In 2001, at the May Call seminar in Iguazú, Sri Kumar spoke about the qualities Uranus. One quality is being original. As an illustration he told us a legend about the 36th chamber of Shaolin. It is a little bit different than the plot of the famous movie. The story is now also published in the book on Uranus – The Alchemist of the Age.

The story impressed me very much. My wife and I have often spoken about its essence: On the spiritual path, it is not enough to follow a set of teachings of a teacher. You have to apply them in your own life, develop something of your own, and then use it for the best in your service to society: “The path to the Truth does not lead anyone to the threshold of Truth. It leads up to a point. Thereafter one has to invent.”

Here is the story:

“In the East there is a great learning temple for martial arts, it is called Shaolin temple. The temple teaches martial arts in 35 grades. To pass through each grade one needs fiery aspiration, one-pointed focus, concentration and a very high physical, emotional and mental discipline. The percentage of pass from one grade to the other is hardly one percent a year. Very rarely a student stands up to the 35th grade of the art. Such one is a very, very, very special one. Only one comes out in 25 years successfully out of all 35 grades which are called the 35 chambers. He would be honoured by the temple (school) and sent out by the pledge that he would serve and protect the society. Such a one is considered to be invincible.

Once one young man through deep dedication cleared all the 35 chambers and he was felicitated by the chief for his ability and accomplishment. He was wished good luck by the colleagues. Thinking that he is invincible, he started serving and protecting the society. He was also honoured by the society for his martial ability.

It so happened that once he encountered another adept of martial arts and fought with him. The fight was a prolonged fight. But the stranger defeated him. The young one was perplexed. He went through all the training in the temple. He was perfect with respect to all the 35 grades. And he was declared invincible, but he was defeated. He went back to the temple, kneeled down before the chief, informed of his defeat in the hands of the stranger and sought clarification from the chief of the temple.

The temple chief smiled and said that the stranger was also a member of the temple, a student of the temple that went through all the 35 chambers. The student asked, “If that is so, we should be equal. How could he be the winner and I the loser?” The chief smiled again and said, “There is the 36th chamber, which is not in the temple, but is in the nature. Having learnt what is taught, your senior invented yet another art which you have not invented. He invented it working in nature. The 36th chamber is the nature. Go out into the nature and invent something of your own. Your invention comes from your origin. As original each one is unique. You too would become invincible, if you invent from your own origin.”

Such is the Truth. The path to the Truth does not lead anyone to the threshold of Truth. It leads up to a point. Thereafter one has to invent. This invention has to be deep into oneself until one touches the origin of one’s being. Once the origin is touched, the Truth expresses afresh. It expresses originally. All those who realized the Truth, thus realized and presented the Truth afresh. The way one realizes the Truth could form into a path for others to follow. But the path will not lead one into the Truth until one also invents. Invention is the means to ‘well out’ the original. Uranus encourages inventions. Once you are an original, you are unique.”

The two grandmasters of the Shaolin Temple Shi DeRu (Shawn Xiangyang Liu) and Shi DeYang (Shi WanFeng) who are two decedent disciples of the late Great Grand Master of the Shaolin Temple Shi SuXi (aka: His Holiness Upper Su and Lower Xi). (c) Wikipedia

Teaching respect for nature and its multi-fold expressions of beauty is something important. One way to do so is providing spaces like an Arboretum, a kind of botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants for purposes of science, education or just rest and recreation. In Switzerland, the Swiss National Arboretum is located in the Aubonne valley between Geneva and Lausanne, close to the Lake of Geneva. A year ago, my wife had been there for a seminar on Earth Energies and told me about its beauty. So a week ago we decided to go there with our eldest son on the occasion of his 24th birthday.

The Arboretum covers an area of about 2 square kilometres, and you can walk there for hours. We did two walks, with a lunch pause in a Florentine restaurant in between. There are different areas of different ecotypes: of north-west America, with giant sequoias etc.; of Japan, with cherry birches; of old orchards or other collections, like cedars from Africa or Patagonian conifers. Here are some impressions of our tour.

A short time after the landfall of the very severe cyclonic storm Hudhud around Visakhapatnam the first e-mails about its damages arrived via a Spanish friend. Visakhapatnam (or Vizag, as it is popularly called – though I prefer the long version) is the centre of the WTT movement and I have posted quite a lot about my journeys – I went there every year since 2000 for the annual seminars of Dr Kumar each January. So of course I was interested in the news.

But the first thought was, don’t overreact: I was reminded of the Tsunami 10 years ago – when the media reported the whole coast of India from the South up to Kolkata was destroyed but when 10 days later I arrived in Visakhapatnam I could hardly see any damage along the coast.

