One of the moments which deeply impressed me during my last stay in India developed its impact only slowly. It was during the farewell ceremony at the end of the seminar. Sri Kumar mentioned that those coming to future seminars should acquaint themselves beforehand about what has been taught in previous Indian seminars. This way they would not get lost and have a better understanding of the teachings. And he explained that he won’t come anymore to the West for giving seminars. He would continue teachings via YouTube, according to American and European time zones. He remarked that he has given so many teachings and that it has become a habit to ask for more without applying what has already been given.

Before my mind’s eye I saw the great sublime structure woven by these teachings given over many years in a grand sequence, bringing to the denser planes of our minds most profound concepts about cosmic dimensions of manifestation, development and re-merging of creation, about their correspondences in us, about the laws of divine unfoldment. And that this knowledge is helping to unfold our inner dimension and speeds up the evolution.

At the same time I noticed how very undeveloped are the inner sense organs of us listeners and of those people over the globe trying to assimilate these teachings. With most there seemed to be a rudimentary inner perceptive system. Many feel attracted by Sri Kumar’s magnetism and by the ambiance of the seminars but not by the teachings. I heard from a number of members that they are not really interested in the teachings or maybe just some small aspects. Some said they feel more drawn to Buddhism and its practices because they are not so complicated. The attitude of mindfulness is very appealing and they don’t want to bother about the cosmological dimensions, which Buddhism leaves out of sight. I answered to a friend that for me the teachings are some kind of a training for our “mental and Buddhic muscles” and that like with other sport training you might feel pain when the muscles are tensed…

The last two days, I heard this from different sides. I thought of the tremendous work done by Sri Kumar and the difficulty of transmitting the sublime teachings. I was reminded of people using a smartphone. It is quite simple to operate, just some clicks – but is it easy under the surface? Who really understands in depth how it is functioning? And how comparatively few know how to build, how to write the software – and how many cooperate, adding specific sub-aspects to the whole, the “simple device”.

A friend said to me, she told Sri Kumar that she cannot understand much of his teachings but that she loves to be in his presence, and he smiled full of love. She added: “A gardener knows, when the seeds sprout and the plants develop.”

A Bonsai Tree Nursery in India – trees grow slowly

Taurus Full Moon is approaching, a time where abundant sublime energy is available if we attune to it. This full moon is celebrated as the Vaisakh (or Wesak) Full Moon, which is also commemorated as the day of Buddha’s enlightenment. People everywhere in the world celebrate this very special moment.

The exact time (Central European Summer Time – GMT+2) is on Monday, 4 May at 05:42 am. You might do an extra effort of alignment during this time or gather for group meditations during the 18 hours before the exact full moon time. You find some more information about the Vaisakh Festival here. United with many meditators world-wide, you might use the Great Invocation in your meditation.

The Lucis Trust has just published a beautiful video about the meaning of the Wesak Full Moon.

A vision of the Buddha blessing at Vaisakh Full Moon, picture from the video (c)

The Vaisakh Valley in Tibet, behind the Mount Kailash, picture from the video (c)

People from the West often feel irritated when they come into contact with the many deities – and masters – worshipped in India. They ask, silently or aloud, what’s the purpose of all this? There are religions which condemn these worships as polytheistic or erroneous beliefs. They argue that there is only one God and monotheism is the only true belief… Yes, of course, there is only One but… comes to my mind. But what?

Some weeks ago I noticed the irritation about the plethora of divine beings with a friend. I know it only too well, this feeling of getting lost:

For many years, this has been an undercurrent in my life. I oscillated between Western and Eastern views of the world. I was striving to bridge the gap. At times it seemed to engulf me. I feel a fascination for Eastern wisdom but at the same time alienated by the many contradictions of eastern practical life, which is often at quite a distance from the heights of their sublime concepts. I noticed, however, that with the years I increasingly perceive the underlying unifying background and came to love the multiplicity.

Over 40 years ago, I came to the house of a member of my then-meditation group and saw there many statues – of Shiva, Ganesha, Krishna… This man had a big collection of partly costly Indian idols of gods. I had no relation to them, I felt disconcerted and at the same time I felt a strange fascination.

A few years later, I started studying Comparative Religion as one of my secondary subjects at University to get a deeper unerstanding. Later, I came into contact with theosophy and anthroposophy. There I learnt that in ancient-most times man lived with natural clairvoyance and could directly perceive the great divine beings of the subtle realms which he revered as Gods, knowing very well that they were facets of the One unknowable source of existence, which he called God. There were guardians (priests-initiates) who showed the way to this sublime vision. In temples and mystery schools the keys to direct experience were safeguarded. With the course of the ages, however, the epochs became darker and the knowledge got lost. Belief replaced experience and jealous religions fought for their God-systems as the only right ones. With the advent of modern critical thought and materialistic sciences the religious beliefs got ridiculed as superstition and accepted merely as a kind of social service.

