[Correction:] A friend just sent me the link to a video of Factly, an India fact checking site explaining that the video is not from the Olympic Games 2021 but from a visit of the Indian Prime Minister Modi in Mongolia in 2015. It is not from Olympic Games in Japan, so I changed the title of this blogpost . The video as such is authentic, the explanation not. It is nevertheless inspiring. So I keep sharing it.

A friend today shared a video from the opening celebration of the [wrong: Olympic Games 2021 in Tokyo]: A large group is performing Yoga Asanas in artistic arrangement, while “OM Maitrey Namaha” is being sung.

Very nice that this is being performed at such a major event, which is currently the focus of attention worldwide. May this be an example for other occasions and other countries.

Last week I did the first trip over several days, after 19 months “pause”. Good friends from Heiligenberg (“Holy Mountain”) in the German Lake Constance area had invited me for a visit. Since the pandemia regulations have now become less strict, I could cross the frontier again without any controls…

The couple lives in a house at the foot of the Heiligenberg mountain with a gorgeous view towards the lake and the Heiligenberg Castle above. On arrival, I noticed that my camera had taken holidays from me and stayed at home – so I borrowed the mobile of Sabine to take at least some shots.

Even without meeting physically, we have a lot of contact with group activity exchanges. But physical meetings cannot be replaced by zooming… It was a very hearty stay.

Thursday afternoon Manfred and Sabine took me on a trip to a beautiful ridge along the lake overlooking vineyards near Meersburg. And Friday morning we went to the Beuron Archabbey, a monastery now of the Benedictine order and in earlier centuries of the Augustinians. It was founded in the 11th century AD and is located in the upper Danube valley.

When we entered the church, a mass was going on. The air was full of frankincense smoke and organ music was filling the space. We preferred to do a little walk along the Danube and to come back later. The monastery has beautiful artwork of the Beuron Art School. The church ambiance brought up reminiscences of long-gone childhood times – I first went to a kindergarten in a monastery near my parents’ home and later served there as an altar boy over years. Parents and relatives wanted to make me a priest. I escaped to other directions but impregnations remained… In the souvenir shop, my friends bought for me a candle with a beautiful blue angel…

Later we drove to the nearby Campus Galli, a kind of museum and construction site (see their German website), where craftsmen and volunteers are using 9th century resources to create a monastery based on the St. Gallen monastery plan. It is the only surviving major architectural drawing from the middle-ages and copies of it were displayed at the site. The workers not only help with the construction, but also act as costumed interpreters. It was very impressive to see blacksmiths, weavers, carpenters, crockers, or coopers doing their work and to talk to them. How many steps were needed to come to the present way of living…. On the marketplace, we had our lunch with “dinnele”, a medieval kind of warm flat bread from a stone oven with cheese.

Sabine is a language teacher and Manfred is a former engineer and manager of a huge German electronic enterprise. He later deeply went into the knowledge about herbs and the healing powers of plants. He built up a large network of people interested in cultivating existing herbal knowledge, applying it and making it available in an understandable way. And he developed a beautiful garden with many kinds of roses and other plants – I very much enjoyed relaxing there under an apple tree, smelling the roses in the air….

Saturday morning Sabine took me to the market in Überlingen. A regional horticultural show is going on over the summer. Plenty of people were strolling along the lake and through the lanes. Near the ship landing point a group of artists was playing the “Pandemia Fairy Tale”… Life seemed to be nearly “back to normal”, with a Mediterranean ambiance.

In the afternoon two friends came for a visit – meditation and intense exchanges, which weren’t possible since a long time.

Sunday morning Sabine and I had an intense working session on the navigation structure for a future website of the German speaking WTT community – a team project. The time was running by, the sunny days as well. Soon I was back to the highway. Rich memories remain.

Some weeks ago, a friend sent me a the link to a YouTube video of a monk dying consciously. It demonstrates the sublime art of spiritual living and leaving. You might be interested in the text on “Dying and Deathlessness” (with info about help during dying; see the text as PDF here) or about “Death, Birth and Continuity” (PDF here) . In the book “Enlightening Encounters” (p. 31ff) of Dr K. Parvathi Kumar you find the profound story of Sreeman Ekkirala Ananthacharya, the father of Master EK, who also departed in a yogic posture and with full consciousness -which is rare in the present times.