However, soon images arrived, and I saw some videos on Facebook showing the trace of destruction of the cyclone. The power of the images changed my impression. I forwarded the mails to the WTT mailing list, and the next day members sent mails expressing their sympathies with the victims and their prayers.

Further mails arrived via my Spanish friend, which I forwarded again: “In Visakhapatnam, they have no electricity nor water. ATM’s don’t work so they’re not able to retrieve money; convenience stores are closed anyway so they cannot buy food. Public and private transportation is very perturbed because of streets’ damage and fallen trees… There is some sacking. People are considering to leave the city and go to their home towns in order to be able to get water supplies and food…” I thought, oh, how severe is the situation?

Some friends called for action, how they can help with money, if we would do a collection. I was reminded of my time at the Swiss Red Cross where over years I published the disaster news and collection calls. I knew very well that for the emergency assistance  there needs to be an evaluation and an infrastructure, besides partners. So I sent an e-mail to Dr. Kumar, and he answered: “As such, we better wait and watch brother!” I thought, yes, that’s what I had expected. Later I got an update from him via a friend: “All are fine. But the city is destroyed substantially. Almost all trees are fallen. Except SMS no communications are possible. No electricity.”

More details about devastations at the different locations of the WTT arrived: Retreat Center: few glass window doors broke, prayer hall filled with water. School run in Ramadri premises needs some repair… What it meant I better understood when I saw some of the images Jayadev, a member had taken at this very beautiful temple site with a free school for the poor:

The school buildings at the temple site in Ramadri

School buildings and part of the temple compound

A little destroyed shrine with a statue of the divine Mother (Photos: Jayadev Pappu)

After the pictures I yesterday received an update from Jayadev writing: “I did visit the healing centre but I could not go inside because the path was completely blocked by trees. From what I could from a distance, the building is fine, some glasses might have broken, but almost all the trees around are down. That is the sad part.

The electricity in Vizag city has been restored in certain areas and in a week’s time almost the whole city will have electricity. All other basic amenities like water, fuel, milk, food, etc. are now available without much difficulty.”

It is quite different whether you hear about far away severe weathers in the news or when friends tell you from their first-hand experience. I know and love these places like the Healing Centre or Ramadri – sites with a sublime and serene spiritual ambiance. I will go there again in January, and I wonder how much of these devastations will still be visible – and how much restoration work will have been done – there is so much loving volunteer work behind these and other spiritual centres, silently carried out over the years.

Update: I just saw on Facebook a series of photos of Vamsi Chintalapati (“our school”) about the devastations the cyclone has done to the Bala Bhanu School – a beautiful school of the WTT at the outskirts of Visakhapatnam. May the sanctity of the place be soon restored!

A little shrine of Master CVV inside the schoolyard with the uprooted Ficus Religiosa tree

The schoolyard

The broken table with the picture of Master EK at the entrance of the school. Photos by Vamsi Chintalapati

Two weeks ago I bought new maps of areas in the surrounding, and so we found a new place for our Sunday afternoon walks. Amsoldingen is a very idyllic location at the feet of the Alps near Thun, with a pre-Romanesque church from the 10th century and a castle, located near two beautiful little lakes. At the beginning of our walk we had a look into the old church and strongly felt the presence of earthbound souls. So we sat down in the cemetery and invited them with some invocations to the subtle helpers to wake up and move up to the worlds of light. It was again a sublime feeling when slowly a greater number of souls passed by and disappeared into the Light.

Leaving the village, the path took us over meadows along the two little lakes. The whole time, there was a fantastic panorama of the Alps in the background. Come with us on this extremely beautiful walk.

Last Tuesday, 23 September, there was the Yogic point of autumn equinox, an important time for aligning with the annual ritual of the 2 solstices and 2 equinoxes (read here more about the spiritual impact of this festival). We gathered with a group of 8 persons from Germany and Switzerland near Einsiedeln at the birthplace of Paracelsus, the great initiate and revolutionary of medicine. On the way, a fantastic sunrise already announced an extraordinary day. The air was filled with golden light when we met at the Paracelsus centre.

After preparing the room with a thanksgiving altar, we started with a little candlelight ceremony (in the esoteric understanding, Libra, representing the unfoldment of objectivity or matter, is the midnight of the subjective side of the year) intonating the mantra of Durga. I gave a short introduction into the theme of the equinox and of the symbolism of Durga, the impermeable Mother. Then we did a group study about the deeper meaning of the ritualistic symbolism.

After the lunch prepared by the group, we went for a walk through the beauty of the surrounding nature, followed by coffee and cake and the discussion of some house rules for the use of the rooms, which we had prepared beforehand – and it seemed to be necessary for the center to run smoothly. The group also decided to make a “cleaning festival” for the rooms next year before Easter – two days of a group living with a cleanup of the centre.

