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

Today at spring equinox I publish a book of poems (in German) called  “Schattierungen von Dus” (Shades of Yous). I wrote the 90 + 2 poems in June-October 2009. Now, 3.5  years later, they come out as a digital work. Each of the poems is illustrated by a photo illustrating the tonality of the content and some of the motives. To give you a vague idea of the poems, here is a PDF with an effort to translate some of the poems. And here you can download the German book as a powerpoint (9 MB) or as a PDF (10.6 MB, with Acrobat Reader bookmarks to each of the poems) to see at least the numerous photos (please download the PDF, in my PDF online-viewer the colours of the photos are bad). Most of them I shot myself, many were given by friends.

It was quite some work to edit the volume and I’m very happy that it is now ready. The poems speak about the reverberation of encounters, of wounds and their healing, of the dangers of the path and the surprises everyday life brings. To my surprise I noted that the “Schattierungen von Dus” appeared exactly 33 years after my first volume of poems, the “Gesang der Stille” (or as PDF) (Song of Silence), which I wrote in Aries 1980 and published end of that year, together with illustrations I did for the poems. Some of the motives of the new poems already were there in the old ones.

Enjoy reading / viewing.

This week when I did a Google search for image elements I wanted to use for a new painting I also searched for pictures of embryos and the growth in the womb. And then I came across all kinds of pictures of inner organs and the like.

Though these weren’t new for me at all, I suddenly became very vividly conscious how under the surface of our skin there is a totally different world than what we normally have in our awareness: When I meet other people I don’t see them in terms of muscles, heart, lungs, intestines and the like. I perceive a personality and, if clear enough, the soul working through the body. I see a being expressing through the body. We speak, exchange, express love, sympathy or any other emotions. We communicate, build up concepts, and live in the worlds of our family, profession or society. And some millimetres below our skin there is this world of pulsating organs, like another planet. A wonder how we blank out these dimension and live in our own worlds, created by our perception. Of course it is illusionary and transient, but that is the dimension where we are mostly living in. And in the underground there are forces and laws at work which shape our destinies… And just like we are not aware of what is just below the skin, we are normally not aware what is just below our conscious awareness.

A picture I selected for the painting was a drawing of an the embryo in the uterus by the Scottish anatomist William Hunter (1718–1783).  I transformed it into blue and integrated it into the picture I did for Cancer. The embryo is head downwards, like our normal perception. Even if we are living with our heads up, we are mostly oriented “downwards” to matter. Let’s turn around and look upwards. It is just a little change in perspective.

William Hunter, drawing of an embryo, from Wikimedia

I today got the following story in Spanish – it’s nice, so I google-translated it:

One day a disciple asked his master:

– Teacher, when will be the end of the world?

– Which end of the world? replied the Master

– What do you mean? How many times will the world end?

– Two times, said the master. The first is when my wife dies and the second will be when I die.

The end of the world comes to us when that which we consider our personal world ends, everything else is relative.

Dawn over the Alps, 23 Nov. 2012

The picture for the month of Leo discloses itself intuitively to the observer, but some words might help for a better understanding.

The wisdom teachings tell us that the sun we see is just the physical appearance of the soul of the sun, called the heart of the sun. And this one is hiding the central spiritual sun. Our sun is an inlet gate for the higher planes. In us the physical heart corresponds to the physical sun. It is the seat of the pulsating principle of life, the sound of which is also called the roar of the lion. So you see in the picture the radiating lion in the centre of the lotus.

When we listen to the sound of pulsation and fall into its rhythm, the mind comes to rest and we slowly get uplifted out of personality to unite with the ajna centre on the forehead, the heart of the sun. This is depicted as a huge flower like a sunflower with a pulsating heart in the centre. The spiritual sun corresponds to our head centre, the sahasrara, where the spark of the eternal light rests in the centre – the jewel in the lotus. This is represented as a sun globe opening its petals into space.

In the background you see the window of a cathedral. I constructed it from out of three cathedral windows and transformed the colours into fiery golden yellow. It represents the inner subjective side, the holy space within us, which opens up and allows the fusion of the different planes of light to happen.

You can download the high-resolution version from the Good-Will website.