Now, in the Aquarian age, when more and more people turn again inward and discover the subtle realms, a more differenciated view of the subtle worlds re-emerges. The “Gods are returning”. By becoming aware of the sublime beings of light, the Devas, they start working with us. They bring a splendour into our life which cannot unfold otherwise. Many times, I witnessed this radiance of subtle light shining into the surroundings. To perceive this light, which is nourished from behind, you have to open your subtle eyes; otherwise the curtain remains closed.

Indian Gods in shop windows at Berne, Switzerland, 24 December 2008:

At the CVV Sharing meeting beginning of Aries I did an experiment with the group guiding it on a meditative journey through life.

Archetypally, our life-span unfolds in a certain rhythmical pattern following cycles of 7 years. In his book on “Uranus“, Dr. Kumar explains: “There is a 7-year cycle with the humans with a grand cycle of 84 years. A life lived for 84 years is considered to be a full life, a fulfilled life.” This is “due to the fact that Uranus functions with the periodicity of 7, for the simple reason that every 7 years he transits a zodiacal sign and completes the zodiacal circle in 84 years.”

Thus, the first 7-year cycle of our life is the Aries period of entering into a new life and starting our self-expression. And the last cycle, from 77 to 84 years, is the Pisces period of completion and preparation for the transition. If you continue after 84, it is regarded as carrying on your journey into a higher turn of the spiral.

Following an impulse received in a meditation some months ago, I outlined a structure for the meditative journey through life, which you can download here in English or in German (PDF). The movement is going back from the Pisces period through the different septennial cycles to the Aries period and then a little bit beyond, to the time of descent into the uterus and of planning the incarnation. Then, we turn around at the point of birth and visualise the unfolding of our life up to the present moment and further beyond, what might still wait for blossoming. Afterwards, we go to the present moment, which is an Aries-point of new beginning, and which was the first day of Aries, when the group experiment was done. From there, we would visualise the seed of the new cycle and the path through the next 12 months. Then we would come back to the present moment and open our eyes.

I invited the group members to relax and close their eyes. For the periods before and after their conscious experience they might intuitively visualise the quality of these cycles, for which I read out a short keynote.

As an expression of the rhythmical heart-beat of life and the undercurrent sound of creation, OM, I kept on intoning a singing bowl, creating a specific “ding” sound when changing to the next cycle. For each cycle I took about 1.5 minutes. The whole exercise took 30 minutes, followed by an exchange in small groups of 3 persons about what period in their lives occupied them most.

It was a very intense experience. While conducting the group, I suddenly started noticing that there was a change in the quality of the atmosphere with every septennial cycle / zodiacal sign, especially when it came to the pre-natal phases.

Several members afterwards came to me expressing that they had been deeply moved by this journey through their lives and especially the moment of touching the pre-natal phases. 2 persons told me that images of a moment of preparing the incarnation came, with a feeling of the plan of their life.

Since it was a a meditative group process, I left it to the members to integrate the experiences of the process into their lives.

Sign                      Phase    Quality
Pisces Time        84 – 77   Completion and preparation
Aquarius Time     77 – 70   Cheerful vastnesses, virgin territory
Capricorn Time    70 – 63   The peak of unfoldment, consolidation and distribution
Sagittarius Time  63 – 56    Sublime goals, implemention
Scorpio Time       56 – 49   Profound transformations
Libra Time           49 – 42  Connections, working together
Virgo Time          42 – 35   Reviewing, reorienting
Leo Time           35 – 28    Establishing one’s kingdom, ruling
Cancer Time       28 – 21   Building the house, preserving
Gemini Time        21 – 14   Equipping, trying out
Taurus Time       14 – 7     Feeling the power, moving forward
Aries Time          7 – 0      Entering into life, expressing

Review at the Threshold Point of Birth:
Pisces Time                     In the waters of the uterus
Aquarius Time                  In the etheric vicinity
Capricorn Time                 Preparation for the descent
Sagittarius Time               Idea and plan for the incarnation

Turning around and prospects at the Aries point of birth
The unfoldment of the flower of life

The Aries point in the Here and Now
Feeling the seed of the new cycle
Envisioning the path through the coming 12 months

• The text in English or in German (PDF)

Intoning the singing bowl

A beautiful 6 minutes inspirational video by the visual artist Louie Schwartzberg on Gratitude. The text is written and spoken by Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast and it has the message to open your heart and feel grateful for this day, the beauty of this planet, the people we meet… Louie’s website Movingart, videos on Vimeo.