We continued with an exercise which I had developed on the basis of the teachings of Master KPK on the directional intelligences of space and the inner planets, followed by a group exchange about some principles of Yoga. The beautiful day ended with a group meditation followed by a water ritual and dinner. On the way home, there was a radiant after-sunset glow in the air, the final of a day full of magic.

The galaxy of which our solar system is just a tiny part is part of a giant supercluster of galaxies – regions in space, which are densely packed with galaxies. It was difficult for scientists to define where one supercluster ends and another begins. A team based in Hawaii has now developed a new technique for creating maps of the universe according to the flow of galaxies across space. They redefined our home supercluster and named it Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian. So welcome home in mind-blowing infinity. A fascinating video of the international magazine Nature, which reports in its September 2014 issue about these new calculations.

Laniakea – Our home of supercluster of galaxies, from the video, (c) Nature. Click on the picture to see it enlarged.

Another fascinating fact which has not yet arrived in our common understanding: Our solar system is a vortex, and the old heliocentric model of planets rotating around the Sun is just a limited perspective. The solar system is moving through space at 70’000 km/hour, and the Sun is like a comet, dragging the planets in its wake. “Rotation motion” and “vortex motion” are two completely different things. Life is a vortex, not just a rotation. The solar system is part of life. “DJSadhu” has created an impressive animation to illustrate this dynamic movement. The animation is not to scale, otherwise you could not see the solar system, the Sun or any of the planets. DJSadhu has also realised another animation about the Milky Way’s journey through space at a speed of appr. 600 km/s.

Very interesting from a cosmological point of view: A complete revolution of the galaxy takes 226 million years. One precession cycle of the earth through the zodiac takes 25,920 years. Since one revolution takes 226 mln years, this would mean that there are appr. 8692 precessional cycles in one revolution. In this animation there are only 60.

So one galactic year is appr. 225,296,640 years. Now look at the Hindu units of time measurement: a manvantara consists of 71 mahayugas (306,720,000 solar years), a small part of a day of Brahma, whose total age is 100 years.

(c) DJSadhu. Click on the picture to see it enlarged.

January last year during a journey to India, I had the good occasion to visit the Nilagiris, the Blue Mountains in South India. I was very much thrilled to be in this sublime presence, where there is the residence of the Grand Rishi Agastya in the subtle spheres. There are a number of posts in the blog about this great Master.

Now the Indian brotherhood of the WTT, especially the group of Bangalore, has launched a project of building a retreat centre in the magnificent surroundings of Kodanadu, with direct view on the Durga Mountain, or Rangaswami Pillar, where there is the centre of the subtle ashram. They just have published a very well done video, “Master Mountain – A Retreat into Presence”. It starts with the following words:

“The Ashram in the Blue Mountains is acclaimed in the Puranas as being equal to all other ashrams on the planet put together. In the theosophical literature, the Nilagiris Ashram of Sage Agastya is referred to as the Ashram of Master Jupiter. Nilagiris is located in the heart centre of the planet. In the words of Master Parvathi Kumar, the Ashram at the Master Mountain at Kodanadu in the Nilagiris is said to be the true headquarters of the work relating to the Aquarian Master.”

The Master Mountain, (c) video Click on the picture to enlarge

In the mountains you can absorb a lot of subtle energies. A week ago, the Sunday morning started very promising with beautiful sunshine, after days of rain. So we decided to go on a tour to the Stockhorn, a mountain we see from our living room, about 50 km away via highway. And indeed, it was a fantastic day for airing and refilling prana…

Souvenirs came while going up – one day before our eldest son was born in 1990, we had a little walk on this mountain – naively not thinking what could have happened – next day evening, my wife felt the labour pains and we rushed to the hospital… Now we looked at other families with small children and remembered how fast these times go by. Enjoy the pictures.

If you are not particularly attached to the yoga of Master CVV you probably won’t have heard about Master MN (Sri Mynampati Narasimham). He was born on 25 August 1883, so we celebrate his 131st birthday (or, in Indian counting, the 132nd) next Monday.

The Master chose to be quite incognito and even secretive. He never wanted his picture to be made available. But Sri Kumar was helped to find some pictures and now we have an idea how the Master looked like:

I came to know about Master MN through the booklet “Master CVV” by Master EK, which I read in the early 90s; there you find a small chapter on Master MN. I felt fascinated. Years later I found an Indian biography – a collection of teachings and memories by his followers – not so easy to read. And it also “disappeared” again soon afterwards – somebody must have borrowed it and not given back…

So I was particularly happy when in January 2013 Sri Kumar gave me his newly published biography of Master MN, and I read it in one go. It is a fascinating book; you find it here as a PDF. If you think you don’t have much time, have a look at this short extract about the initiation of Master MN by Master CVV – beware! afterwards you might want to read the whole book!