A friend sent me the link to a page of the website of Van Cleef & Arpels, a French luxury jewelry, watch, and perfume company. The page is about their vision of Poetic Astronomy® with planetarium wristwatches. They write about the “Midnight Planétarium watch“:

“…the Midnight Planetarium watch captures Earth and five of its neighbors in the solar system (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) as they revolve around a rose gold Sun. Each planet, represented by a meticulously fashioned ornamental stone, moves at its true pace relative to the Sun: Saturn will take over 29 years to make a complete circuit of the dial, while Jupiter will do the same in just under 12 years, Mars 687 days, Earth 365 days, Venus 224 days and Mercury 88 days. The wearer of the Midnight Planétarium watch can also choose his lucky day: on the selected date, Earth will move to a position directly below the star engraved on the sapphire crystal.”

The website is very well done, with poetic video presentations, even if the prices of the astronomic watches probably will be “in the stars” for you – and me. The two pictures are from their videos (copyright Van Cleef & Arpels) And have a look at their videos – excellently done.

Such watches might also be spiritually understood not just a beauty accessory but as visualising the macrocosm reflecting in the microcosm, and keeping the relation visually present. It is the Science of Correspondences which is at the basis of our relation to the universe.

I recently had an exchange with a seeker from the West about various questions relating to the wisdom teachings as given by the World Teacher Trust. – The photos are from morning walks through our neighbourhood and not related to the content.

On one of the first e-mails the lady replied: “Again, many thanks for this, especially to Master Kumar. Maybe there will be an opportunity for me to participate at a meeting with him…”

I answered: “Master Kumar will not travel to the West anymore. In February 2020, Master Kumar became very weak. On April 14, 2020, he was hospitalised with cancer and lost consciousness for 5 days. During this time his wife died. He came back again because his work is not finished yet. After the first chemo, he just let himself be treated with homeopathy for a while, but then a second chemo became necessary…”

She: “I was very much occupied by the reference to the illness of Master Kumar and I asked myself how it can come to such a disbalance in the physical body of a master? Maybe it is a naive thought, but that a person with this spiritual background and the connection to Master CVV falls victim to such an aggressive disease, I would not have suspected and this gives me some puzzles. Was there any explanation on the part of the WTT or maybe even from Master Kumar?
Were or are under these circumstances fundamental assumptions of the theoretical frame of reference of the spiritual background of the WTT again put to the test? Could it be purely theoretically that not all basic assumptions contained in the publications and recommendations derived from them are doubtlessly, correct? I ask for your indulgence, but I would be grateful to learn how this -for Master Kumar unfortunately very sad circumstance- is dealt with in the community.”

Me: “There are often things where we run into the void with our (mental) urge for the ‘why and how something is so’. We also cannot see from our limited view why something is chosen where by a Master. Master Kumar often told how the great Masters Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Wikipedia: ‘On August 16, 1886 Ramakrishna died of throat cancer in the circle of his disciples.’) and Ramana Maharshi chose to choose a serious disease like cancer. (Wikipedia: ‘In 1949, a cancerous tumour was discovered on his arm. Ramana underwent four operations, but refused to have his arm amputated. When he died on April 14, 1950, he assured those left behind, “That which is me cannot die because it was never born”.’)

I have not attempted to explain Sri Kumar’s illness, nor do I know of any such attempt. However, I am very impressed with the way he deals with it. … For me, due to the illness, the teachings of the WTT are not at all ‘on the test bench’, on the contrary, he shows, as he teaches, that we all use the body as a vehicle, which we will also replace again like a car that has become unusable, in order to get a better model.
I have studied his teachings intensively, but I do not see that even in purely theoretical terms a revision of basic assumptions would result from the present situation. It is very stringent to me. I have, over the years, gone through enough doubts and also chasms, where I had often also received great support through him. I also think there is not ‘one’ way the community deals with the situation, but everyone has their own approach. (I sometimes said it seems to me that there are as many WTTs as there are people in it – because the understanding is in each case that of the person).

She: “Thank you for your extensive explanations, which show me that there are many more aspects to be considered and that the illness of Master Kumar can be seen from completely different angles. I had left unconsidered in my questions and considerations the fact that the ways of a Master can be unfathomable and elude our limited horizon. There seems to be in the connections and the interaction between the 7 bodies of a human being still other connections than those discussed so far. Possibly a disbalance with a Master can be balanced differently than it is possible with a ‘normal mortal’. In my opinion, a cancer illness mostly indicates an imbalance and an unresolved problem in the psyche, which has become somatized. Thereby not ‘redeemed’ and ‘repressed’ aggressive impulses often play a supporting role in this kind of illness. The fact that all Masters mentioned by you have left the incarnated life because of exactly this disease, seems to me to be no coincidence……
Life on earth is complex and the backgrounds and connections are multilayered and often difficult or even impossible to understand. It is important that Master Kumar is in harmony with himself and it is nevertheless so far well for him.
I am very grateful to the WTT that the spiritual teachings have been made accessible to everyone and I thank them again expressly.”