Photo from the video (C Louie Schwartzberg)

The Vaisakh Festival (also written Wesak) is an important annual event for receiving the cosmic energies of Will coming from the “Eye of the Bull” and giving us a fresh dose of Will energy to carry out the work of good will. The festival is celebrated at Taurus Full Moon. The full moon phase is from 13 May, 10:45pm – 14 May 09:16pm CEST.

You can read more about the significance of the festival on the WTT website. In the book “Mars – The Kumara” by Dr K. Parvathi Kumar there is also a chapter about the deeper meaning of the Vaisakh Full Moon. Here is an extract as a PDF.

The Lucis Trust has just released a new beautiful video about the Wesak Festival 2014.

Taurus – The Vaisakh Festival, (Images of Synthesis 2010)

2009 was for me a time of a prolonged inner crisis and of signs of a deeper transformation. I experienced a high sensitivity towards people and words. Between June-October I wrote a series of 90 poems; 2 came a bit later, written in memory of a friend who passed over. Then the doors closed again and no more poems came through. In April 1980 I had experienced a similar influx of words leading to my first book of poems, “The Song of Silence” (German). 33 years passed until the German publication of the new volume appeared in 2013.

I called it “Shades of Yous” (Schattierungen von Dus), because “The poems speak of the reverberation of encounters, of wounds and their healing, of dangers of the way and surprises of everyday life.” (from the preface)

People whom I showed the poems often asked me, “What is Yous?” I reply, “The plural of “you”. – “But there is no such plural, you is always singular.”

I know, but each time I met a person and later a poem arose, it was an intimate echo of this encounter with a “you”, and each encounter had a different quality, gave rise to another shade of yous.

When reading the poems you might feel other such irritations. They reflect the inner reactions you might experience in encountering friends or also just passers-by. Often, however, these sensations drown in the currents of everyday life. I tried to save them in these poems. For if you listen to what the irritations want to tell you, you will discover a message, and this message might guide you to a deeper understanding and even show you a way out of a crisis.

Last year I published the German version – in digital form and one as a paper copy –  each poem illustrated with photos visualising an aspect of the respective message. I edited the images in a way that they do not superimpose the poems.

It was an adventure to translate the poems, and often it was not easy to render the content and musicality of one language in another. Vijay Ganugula from New Jersey, USA, helped me a lot through his proofreading and our discussions. He wrote: “Some of the poems touched me deeply – as I noted in my comments on those slides. It is especially very inspiring to see in the 4th part how the tide turns and veils get lifted when you have confidence in the inner/Yous/Master. … Like your paintings, these poems are a true gift from you to people like me. Thank you for sharing this gift.”

You can view the “Shades of Yous” online on my website, download it as a powerpoint or as a PDF. And here you find some words about their creation.

Whenever you have tried to silence your mind you will have realised that it keeps on moving. Only when you move on to the next higher plane of pure energy, the thoughts slowly vanish. The same, when you try to fight any disturbing outer influences such as noise you will notice that your fight is in vain – or better that the disturbance is inside and not coming from outside.

In his computer animated short “The Fly“, Hanjin Song, a graduate from a school of art and design in Florida gave an excellent illustration of this principle of meditation: A samurai is seeking inner peace by trying to rid himself of the distraction by a fly. However, he discovers that the flies multiply and seem to be coming at him harder and faster. Only when he starts accepting the disturbance ends and he really turns inward. Well done!

The fly on the cheek of the samurai – picture (c) from the short.

In the last blogpost on the Astro-Forum in Hamburg I gave a short description of a visualisation exercise with the double pyramid and the planets on the central axis I did with the group. I like this exercise which I do every morning in a standing position after doing some yoga asanas.

Two days ago I cam across an interesting extract of a transcription from a seminar of Sri Kumar in Hamburg 1989, where he gave more details about the work with the double pyramid as a powerful protection shield. In the text he mentions the mantram Saravanabhavaya, which you find described in the book on Mantrams  and which you can listen here. So here is the extract from the lecture (c: WTT India / Dhanishta Editions):

“Then we come to the meditation of the 6-faced Kumara. North and South, Each and West are the four directions, and we have two more directions, one is above, the other is below. With above and below, we have the six directions. From all these six directions, six types of energies visit us. They can be positive, if we are positive, they can be negative, if we are negative.

There is one triangle upwards and another triangle downwards making a rombus. Imagine that from the East there is a ray of light and wisdom coming into you and from the South there is a ray of love coming and meeting you in the heart. From the West you can imagine another ray of strength coming and meeting you in the heart. From the North it is the energy of silence coming as a ray and meeting you in the heart.