I was impressed by the profound changes in the life of the Master: He started his professional career as a teacher, then became a reknown lawyer. Coffee drinking and chain smoking were part of his daily routine. He organised tournaments in billiards and tennis to popularise the games in the town where he lived. Family, games and cards at the lawyer’s club plus cigarette smoking mounted up stress on him. After some heavy ‘blows of fate’ (losing 3 elders and his younger brother in a short sequence) he started searching for the sense of life. While on the outer side his daily routine continued, he felt disgust of life and even depression. Meeting Master CVV through some “mysterious incidents” and getting initiated by him totally changed his life.

There was an influx of life force, and knowledge started coming inwardly. He continued his law cases but started concentrating on yoga. Thereafter, he never charged any money for the cases. He said to the clients, “If you wish to give, you can, if not, it is ok.” He accepted whatever came. “I never handle cash. I do not, as far as possible, touch cash. Money comes in large quantities and goes. Comes according to my needs and goes according to my needs.” Like Master CVV, he also used to offer sumptuous food to people coming to his home.

More and more, he demonstrated the energy of the Master – healing without giving medicine, teaching and initiating people into the Yoga of Synthesis. Three years after the initiation, Master CVV wrote to Master MN, “You are already a master. I call you the Little Master, there is no difference between me and you.”

Though he “disappeared” again on 11 March 1940, on the day he had announced already previously, his work is going on behind the scenes. Master EK wrote about him: “Those who are initiated into the Yogic experience by Master MN are now laying the foundation of Yoga in the Western countries. Through the fiery and invisible efforts of Master MN, the presence of Master CVV would again permeate to the East, establishing the spiritual fusion of East and West.”

I like very much airing out in nature. Whenever possible, my wife and I go out for a walk on Sunday afternoon. It is a good occasion for reflecting on experiences, events or persons , especially when walking on a hill with a view into the distance. While walking thoughts get cleared out and nature replenishes the “stocks of prana”.

Before each walk I’m intensely studying the trail map of the area to find a new spot or a place where we haven’t been for some time. And there are plenty of paths in the surroundings. So I’d like to take you with us on yesterday’s afternoon walk.

I chose the Falkenfluh, about 25 km from where we are living. Falken means falcon, and Fluh is an expression for a rock face. Though there were no falcons around, it is a very beautiful place at the foothills of the Alps.

From where we parked our car there was a beautiful view down, with the Lake Thun in the background. It wasn’t raining in the afternoon but the clouds were still hanging deep and veiled the Alps of the Bernese Oberland.

When we crossed the first little forest there were wood-strawberries all along the way. Later, on the top of the Falkenfluh, there were raspberry bushes and along one forest even blueberries. We could advance only slowly, the berries were too delicious.

At the entrance of a country house, Amor was waiting for sweet victims but there weren’t many around…

A little further ahead, we discovered a ramp leading over the cliff into the abyss: a jumping-off point for delta planes and other para-gliders.

Some meters ahead, there was a triangulation point marking the geographic centre of the Canton of Bern. And the Swiss Geomatic Society was celebrating an anniversary and inviting to register in a guest-book to participate in a raffle for a GPS…

Old apple trees on a meadow were heavily loaded with fruits.

Following the path, we arrived at a little farmhouse where children on the balcony told us the direction to follow: Turning to the left and along the barn, where some hens were running through the grass

We opened a pasture gate; the path became a small trail running over the meadow. A huge linden tree spread its aura far over the little valley. On an “emotrance seminar”, my wife has learnt to observe trees by asking whether they are willing to share their energy or not. Many trees, especially young ones, are not but huge, well-grown trees are spreading their energy all around. You could clearly feel the energetic presence of the linden tree even at a distance.

The air was filled with the ringing of the bells of the sheep. Here in Switzerland, sheep and cows often wear bells, so that you can easily find them – without GPS (I recently read about the tagging of animals with codes injecting the chips subcutaneously – for “better registration” and easier delivery at the butchery…)

A little further ahead we walked up a steep trail up the mountain. The earth was still very humid from the rain of the previous days and we walked zigzag over the roots.

At the top a lady was waiting with her mountain bike. When we came out of the tree alley, she started driving downward, over the slippery ground. It was steeper than the photo shows:

The path led us along the forest with a beautiful view over the meadows. When we stopped at a bench, we saw that people were just preparing a delta glider at the ramp. And again there were bushes with berries but had enough and started going down again.