Me: “Yes, there may be other possibilities for the influence of a Master. However, unlike what average people do or would like to do, they do not use their knowledge and abilities for themselves. They allow what happens to them to happen. Often initiates have explained that this is a way they neutralize any remaining physical karma by remaining neutral to it. Whether that is cancer or some other disease, whether it is an accident or even, as often happened, for example with Buddha, a poisoning by a follower, or even, as in the most famous example of Jesus Christ, a crucifixion.
An average person would certainly have quickly found ways to escape this.

The Master is also not concerned with ‘being in harmony with himself’, but with the divine – whether he, as a personality, is doing well, is of no importance to him. In a small booklet about H.B. Blavatsky I once wrote:
‘In spite of great bodily pains, she continued the work on the “Secret Doctrine”. By the end of 1886, her state of health was so critical that she was temporarily in a coma and made a will on the insistence of her friends. However, the “Secret Doctrine” was not yet finished, but after one night where she was near her end and the doctors had already given her up, to the great surprise of her friends, she sat up in her bed with wakeful eyes and said: “Master was here, he gave me the alternative either to die and to be free or to live and finish the ‘Secret Doctrine’. He warned me of further great pains and torments, if I would choose to live. But when I thought of all those serious students, who are waiting for help from me, and of the storm-shaken society, for whom the ‘Secret Doctrine’ could be an anchor…” Then she asked for coffee and her tobacco tin…’
Several times, I have also observed this attitude with Master Kumar.”

A day before spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, a radiant morning sun shed its light through the narrow opening between houses into my study and meditation room. The azalea in the flower pot started to shine and also the St.-Germain picture in the background.

On the balcony, the OM sparkled in the shrub, while in the background the morning sun drew contours on the snow-covered mountains.

An Easter egg beamed on the bush in the garden next to the kindergarten around the corner.

And beyond the field path, a shrub was raising its pink blossoms against the dark blue morning sky.

Nine days ago, there was the first spring day with clear blue sky. A week before it was ice cold and snow on the fields. Now the temperature had jumped up. We went out for a walk around Schlosswil, a little village in the surroundings with a castle from the 13th and 16th century. Here are some impressions for you to enjoy.

On the website of the castle it says that there are almost 400 paintings distributed throughout the castle. The apartment corridor is decorated with a cow picture gallery (18th/19th c.) with 31 paintings.

This morning, a friend of mine sent me a short video of today’s sunrise at Durga Mountain, also called Master Mountain in the Nilagiris, the Blue Mountains of South India. It reminded me of our visit December 2016.

I had planned for last December to go there again with a group – but the strict regime of “Lady Corona” thwarted our plans. At least this way you can look digitally “through the keyhole” and see the beauty of this place.

Last Monday, Winter Solstice, getting up like every day around 20 to 5, taking a shower, doing some asanas and preparing for breakfast. But the solstice energy was already very much in my awareness, a very special moment of the year. At the longest night, in the Northern hemisphere, when the Sun enters Capricorn and is about to begin its seeming northern journey until Cancer., it is helpful to lift oneself up from matter to spirit.

The morning meditation was the WTT group gathering via Zoom – a new ritual since the beginning of the “Corona age”. This morning with a nice solstice video presentation prepared by the Spanish communication team.

After breakfast, when I was about to leave the apartment, my little granddaughter, who had surprisingly come the night before, came out of the bedroom and asked me, “Where are you going?” “I have told you yesterday that today I will meet with some friends at the Paracelsus centre to celebrate Winter Solstice”. I explained to her that from today on, the darkest day of the year. the days will start becoming lighter again. And that there is a rhythm of the earth, so that we will come again to summer. in six months. “Ah, that’s how it is”, she said with wonder in her words; “see you tonight again”.

I picked up Mathilda at the train station. When we were about to enter the highway, we saw a strong orange light behind the forest. I changed direction and we drove to a little hill behind a nearby shopping mall. There was a breathtaking view of the Bernese Alps – a grand panorama. We greeted the solstice sun and received the golden light into us.