Changes are natural for life – many we don’t notice, some come as thresholds and some bring new directions in a drastic way. This year there were a number of challenging situations of  transformation where I was / am learning to go through in balance – surgery, friendships, job – without clinging to something  when its time is over. A little observation:

Cars get older, and ours got a gearbox malfunction after nearly 200 000 km. A repair would have been too costly. Yesterday we got a new car and gave the old one away.  A change without pain. Leaving the old vehicle to take the new one is like changing bodies: We depart from the old body with its malfunctions to get into another one. We continue to exist as solar principles or “the soul”. When we identify with the body, we “lose” our existence at death. When we maintain continuity of identity we will be able to consciously withdraw and enter into the next body, realizing that we live eternally. This is the main purpose of spiritual exercises. Have a look at the book “Venus – The Path to Immortality” by Sri K. Parvathi Kumar. The fundamental wisdom teaching in the present time is to realise that there is no such thing as death.

I’m reading at the moment two books of Michael Newton (Journey of Souls / Destiny of Souls), a hypnotherapist who over more than 35 years has done clinical research and practice about regression into prior lives and especially into episodes taking place between them, such as spiritual progress reviews and the planning of future incarnations. Quote Wikipedia: “Newton describes that during their continuous visits, a great number of his patients regressed beyond this life and passed through the spirit worlds; through ongoing age regression sessions, these subjects have recalled and revealed their past life experiences and their journey through the spirit world.”

For me it is fascinating to read these detailed descriptions which substantiate the wisdom teachings and give an understanding for many twists in destiny. For more information see the website of The Newton Institute for Life between Lives  Hypnotherapy.

The reincarnation of our car

Last Tuesday I had the good chance to meet Sri Kumar for some hours in Hergiswil, where he stayed a few days on his way from Spain back to India. He was relaxing a bit after an extensive tour to groups in Europe. For an hour we watched a video of a new film together and afterwards he took time to talk with me. I told him about the turbulent weeks and months I had gone through and he gave me valuable hints and suggestions for the time ahead.

He explained to me that when you speak to people they take it with their personalities. This automatically gives a twist to the situation. Though you might speak with innocence and without ulterior motives, but the world isn’t like that: The other persons normally don’t take things as such, but colour them with their own motives and tendencies. In their critical attitude they interpret what they hear according to their understanding. They judge about the situation and talk about it to others. Gossiping thus creates rumours.

He pointed out that especially in the groups there is a lot of gossip about others going on. He said that he is continuously confronted with this gossip, which he neutralises by taking it in and not letting it out. He absorbs it and doesn’t let it stick to him: “Even in my family I do like this, so in our relations we don’t go into these matters. Keeping silent is the best.”

He recommended me to keep away from a certain situation and to learn to look for the motives of people: “Things normally aren’t the way people present them to you, for they have their motives. You have to learn to see behind and to understand the motives, but not act on what the people present.”

He said, “Many come and look what the WTT does and then go away again. Others come, look and spit at it and go away. Neither way affects me. Without any doing from my side, when somebody spits, it comes back to him. Nature does it. The WTT is open for all to come and to go when people like. The doors are open. Did you ever notice that I insisted on anything for you?” I replied, “No, and I highly cherished this freedom when I first heard about these open doors.” – “I’m like a reflector, I reflect the way people approach to me. If they come with a critical attitude to the WTT, they will encounter critical points, devotional people meet devotion, others make experiences according to their disposition. So some are disappointed when their expectations aren’t met.”

I told him that I regularly practice in the morning visualising the double pyramid he recommends for protection, especially during the times of attacks. “You can visualise the double pyramid surrounded by flames of fire, this will strengthen the protection”, he suggested. In these periods it is particularly important to stay aligned inwardly.

When speaking about my professional situation he proposed not to rush but to wait and to let things come. He explained that in his life he observes rhythms of 7 years and he gave me some examples. He explained the importance of observing the movements of Saturn, Jupiter and the north and south node: “Whenever aspects are touched by the nodes there is an obscuration. The effect of the south node is like Saturn, the effect of the north node like a double Mars.” And he gave some hints as per my present situation: “When Saturn returns to the birth position, a big cycle closes and new opportunities open up.”

(These notes are made from memory and aren’t literal statements.)

The outside as a reflection on the mirror of our consciousness

A friend sent yesterday the following story:

Once a disciple went to his teacher for a consultation. The teacher warned him – ‘I just answer three questions, my friend. So think carefully before you ask them.’

After a moment of reflection, the disciple asked: ‘What is the deeper truth?’

The teacher said: ‘A tree in the garden.’

Then the disciple asked: ‘What is enlightenment?’

The master replied: ‘A tree in the garden.’

Shocked the disciple asked: ‘What is wisdom?’

The teacher replied: ‘A tree in the garden.’

Wisdom can be everything, yet is invisible to the mere conceptualization of our brain. Teachers avoid getting caught by the questions of their disciples, because if they respond in a conceptual way they won’t achieve that the disciples abandon the confinement in their little minds.

The reflection of the sun confined to a small puddle