Recently, I came across a fantastic time lapse video with sequences of the Sun’s atmosphere observed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft between 2011 and 2015. The music “Una” by Murcof (from the Album Utopía, 2004) fits very well with the scenes of solar eruptions.

From viewpoint of the Wisdom Teachings, the essence of the Sun and of ourselves is but one and the same. We are no different from our Sun.

There is a beautiful prayer in the Isavasya Upanishad. Here, the disciple who can withdraw at will from the activity of externalisation through the senses is compared to the Sun that withdraws his rays. When the rays of the Sun are withdrawn the Sun globe is visible. Likewise, when the externalisation from the senses is withdrawn, the Soul is visible. Sun is the Soul. The Sun globe appears like a golden disc when the rays are withdrawn. Likewise, the disciple also experiences his golden form when he suspends the activity of senses. This golden form is the subtle body which is immortal and divine. (from Agni. The Symbolism and the Ritual of Fire, by Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar; see also his book on “Sun – That I Am“)

PÛSHAN EKARSHYE
YAMASÛRYA PRÂJÂPATYA VYÛHA RASMÎN
SAMÛHA TEJAHA.
YATTE RÛPAM KALYÂNATAMAM.
TATTE PASYÂMI YO
SAVASOW PURUSHAHA.
SOHAM ASMI.

Meaning:

“Oh! Solar God,
You are the son of Prajapathi.
You are lone ranger of the sky.
You are all nourishing and all regulating.
Please withdraw your rays and brilliance.
By your grace I would then be able to see
Your beautiful golden disc.”

Isavasya Upanishad, 16th Mantram
Here you can listen to the prayer or download the text.

Image from the video, courtesy of: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Scientific Visualization Studio

You haven’t seen the moon rotating. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has now been composed.

Picture capture from the video, (c) Video Credit: LRO, Arizona State U., NASA

On a nearby mountain we recently saw two dwarf goats standing on the roof of their hut, Bruno and Leo – sturdy, perky and full of power.

Quite a different mentality from that of sheep. Sheep seem to be more interested in following their herd.

You can imagine that it needs a different method for approaching goats or sheep. Or for targeting humans behaving in similar manners. Scientists and marketeers are researching methods to deal with the different types – and the latter want to get the sheep eating what they want to offer them.

Now, if someone finds what kind of psychograms the different animals in a crowd have, it would be much easier to get them run in the “right” direction. And if politicians show this “right” direction, and scientists develop the psychometric instruments, and marketeers cleverly “tailor” such tools for delivering ads and other steering methods, the “ignorant animals” will unknowingly be driven in the wanted direction by eating the food prepared to their “Likes”. The outcome will be an explosive mixture for “guiding” the sheep  – the ROI, the “return on investment” being highly intelligent and effective mass manipulation.

Last Saturday’s issue of the weekend magazine “Das Magazin” of the Swiss newspaper “Tageszanzeiger” – a paper not at all close to conspiracy theories – published an article called “I have only showed that the bomb exists“. It is about a young Polish researcher, Michal Kosinski, who just gave a talk in Switzerland at the Risk Center of the ETH Zurich about the dangers of Big Data and the so-called digital revolution.

The topic of big data and their power in marketing is not new to me but I felt the article quite alarming. Maybe you can read it with the help of Google translator or so. The information below is mainly from this article.

Michal Kosinski is a leading expert in psychometrics, a data driven branch of psychology. He first worked at the first psychometric laboratory at the University of Cambridge, England, and now is working at Stanford University, USA. His research lead to new and very effective ways of profiling great amounts of persons from out of the digital traces they leave on the internet, especially Likes. You can test it on the site of Cambridge University “Apply Magic Sauce” (a personalisation engine that accurately predicts psychological traits from digital footprints of human behaviour). Kosinski’s research showed that from a few Facebook “likes” the intelligence, religious affiliation, alcohol, cigarette and drug consumption can be calculated, besides many of their attitudes, and even if the parents of a person have remained together until their 21st year of age. And it goes much beyond.

Against Kosinki’s intention and knowledge his research was used to develop very effective mass targeting tools by a British enterprise, Cambridge Analytica (CA) – “Better Audience Targeting, Powered by Data Modelling”. These instruments are not only marketing boosters but they were used to steer people with targeted news and other ways of influencing in the Brexit campaign and now in Trump’s election campaign – and they are much more effective than what was known upto now. The head of Cambridge Analytica declared “We have psychograms of all adult US citizens – 220 million people”. On their website a video is shown with a quote by a political pollster: “There are no longer any experts except Cambridge Analytica. They were Trump’s digital team who figured out how to win.”

Euphemistically, Cambridge Analytica boasts that they are “building a future where every individual can have a truly personal relationship with their favorite brands and causes by showing organizations not just where people are, but what they really care about and what drives their behavior.” Marketing speech for intelligent manipulation. Have a look at their website and you will understand better.