It was a short moment and the colours started quickly fading again when we took the highway. Soon it was grey all around and later foggy. About two hours later we arrived at the Sihlsee near Einsiedeln. Here, winter was still around.

We turned into the little side road and soon arrived at the Paracelsus centre. In the past years, we had frequently met there at winter solstice, but this year, for a longer time, it was not sure if we could do so. The day before, Austria closed its frontiers to Switerland, and so our Austrian friends could not come. Others also had withdrawn due to the present situation. But since the present Swiss regulations allow such little meetings with due hygiene measures, we decided to keep up with the ritual. And two other friends joined us at the Paracelsus centre – putting on masks.

Inside, we arranged a little altar with some fir twigs, flowers and candles. We we started with a small candle ritual and meditation.

It was a special day: 21 years ago, three times seven, in December 1999, the centre had been inaugurated by Master Kumar with a seminar on Paracelsus and his ways of healing. There was much snow around when the entire seminar group came in small batches from Einsiedeln to the centre. It is located above a restaurant, where we took lunch together. Exchanging about it brought back the souvenirs.

Now, at winter solstice, we read about “Sun’s Grandeur” and the ritual of Deergha Tamas (PDF), in the book on “Sun” by Master Kumar, p. 131ff, which is related to the mystery of winter solstice (see also the hymn in Appendix 1).

After the noon meditation, our two friends had to leave already. We prepared lunch and later did a promenade in the nearby area.

The path was full of snow and ice and there was profound silence around. A pale winter sun shone through the trees.

At one place we could see the house of the Paracelsus centre with the bridge.

Later, we did an inventory of the books in the centre and had an exchange. After evening meditation, the journey back home started. There was a strong rain and the lights on the highway were glittering on the street.

When I came back home, my little granddaughter was still awake. My wife told me that she wanted to wait for me. And so I told her about the day before going to sleep.

At one point, the correspondence with my young Indian friend touched the question of ethical issues in microdosing psycho-drugs, esp. Psilocybin. The illustrations are from a walk along the Aare river in the municipality where I am living – not related to the content.

My friend wrote: “I don’t remember if I told you this previously but I started researching on microdosing of Psilocybin to see if it can be used to treat psychological problems like postpartum. It’s a very exciting study and with a lot of luck I’ll probably be able to do a clinical trial to study its performance. Please let me know if you sense any ethical issues with the aim of this study.”

My answer: “As per Psilocybin / ‘Magic Mushrooms’: Microdosing might be an interesting field of research. Here in Switzerland a psychiatrist team officially got permission to experiment with microdosing LSD. (I had done self-experiments with LSD, about 10 trips in 1973-74, before starting meditation; for 3 years at that time, I also smoked a lot of hash – I felt attracted to the Hippie movement and ‘expansion of consciousness’.)
It is difficult to understand the long-term impacts. Depression seems to be a problem related to missing soul contact. I do not clearly know about the subtle effects of psycho-drugs but it seems that they have effects of tearing apart subtle etheric veils.

The brain is the instrument for the soul to incarnate through, built by the Lords of Form (Lunar Pitris), and it took very long to develop the right forms for the souls to enter. When these forms are somehow affected, the expression cannot be stable or is seriously hampered.
If microdosing helps to remove blockages must be studied in such experiments – ask for inner guidance the inner team of healers as per such experiments.
I know from the trance work of my wife that she had success to a certain degree with treating depression – in the process, she is ‘taking the place of the soul’, triggering the soul contact of the patient who is not able to hold it him/herself); but in serious cases it needs treatment with psychopharmaka. It is certainly worthwhile researching if psilocybin opens new vistas.
So I don’t see ethical issues as such but try to stay in inner contact with the processes initiated.”

She answered: “For a while, I had the feeling of the presence of an inner guide. It was not the / a Master, maybe an elder helper. In the Tibetan’s books it is described that elder disciples help the younger ones from inside; this reminds me of a message Master KPK sent us recently. He said that seniors help juniors. The way your wife has a team of inner doctors helping, I hope I’ll get a team of pharmacologists, clinical researchers, statisticians and neurologists to help me advance my research on psychedelics.
I was repeatedly thinking of this ‘joke’ in my mind and then a thought came out of nowhere. It said, ‘Wisdom wasn’t given to Madam HPB for free. She had to take a very tough training before becoming capable of receiving all that wisdom’.
This thought felt like a gentle slap in my face. I understood that I should first be worthy of guidance to receive it and this totally makes sense.”