The multitude of simultaneously existing life-forms on earth is astonishing, and there are worlds next to us of which we have nearly no idea. Can you imagine the incredible diversity of strata of consciousness expressing through these life-forms? And still each is an expression on the background of the unity of existence.
The 11th International Deep Sea Biology Symposium 2006 helt in Southamton, UK, had an image competition in the context of the Serpent-Project. Have a look at these amazing pictures -Â of a syphonophore from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, of an alienlike viperfish from approx. 2000 m depth or of a giant leptocephalus larva from the Pacific Ocean, almost completely transparent.
All these are life forms contempory to us, though seemingly very far away from our daily surroundings. At the same time they are giving uns an impression of how life-forms in the hoary past might have looked like and how important it is to guard well the basics for future times -not just the next 10 or 100 years.

You might have come across in the media about the amazing true story of a baby hippo having lost his mother during a tsunami and got adopted by a tortoise, a story about love and acceptance, which even was published as a children’s book, Owen and Mzee – The True Story Of A Remarkable Friendship.
Even more interesting is the story about the Haller Park, in which this animal romance happened:
In 1952, a Swiss company, Cementia Holding AG Zurich, built a cement factory in Kenya just behind the palm-fringed Bamburi Beach, 12 kilometres north of Mombasa, which became the biggest of Kenya’s industrial giants, and East Africa’s biggest cement producer, but which destroyed the ecosystem of the area. In 1959, the plant hired Dr Rene Haller, a young agronomist from Lenzburg in Switzerland, with the mandate to produce food – fruit and vegetables – for employees of the factory, many of whom were undernourished, as well as spruce up the area surrounding the site. In the 1970s he started a unique ecological experiment, attempting to rehabilitate the limestone quarries scarring the Mombasa coastline. Today he has transformed much of the seven square kilometre Bamburi site from a barren and dusty lunar landscape to an ecological haven. The quarries are now a combination of lakes, wetlands and savannah grasslands, with walking and cycling trails, as well as a Nature Park and Wildlife Sanctuary – nearly 100,000 visitors came in 2002.
Dr. Haller published a book called From Wasteland to Paradise, where he presents the remarkable history of the transformation. Rene Haller recalls “The ugly wasteland expanded annual by tens of thousands of square meters. No plants seemed able to establish themselves. I spent countless hours in the hot dusty barren land, found a few ferns and perhaps half a dozen� grasses struggling to take root� – it was hardly an encouraging environment for tree planting. However one day I discovered in a remote part of the quarry five small casuarina trees . Finally I had found some life which inspired me – a glimmer of hope giving a direction which might be worthwhile following”.
His “Baobab Trust” is a charitable organisation committed to working closely with the surrounding local communities to develop innovative environmental and wildlife conservation practices.

Sommer solstice today! In the annual rhythm nature is at its full bloom here in the northern hemisphere, and from now on will go again back. Everything in creation is living with bigger or smaller cycles of manifestation and dissolution. The seeds of one cycle are preserved for the next one, like shown the story of Noah’s ark or of Vaivasvatha Manu in the east, who collects the seeds of life for the next creation.
This seems to be the inspiration of the Global Crop Security Trust, whose mission is it “to ensure the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide. The fight against hunger is one of the greatest challenges facing the world over the coming decades. Crop diversity is fundamental to defeating hunger and achieving food security. But it is at serious risk. An increasingly unpredictable and changing climate, and a world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, will place unprecedented demands on agriculture. Conserving the vast diversity of crop varieties is the only way to guarantee that farmers and plant breeders will have the raw materials needed to improve and adapt their crops to meet these challenges – and provide food for us into the future.”
As the press told yesterday, they have just startet building a vault dug into a frozen mountain deep in an Arctic island’s permafrost, which will serve as a Noah’s ark for world seeds in case of a global catastrophe. Premiers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland were attending the cornerstone ceremony near Longyearbyen, a town in Norway’s Svalbard Islands, about 620 miles from the North Pole. The seeds, packaged in foil, would be stored at such temperatures that they could last hundreds, even thousands, of years.
If the grass seeds sold by clever German business men to football friends as “Hallowed Ground” – a box of the standardised seeds used for the football grounds of the world cup – will also be included in the northern ark was not reported by the press…

After a few hours at the computer – working for next month’s Lunar Messenger, on the Devas, the subtle intelligences, see the note about the booklet “Cooperation between the Human and Deva Kingdom” by. E. Krishnamacharya – we went for a short swim in a nearby river. The clouds were already dark, announcing an approaching thunderstorm, when my son and I jumped into the fast flowing waves – a wonderfull feeling. The air was full of leaves chased by the wind. Water is such a great purifyer, and swimming in fresh water gives you an increadibly feeling of energy.
When we came out, the first drops were already falling, and a few minutes later the full rain broke out. Many people took shelter at the buildings of the river bath. You virtually could feel the electricity of the subtle intelligences chasing in commotion through the sky. Lightnings flashing gave release to the tension, and the rain calmed it even more. An Australian neighbor invited us to bring us back home in his car. After a short sprint to the parking we were back into the dry.
Water, thunderstorm, freshness, energy, electricity in the air – we experience all these phenomena not as scientific processes, but as totalities of impressions. The totality hides the individual components, and hidden in the components described by science there are intelligences at work, which arrange the totalities of the different levels – thus you can experience the devas at work.

