Today a Spanish e-mail which landed in the spam-folder from one of the newsletter-subscribers contained a link to a film about “Shocking New Fur Investigation“, by the Swiss Animal Protection / East International, showing how in fur farms the fur is cut off from living animals. There was a link leading to a site called “Fur is Dead“, for actions against cruelties in the name of fashion. (You might consider not looking the video, for it is atrocious.)

I had written before about “Trash? or How to Deal with Atrocities” and other blogposts about man’s cruelty against his fellow-creatures. It seems as if people cut off part of their being to ignore what they are doing, to suppress their consciousness. Such cruelties not only happen against animals, but also against fellow men. It is difficult not to close one’s eyes and at the same time not to be drawn into a voyeurism of media stimulation. May people realize that what they are doing now is the seed of their future destiny coming back to them. And may they develop feelings of friendship and friendliness towards all sentient beings.

Temple elephant in India

Today a friend sent me a beautiful powerpoint presentation (not the sound…) about the Giant Crystal Cave in the Naica Mine of Chihuahua, Mexico. It is said that these are the largest natural crystals on Earth. The pictures are awe-inspiring, very impressive. You can read more about the crystal cave here or find more information and links at Wikipedia.

An addition: A friend sent me a comment on the giant crystals from an intellectual colleague:
“You do know this is bullshit. Yes they are ‘actual’, but they are not verídicas (please excuse the bit of show-off pedantry). A clever but still fairly obvious cut-and-paste hoax. Pay careful attention to light angles and shadows, also different levels of focus. And, like all other similar fakes, if they are real why haven’t we already seen them in National Geographic? Still, interesting bullshit.”

It seems that this colleague didn’t read his “National Geographic” bible well enough, for they posted an article on the caves on April 6th, 2006, also with a photo.

This crystal isn’t from the mine, it is in the house of a friend.

The pictures of the Crystal Cave remind me of the famous painting of Nicholas Roerich “Most Sacred – Treasure of the Mountain” of 1933. He is combining in his pictures sublime spirituality with extraordinary beauty.

Courtesy Roerich-Museum, New York

Last Wednesday the team of our division at my office made a works outing to Augusta Raurica, an ancient Roman city located about 20 km east of Basel near the village of Kaiseraugst. It is the oldest known Roman colony on the Rhine. Today there is a large archaeological site with a museum.

It somehow touched me to see how, over a period of about 300 years, from about 40 BCE to 260 CE the city developed to a prosperous place, with a big amphitheatre, numerous temples and commercial centres. Then, after battles with invading German tribes, the upper village was destroyed and a small fort and settlement remained over the centuries. It was the biggest Swiss city until the 19th century. In the last decennies archeology has restored parts of the ruins and tried to reconstruct how people lived at the flourishing times. Many layers of mud had covered the ancient sites, often several meters of debris.

Reconstructing bygone splendour: How did people live in the past? A lot remains speculation. And what about our way of life? How will people think about it in some thousand years?

We often have the impression that the society where we are living in is a stable situation, with all the infrastructures. But things can quickly change, and there have been so many empires coming and going. Also in our lives the qualities of time cycles keep on changing, often without our noticing it.

In Kaiseraugst people had found precious silver plates on fields, without knowing their value, and had even thrown some away into the garbage. It’s not so easy to discover a rare value, when you don’t have the eye to see. Some had taken silver treasures to their homes, but had to give them back, because these are common good. Also a very “normal” human trend of “appropriating” things…

Mercury, the messenger of God – for long periods he was waiting hidden in the earth. Likewise for long centuries the ancient wisdom, symbolised by the statues of Gods, was in the West lying deeply buried under orthodoy and materialism.

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.

Some days ago I got an e-mail from an Indian friend searching books of Pythagoras for an acquaintance. I didn’t know much about any books of this great initiate in English, I just have read the excellent book of Master EK (Ekkirala Krishnamacharya), “The Wisdom of Pythagoras“, which for the time being is out of print in English and only available in German and Spanish.