It is the light and wisdom of the East,
the love of the South,
the strength of the West,
the silence of the North

meeting you in a 4-fold direction in the center of your heart. You have already the cross fixed in you, because there is one energy coming from the front of you and another energy coming from the back and meeting at the same point in the heart. You have the center of the cross in your heart and you have the projection on all four sides. Then you connect up the four and you image that from above the four points are connected. Now you can see the dome and the base.

From above you invoke the Lord who for our purposes can be considered as the energy of Vasistha, and you have the dome connected from below to the four points.

There is a pyramid constructed from below and a pyramid constructed from above, the energy of the apex is that of Vasistha, and the energy that comes from below is Agastya. So, in the double pyramid you are totally covered. When the six angles are connected, you have the double pyramid built around you. The six angles are invoked with the six energies. One is wisdom, another is love, another is strength, and the fourth one is silence. This is how the cross is built, and with the energies from above which are the energies of Vasistha, and with the energies of Agastya, the two pyramids are constructed.

The two names Vasistha and Agastya which we use in the fire ritual are the names Indra Vishnu and Agna Vishnu in the Veda. Agna Vishnu is the one who burns up from below upwards. Indra Vishnu is the one who shines from above downwards. There is downpour of light from above downwards, and there is upsurge of light from below upwards. It is a 2-directional fire work. So, you have the wisdom, the love, the strength, the silence meeting in your heart center along with the 2-directional fires.

This is how the six syllables are uttered. When the pyramid is built on a daily basis and established around you, it is like a diamond armoury. From head to toe there is total coverage through this protective shield. It is a diamond-like protective shield that shines forth with great brilliance. You know how a diamond shines, when there is the light of the Sun? It not only makes various colours, but the colours that are reflected are very sharp, very brilliant. If you expose a pearl to the Sun, you can see some colours in it according to the angle. But if you expose a diamond to the Sun and then make angles, the colours it makes are so sharp and so brilliant, they sometimes blind your eyes. That is the kind of sharpness we have developed around us.

It looks as though we have developed an outer shield, but then this statement has its own inversion. We have to reverse the inversion. The inversion is that we find as if we have developed it around us. It is not something that is built around us through this meditation, but something from our heart unfolds as the two pyramids, while we keep making an external construction in meditation. The seed relating to the double pyramid is in the heart, and it unfolds itself and fills us from within outside. Then we carry that kind of aura around us. We can see the etheric of that person so well developed. It is not only transparent, it is effectively transparent.

…It is not mere development of an etheric body around us, it is a very brilliant and effective etheric that affects positively others. That is how the 6-syllabled mantra has to be meditated upon.

The mantra Saravanabhava is meditated after building the double pyramid. Each time you utter the mantra Saravanabhava you construct each of the directions, and then by six utterances you complete the double pyramid, sit happily inside and keep uttering as many times as you like. You are totally insulated. There is no question of any disturbance coming from outside. Inside there will be total clearance. …

Like this, the double pyramid will make you reach the high state of blissful existence.”

Here is a painting I did in 2010, about the double pyramid: “Libra – Balancing the Higher and the Lower Pole”. You find here a description.

Cancer is the sign of the return of the soul into a physical body and thus it is related to the process of reincarnation. The Moon is also the symbol of the generative life which gives birth to forms. I tried to give expression to this idea.

In the upper part of the image you see the Moon and behind it the glow of the Sun. Two angelic figures, solar angels, observe the descent of a soul into the embryo in the womb of the mother. You see the embryo head downwards behind the descending soul. Another name for the soul, the I AM, is the Solar Angel. It is the eternal part in man which in the cycle of evolution goes through series of incarnations. The body is also called the Lunar Angel; it serves as a vehicle for the incarnation of the Solar Angel. For the left angel I chose an extract from a painting of Franz Dvorak, and for the one on the right side an extract from a painting of Edward Robert Hughes; a drawing of William Hunter for the embryo in the uterus. For the illustration of the descending solar angel, I took an image of Ilmatar, the virgin spirit of the air, by Robert Wilhelm Ekman.

At a seminar in January 2012 Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar spoke about the symbolism of the descent of the soul:
“The monad is the soli-lunar angel. There is the baby descending into the womb. The lunar angel develops all the aspects of the form and the solar angel descends. In solar there is lunar. Our sun is the lunar aspect of the cosmic sun, our sun is male-female. That is why it prepares the body in the womb for seven months. When it is preparing the body it prepares the form through the lunar aspect, and then the solar angel enters into the lunar aspect of the solar angel. It is by itself male-female. The cosmic sun even is male-female. That is how the work is. Preparation of the form and joining. We prepare the house and when it is ready we enter into the building.”

You can find this painting, also with a print version, on the Good-Will website. Or on the new website ludgerphilips.org.

28 February 2013, A 5, pencils, crayons and photo work