With these tools, 175000 versions of Trumps messages, slightly varying according to the target persons, were given out. The team of Trump’s electoral assistants got an app to recognize the political attitude and personality of the residents of a house. They contacted only those whom the app showed as receptive to their messages, and they carried text guides adapted to the personality of the resident they approached. Here is a TV report of SkyNews with a talk of Mr Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica, from YouTube about their influencing the election.

The members of the Clinton team first were laughing about these British data people. Now, many (right-wing) political parties in Europe are becoming clients of Cambridge Analytica, and the business has requests from all over the world. I am sure that soon legislation here will have to react on these methods. Kosinski, the researcher whose findings enabled all this, declares that he has not built this bomb but only showed what is possible.

Power (politics) and money (business) together are a dangerous mix. They need to be guided by wisdom, i.e. by ethical and moral guidance – and this not only as “marketing speech” declarations. And we ourselves need to develop a high degree of discrimination and loving understanding not to let ourselves get dragged into what others define as “what we really care about”.

In other words, we must firmly stand in the light of our soul and act from there. And we need to have a clear view of what those of the “world” around want us to. Like Bruno and Leo looking around from their viewing platform.

P.S. (6 Dec.2016): An article in the German version of the Wired magazine discussed the claims of Cambridge Analytica (CA) and pointed out that the cooperation between CA and the Brexit campaneers did not work out and that the way they are using data from Facebook etc. for profiling without permission of the users is against European data protection laws.

3 days ago, on 23 February, the video was published. Within 24 hours seen over a million times and now already nearly 10 million times:

The Google daughter Boston Dynamics  presents a YouTube clip with a humanoid robot marching through the snow or working in a factory hall. The new version of the “Atlas Next Generation” robot can walk over rugged ground or react on changing situations while packing boxes. Even when he falls down he gets up again and continues.

There are sensors and stereo cameras stabilising the metal guy. Boston Dynamics develops this humanoid “buddy” by order of the US American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The next stage of humans & humanoids is coming from fiction to reality. What kind of intelligence is incarnating here? For the weal or for the worse? May the intelligence used be directed for good will and upliftment.

Source: Youtube.com/Boston Dynamics

If anybody doubts that the Aquarian Age is an age of conquest of air and space have a look at the video below visualising the world-wide air traffic of one day done by the Zurich School of Applied Sciences. I blogged about their flight radar map 3 years ago. You can also look at the PlaneFinder showing real time all airplanes flying at a moment.

Awe-inspiring what a great human, technological and logistical effort is behind these pictures.

The European Space Agency ESA has now mapped signals picked up from Proba-V satellite upwards of 25 million positions from more than 15 000 separate aircraft. They contain flight information such as speed, position and altitude. ESA wants to demonstrate the feasibility of orbital constellations that could work to better police our skies from space.
At the same time, it appears as a map of the interconnectedness of humanity and the nervous system of human civilisation.

Air traffic map by ESA/DLR/SES (c)

Printscreen from PlaneFinder (c)

Awesome views of the Himalayas in highest quality, filmed from a helicopter with a crew flying from Kathmandu at 1400 meters up to 7300 meters on supplemental oxygen. This is the first ultra HD footage of the Himalayas showing crisp clear aerial shots of these mountains ever released, which include Mt. Everest, Ama Dablam, and Lhotse. The aerial cinema experts of Teton Gravity Research took the pictures with the most advanced gyro-stabilized camera system in the world

Image (c) Teton Gravity Research, from the video

I came across a Facebook page of “Not Impossible Now“, a “global web-based community of people who pool knowledge and resources to create technology for the sake of humanity” – a fascinating combination of good will and technology.

In their mission statement “About” they say: “We at Not Impossible Now believe in technology for the sake of humanity. While nobody can do everything, everybody can do something, so we crowdsource our solutions to real-world problems. Suddenly, yesterday’s pipe dreams are Not Impossible Now! By helping one person we can all inspire others to do the same – it’s our “Help One Help Many” philosophy and it breaks down barriers, enabling greater access to all in need.”

The name “Not Impossible Now” is exactly expressing what they are doing. They show some incredible uses of technology which they make accessible to handicapped people or other people in need.

There is for example the viral story of a blind women who can see her new-born son for the first time with the help of eSight, electronic glasses that enable the legally blind to actually see: “With eSight, I get to see and do things just like any other normally-sighted person. I can see my children’s faces while I do all the things moms do, I can see as I work as an artist, I can see as I work on my computer and watch TV, I can see as I raise money for other blind people, I can see as I travel independently on subways, buses, trains and airplanes, I can see a hockey game, I can see as I play golf.”

With the help of fundraising, they are now striving to make this high-tech solution accessible for other blind people.