Wikipedia said that no texts by Pythagoras survived, but some relevant source texts from Antiquity deal with his life and teachings and that of his followers. There is even an on-line book, The Complete Pythagoras, containing all survived biographies and Pythagorean fragments. Since my Indian friend has built up a beautiful little Spiritual Book Centre in Hyderabad, which I had visited last January, I tried to find out a bit more about books on the esoteric teachings of Pythagoras and asked an American friend with a profound spiritual background, but he referred me also to Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica, with paid content.

May last year we had been for a seminar on Pythagoras with our spiritual teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, in Samos, where the great spiritual master was born. He later had to leave his native island to escape the tyrannical government of Polycrates. We had seen the caves where he had lived and I remember a beautiful evening meditation in the harbour of Pythagoreion at the feet of the Pythagoras statue.

Statue of Pythagoras at Pythagoreion, with cosmological and mathematical symbols related to his teachings

View from the cave, where Pythagoras meditated

The cave is situated in a rock face at the north coast of the island.

View from out of the cave

Pythagoras – meeting of cosmic and human wisdom

Yesterday at my office I was at a presentation of impressions from a journey to the north of Mali a colleague and a photographer had made last week. They had been accompanying a health care team of the Mali Red Cross – distributing mosquito nets to pregnant women – to shoot photos for a donation campaign. The journey – via Timbuktu and Goundam to small villages over bumpy roads – through the desert had been quite an adventure for the Europeans, and the report of my colleague gave a lively, colourful impression.

It was very impressive to see how the people there live in great poverty in a desert-like area, which had been full of lakes until beginning of the 70ies of last century. The Niger River dry, 40 degrees centigrade, burning sun, a sandstorm, nothing of the infrastructures which are so normal to us here, like electricity, water, telecommunication… not even vegetables, and for food just a bit of rice and millet. And the wells are running more and more dry.

In the group of listeners the head of a PR-agency who has designed the donation campaign asked: Why do you support people in an area where there is no future for them? Why not evacuate them to other areas? – The photographer explained that he also had reflected on it during the journey, but that you cannot give just simple answers. The people have arranged their lives in a way to cope the extreme difficulties, though many children die and the health of the adults is also often poor.

I was deeply moved by the impressions of the journey. Looking out of the window, it was raining, and it continued to do so the whole day and night and also today. The rivers in Switzerland are overflowing their banks, there are help appeals in the media, and this morning I shot some pictures of the flood water in the old town of Berne for a news article on relief efforts. It was cold, the sky heavily covered with grey clouds.

A friend from Minnesota wrote today that the farmers over there are praying for rain, and this for the third year. The climate is getting warmer, but the people don’t believe in global warming.

It’s such a range of simultaneous extremes.

The old town of Berne with high water of the river Aare

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.”

Today is new moon, this being a time of a reorientation of forces. A new cycle is about to start. A beautiful impression of the moon was captured in July 2006 by astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) floating far beyond the horizon. You find here some information about the picture.

(c) NASA

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.

Having yesterday came back from an intense one week seminar on Yoga and Transcendence with Sri K. Parvathi Kumar in Kandersteg, which was fascinating, but not so suited for blogging… It was much focused on experiencing inner dimensions and gaining the related understanding. Meditating and focusing on subtle topics with about 200 people creates a field of vibrating energy which for me is very thrilling.The seminar was also inspiring because of meeting a lot of friends from different countries and continents and have exchanges with them.

When this evening I went through the pictures I took one jumped into my eyes, though seemingly uninteresting. I had been taking several pics of the Blümlisalp-Mountain from out of the hotel window at different times of the day. On one I had taken last Wednesday at about 5 o’clock in the morning, there were all over the photo balls of different size. You can recognize them in the sky:

Click on the photo to see it enlarged (also the other picture).

It is the only photo of all the pictures with these circles. But they reminded me of a series of photos a friend from Spain had taken in the Ajanta caves in India, where exactly the same balls had appeared, and this in the holy atmosphere of the temple caves. He told me that these were energy patterns of subtle beings, devas, and that also other people had made such photos. Here is one pic of this series:

It is easy and common to intellectualize these phenomena away, while others might be getting enthusiastic about such things manifesting, like for example Crop Circles (here a recent Lotus manifestation). For me they don’t have a value in themselves but are messengers, symbols or ciphers of the subtle worlds, pointing to that which is beyond.

For a deeper understanding of these energies you might like to read the Lunar Messenger on Cooperation with the Devas.