Last week a friend from Germany sent us a folder with two fairy tailes of the Brothers Grimm and thoughts from her and from a group work. It is fascinating to see how the genuine folk tales contain in a symbolic form teachings of eternal wisdom stirring the souls of the readers or listeners. Many modern scientists think the tales, often full of seemingly cruel adventures, are expressions of existential fear and need to be “purged” before reading them to children. But when you read them with a spiritual understanding, you see that they are telling about the path of the soul. The soul,� encaged in matter, through a long journey (of many lives) finds back to a union with its origin.
One of the tales I got was about a girl whose hands were cut off to avenge a curse of the devil on her father, who later got silver hands, then, because of her pure life, new hands and finally found union with her husband, the king. The hands represent our attachment to material life (the grip) and silver or moonlight the denser worlds of matter. The girl are we as a soul, who finally finds back to an eternal life with the spirit-king.
This tale deeply touched me, because it expresses the inner urge towards light which is a thread through my life.

Yesterday morning at the breakfast table with some friends and our spiritual teacher, Dr. Kumar, he mentioned� in the talk a poem by Osho on� Isaak Newton, saying when� Newton saw the apple falling from a tree and discovered the law of gravity, he only� saw half of the truth: He did not note that before the apple could fall, the tree had to grow.� Before matter and thus materialism can come about, there is spirit and there is the upward urge.

Yesterday afternoon I went with a Bulgarian, Indian and Spanish friend to the birth house of Paracelsus, where our group has a little room for commemorating the life and work of the great initiate and alchemist Paracelsus. It is a beautiful place surrounded by hills and forest, near the old Devil’s Bridge. Paracelsus had had a deep impact on medicine and opened the way for a holistic medicine. Today many people still are inspired by his ideas.
Friends of us have started 3 years ago the Paracelsus Health and Healing magazine, where my wife is also helping with proof-reading part of the English translations.
The room in the Paracelsus centre is also used for full moon meditations, an ideal place to link-up with with cosmic rhythms. We stayed there for a while, had a short meditation and enjoyed the serene atmosphere.

A friend just sent me a nice article of the San Francisco Chronicle, from Dec. last year, about a whale who was saved by divers from being entangled in crab lines and nuzzled them to say thank you…

Yesterday evening, after work: I was driving with my motorbicycle back home from work during rush hour. There was a jam at a roundabout, and so I took a way which I sometimes take along tennis-courts on the side of a forest, which is free for pedestrians, bicycles and moterbicycles.
Half way through a man with a bicycle with a children’s cart with two children in it coming from the other direction stopped me and said: “Don’t you want to take the road?”. I replied: “This way is free for motorbicycles.” – Yes I know, but here is a forest and I would prefer for my children and me that there is no motor traffic here, in this forest air. Don’t you want to take the road?” I said: “No, I would prefer going on” and drove away. I felt irritated and started reflecting on the encounter. I had to agree that the man was right and that my insisting on the right to go through that way was mainly because of the feeling that I didn’t like being approached like this and out of a feeling of being right.
Being fixed in my conviction, I could not react to the concern of this courageous father.
Though this small way is a shortage when coming in the morning, for returning home I could just as well take the road, though a traffic light might sometimes stop me.
So I decided to change my habit and take the road in future.
Surprising encounters bring you messages to reflect upon.

I yesterday got an e-mail from a young woman fom the French speaking part of Switzerland, who had visited us last year. The contact came via the Good-Will website and was motivated by her spiritual search. She now wrote that, after some turbulent months, she is just about to leave Switzerland, direction Sahara and Ocean, to live together with “her prince”, whom she had met a short while ago.
The lines gave me a lot to think, of my own coming to Switzerland 20 years ago, following the call of love… Of another e-mail arriving yesterday from a friend, who had gone to the States some years ago and is just leaving her friend’s house to get out of the relation… Of the news in the media the last days of the many African people crossing the ocean in tiny boats towards Teneriffa or Italy, in search of a better life in Europe… Of the many dramatic stories I had come across during the 90ies, when I was head of a psychosocial counseling centre for refugees and migrants…
The search for a better life and living is such a strong motivating force, expressing in so many biographical stories – of love, dreams, hopes. The underlying force is not just that of woman and man, it is part of the essence of man. In the more subtle way it is the expression of the search of the personality toward the soul, depicted in many fairy tales as the search of the prince (the soul) for the lost princess (the personality lost in material life).
The symbol of the young lady who is about to follow her prince is the rainbow. May the many coloured bridge lead her to the true goal of her dreams.