Picture from the video (c)

Another success story is helping to spread the benefits of 3D printing to the developing world. Like 3D printed prosthetics – arms, legs, robohands… They allow hospitals to provide custom-fit prosthetics to amputees at a much lower cost. They have started providing 3D printed prosthetic arms for children of war in Sudan which are just around 350 dollars – much cheaper and better than conventional prosthetics. There is now a new project to bring inexpensive prosthetics to the masses with a 3D printing farm. Read here an article by HP about the use of 3D printed prosthetics.

Here you can see a touching video of a 7 years old boy receiving a 3D printed “bionic” arm from “Iron Man” Robert Downey Jr.

Picture from the video (c)

You find many more compelling stories or tools on the Not Impossible website. Like the one of a menstrual cup by a Finnish woman, Lunette, which is now on sale in over 40 countries.  Or about many other innovative technical solutions made available to reach people in need.

As their slogan says: “Inspiration from Innovation? It’s Not Impossible Now!” See also the other Facebook page of the Not Impossible Foundation.

An Indian friend from the States, Vijay, sent me the link to an article of BBC News about new insights of science into the heart of our heart, its inner core. Vijay wrote:

“This is very similar to what we studied from Master EK’s Spiritual Psychology book few weeks ago. Master EK described that the earth used to have its north pole in the sun first and then it had a 90 degree shift and now has its north pole in the pole star. I thought it is interesting that this new research seems to align well with Master’s words.”

The article shows that researchers from the USA and China suggest that the innermost core of our planet has another, distinct region at its centre: The structure of the iron crystals seems to be different from those found in the outer part of the inner core. Since you cannot drill into the centre, which lies 5000 km beneath our feet, the scientists analysed echoes generated by earthquakes to see how they change as they travel through the different layers of our planet. “The seismic wave data suggests that crystals in the “inner inner core” are aligned in an east-to-west direction – flipped on their side, if you are looking down at our planet from high above the North Pole…. The core, which lies more than 5,000km down, started to solidify about a billion years ago – and it continues to grow about 0.5mm each year. ”

We read the book “Spiritual Psychology” in our English online study group. In the chapter “Poles on Earth” it says:

“When the Earth was in its child state, it had its upper pole in our Sun and the lower pole in the region of the then existing North pole. During that period, this Earth was only a half-globe with its one pole, i.e. the North pole. That pole was towards the Sun and the half-globe was going round the Sun with its circular base away from the Sun. At that time a group of intelligences descended upon our Earth from Venus and another group from Mars. Both of them worked out through love nature and those from Mars worked out the interactions of the material of the half-globe. By the time this process was complete, there was the birth of the second pole or South pole. By that time the Earth had undergone a tilt and the North pole deviated from our Sun to our Pole Star. From that time onwards the Earth began rotating with its equator facing the Sun. The tilt was about 90°. This change occurred also in every atom of this Earth globe. Every atom received the two poles.”

The layers of our earth. Source: Wikipedia

Illustration from the book “The Teachings of Kapila“, by Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar, giving the orientation of the earth in its etheric state to the Sun. Kapila is the ancient-most teacher on earth.

NASA has published the sharpest composite image ever taken of our galactic next-door neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). It is a bird’s-eye view of a portion of the galaxy and has been created with 7,398 exposures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over 411 individual pointings.

In their publication, they write about this image: “Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, the Hubble telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disk. It’s like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And, there are lots of stars in this sweeping view — over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk.”

Click on the picture below to get a larger view of the galaxy or see the zoom-version at the Hubble site.

Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler

We know from the wisdom teachings hat all nature is inter-related, and it is getting more and more confirmed by modern science. At the same time a tremendous extinction process is going on on the planet caused by us humans – water, soils, biodiversity, bees, and the basis for our foods are being poisoned or otherwise destroyed or degraded by mono-cropping, factory farms, creation of transgenic organisms…

The inter-relatedness of life is not just an esoteric idea. The new research on mycelium, or the branching, threadlike vegetative portion of fungi, shows that it is like a high-speed internet under our feet, a network of vital information transferring the right nutrients to the right plants to ensure optimal vitality and nutrient density. It also helps detoxify, purify and recycle soil to ensure plants can grow in the most nutrient-rich conditions.

Two months ago, I read an article in the Swiss magazine NZZ Folio about the Wood Wide Web, the giant communication network in the forests. Some days ago, a Canadian friend sent me a link to the trailer of a new, extraordinary film about the same topic, “Fantastic Fungi – The Spirit of Good“. It is a 3D documentary feature by Louie Schwartzberg about Paul Stamets, a renowned mycologist, author and visionary on how mushrooms can save the world. Here is a trailer to the film – see also below.

‘Fantastic Fungi’ helps to create a new vision about the importance of the natural world from a new, ‘down to earth’ perspective. The website is for foodies, scientists and explorers…. Read more on BBC Earth about the hidden internet of plants. And this is the website of Paul Stamets, Fungi Perfecti – the finest mushroom products “for home and garden, farm and forest, people and planet”.

Photo (c) from the trailer Fantastic Fungi