switzerland. They told me about many Russian speaking people they know who are deeply interested in the wisdom teachings of WTT and we discussed of how this could be further developed.

Sabine had prepared a little slide show about the Mount Shasta and the May Call there and she asked me to give a short talk about it. Time quickly ran by, and when the guest had left we tried to clear up the garden as much as possible – an intense thunderstorm came during the night bringing lots of water.

In the morning, there were clouds hanging over the nearby hill and the flowers were still decorated with raindrops. We finished the clean-up work and had some conversations. Such group exchanges are always a good networking time, and so we discussed some ideas. When I set out for the journey back to Switzerland, the temperature had risen high again but I felt fulfilled with the impressions of the beautiful weekend.

The formula “E Pluribus Unum” (from many, one) is the traditional motto of the United States used on seals and coins. Its meaning, however, is much more profound than just uniting different ex-colonies to one nation. It is even deeper than what the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus gives as “The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one”. The eternal wisdom teachings explain that focussing on diversity, as we do with our analytical minds, makes us lose the sense of oneness. All multiplicity is coming from one source, is being held in existence by the unfathomable background of all and is merging again into the inconceivable oneness – from many to one.

Chris Jordan, a photographer and artist, has created a mandala named “E Pluribus Unum”. In the video project realised in 2010, he visualises the many different “organisations around the world that are devoted to peace, environmental stewardship, social justice and the preservation of diverse and indigenous culture” (from the video) by zooming from a detail structure to a great globe of interconnected lines expressing the beauty created by all the goodwill work done on the globe.
The video contains a million names of such organisations – Chris explains that it would need to include more than twice the number of names to cover all activities.
All these projects seem to be different activities but together they form one unified effort to promote the well-being of earth and of the beings living on it – a great visualisation of oneness done through Chris’ video.
The mandala is constructed around a circle containing 108 equally-spaced points. In Eastern wisdom, the number 108 is explained as containing profound keys to understand time cycles, like 4 x 108 = 432.

In many of his artworks Chris visualises complex realities in photos or movies. See also my 2007 blogpost about his activities or about the trailer to his impressive video “Midway” about plastics polluting the Pacific Ocean.
His works are intended to raise our awareness to understand complicated relationships by visualising with his “environmental art” the effects of pollution, mass consumption or destructive behaviours.

See more on his website or his videos on Vimeo.

Picture (c) Chris Jordan, from the video

Today 12 years ago, I published the first blogpost on Friday, 31 March 2006. In the meanwhile, 1402 little “flowers” (blogposts) have grown along the wayside. The quote from Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’ Garden I with which I started is still the guiding star:

Yes, yes, yes, each word of unity is as the seed of some fair flower.
To cultivate a garden of beauty is permitted to all.
But where are the gardeners who can judge which seed is best?
We shall teach them to gather the fertile stalks.
We shall pluck out the blighting weeds.
And the ground where God has manifested Himself
We shall adorn with flowers.

I decided to do the blog in English to keep the scope international. In a way the blog is my public diary of events, reflections and little stories to sow some seed of inspiration and good will. And I frequently search the blog to re-find a specific topic.

And sometimes interesting comments by readers add a little flower to the garden. So I hope that the garden of inspiration will further grow with future blooming.

Easter Bunny working in the garden in front of the seminar centre “Lichtblick” (Bright Spot). On the ball in the background it says:
“Good thoughts are angels which you send out to bring about the desired event.”

 

A friend today sent me the link to a fascinating  video about “The World’s Biggest Eye Contact Experiment“.

The initiative is organised by a group of young people from various backgrounds who call themselves “The Liberators International“. The idea came “after noticing a common thread of isolation in today’s society.” So they organise events where people share 1 minutes eye contact with a stranger in the heart of cities and towns worldwide. “Holding eye contact with another person can evoke many feelings which can be scary, especially when in today’s society we tend to repress our deepest emotions.” More…

The next global experiment with events in many countries around the world will be on 23rd of September 2017, during the UN International Week of Peace.

Have a look at the video from last year’s Eye Contact Experiment, where 124 cities cooperated.

Read more about their inspiring mission: “”We are a whole movement of people passionate about sharing acts of love and kindness in public.”
“We are here to lead by example to allow the people of planet Earth to see that we are brothers and sisters of the same human race, travelling together on this Earthship we collectively call home. We are a global family of people ready to actively be a part of the change we’d like to see in this world. We use our skills, intelligence, gifts and abilities to create positive experiences for the world to actively participate in making today and tomorrow’s future more sustainable and harmonious. We create large scale global events that create an experience of unity for the Earth, we also create festival experiences of unity that uplift crowds of people by combining ice breaking games with a banging DJ set. … We do not force, we simply give rise to a new opportunity.”
“Our Vision for the Future: We aim to coordinate, record and distribute monthly global acts of freedom, which reconnect humanity with their innate, interconnected power.”

You also find the Liberators on Facebook.

Image (c) from the gallery of Eyecontactexperiment.com

Video: The World’s Biggest Eye Contact Experiment 2016

Benjamin, a good friend of mine from Munich, has built an app which shows daily astro-events as a calendar. He calls it smoon and makes it available for free:

The new app is launched today, at Virgo full moon. smoon stands for “sun and moon”. It runs on smartphones and tablets with iOS or Android, in English German or Spanish, in a few days also in French, later will come Portuguese.

At a glance you can see moon phases, constellations, sunrise and sunset, day and quarter rulers; short keywords indicate the specific quality of time. All calculations are done for your local position and time zone – everywhere in the world.

For installation on iOS download “smoon” in the AppStore, on Android search for “smoon” in the PlayStore.

The app is a practical tool for working with the daily constellations, for meditation or interpretation. It might help you to have the energies of the time in mind.

A few days ago, I received an e-mail of Fali Engineer, a friend from the Houston Lodge of Theosophical Society, with a video-file of a speech by Valarie Kaur. I found the video online at Scroll.in, and it is worth viewing.

“She spoke of the dark times ahead and how instead of leading to despair, this could be an opportunity for change,” it says on her website. And further: “This speech was actually the message of the Revolutionary Love Project, an initiative she launched in autumn of 2016. This movement and her New Year’s Eve speech, Kaur said, arose from her distress about the increase in hate violence during the US presidential election campaign.”

This moving talk was given on last New Year’s Eve in an African American Church in Washington DC. Though it was helt in the context of the political situation in America, what she is talking about is not an American topic but a universal one – about the basic oneness of humanity and overcoming hate an exclusion.

Valarie Kaur is a powerful woman and a charismatic speaker. Wikipedia says about her that she “is an American documentary filmmaker, a civil rights activist, and a Sikh interfaith leader. After the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, she began to document hate crimes against Sikh and Muslim Americans immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, which resulted in the 2006 documentary Divided We Fall. … Kaur has given speeches at the White House, the Pentagon, and the Parliament of the World’s Religions.”

:: The 6 minute video “Raising a Brown Boy in Today’s America“.

Valarie Kaur [picture from the video (c) Scroll.in]