Yesterday at my office a colleague gave me an article to read. It was a talk which one of our heads of the Red Cross had given on the occasion of the release of a book about Professional Solidarity on the World Volunteer day of Dec 5. The book has been financed by a Swiss association of fire insurances. The talker, a theologian, presented a brilliant association between volunteer work or donations to a good cause and fire insurance:

Volunteers help other people, often with the perspective of getting something good in return, at least a good feeling. Also people giving money for a good cause mostly do it with the perspective of getting a better feeling. They are hoping for a better hereafter, so that they don’t land in the purgatory fire. Thus doing good-will work or giving donations is in a way some kind of a fire insurance.

The wisdom teachings tell us that the purgatory is not a world hereafter, but the plane of unsolved emotions, desires and reactions on our doings. You can experience the effects now as well as in the time between the passing and returning. There is a beautiful passage on the purgatory fire in the book Fiery World 3, § 69, from the Agni Yoga series:

“There is no mightier purgatory than earthly life, if all the potentialities of the spirit are intensified. Likewise there is no mightier hell than the earthly infections of the spirit. To affirm purgatory on Earth as a beginning leading to the Subtle and Fiery Worlds is a problem of the purification of consciousness. All strivings of humanity for knowledge of the Invisible World should impel the consciousness to take up the thought of purification, which will continue the earthly path to the Fiery World. Only the concept of oneness of the path will impel people to live in beauty, and to depart this life as wayfarers continuing their journey. When the World will apprehend this indissoluble bond with the Subtle World, purgatory will then take its rightful place in Eternal Truth.”

Picture of a Fire Ritual, Delphi, Greece, May 2005. Fire rituals have a purifying effect on the subtle bodies, see the book on Agni – The Symbolism and the Fire Ritual“.

My wife yesterday said that she had observed something like a “love leakage” with several persons: They seemed to be unable to go into a nearness to a friend or a partner, and it seems that it had to do with a feeling of not being accepted themselves. With some there was a problem with their father or mother in the past and one didn’t have a father. Though many years since their childhood had passed they tried to avoid closeness or expressing affection. This strategy of avoiding somehow spills over into different areas of life.

My wife described how some “miraculous” changes happened, as soon as they started establishing a conscious contact with their soul, the higher self: On very deep levels there were transformations happening, and they started coming into a flow. In one case the changes were quite dramatic. Psychiatrists and psychologist who had been involved in a related crisis hadn’t been able to reach to the point. The “magic” of the soul, however did.

It needed accompanying and guiding the persons to themselves, to get confidence into their own inner essence. The problems couldn’t be changed from outside, but from within.

Master EK says in his Spiritual Psychology Meditations: ““Have a friend in yourself, be a friend to others.” And Master KPK beautifully describes the power of love, which is the power of the soul, in his booklet On Love: “Love heals. It needs no intellectual techniques… Love transforms… Love is the sleeping energy in every being. When Love awakens, there is no self-control! The SELF flows…”

White-waters in the Pochtenschlucht in Kiental, Switzerland

The third evening of our series of evening themes on Meditation – Experiment and Experience yesterday evening happened to be around Sagittarius full moon time. Two newcomers popped in, some returned from the previous meetings and then there were members of our local group – all together we were 13 persons. The atmosphere was very different to the last time, a Scorpio new moon. There was a good presence and resonance in the audience, and I felt a continuous flow of thoughts around the topic popping in. Before I felt like being empty, but after the alignment in meditation before the meeting I felt like being “plugged in. During the talk I was more calm and settled than the first time, and more energetic than last time. It was a good experience.

After a short repetition of the last meetings I started with the powerpoint slides of this evening, mentioning some fundamental things about spiritual practice: “Make haste slowly”, as the saying goes. There is no need of wanting to get enlightenment the other day. It is a long journey. Then we touched the topic of food and drink and the importance of service for a spiritual evolution and came to the main topic of this evening, the Path of Yoga. I spoke about the subtle bodies of man, the etheric existence and the bridge between the lower and the higher mind, between soul and personality. We had a look at the subtle energy centre, called chakras or lotuses and the kundalini.

The people were very open, and the meditation, starting with the singing of 21 times OM quickly established an energy field which most of them experienced as a deep inner silence. A newcomer said that she never had such an experience before. It was inspiring to see some seeds of inner growth sprouting.

Energy field – a statue by Swiss artist Maya Thommen

Someone remarked in a talk some time ago: “I don’t need to study anything about meditation or spirituality to get knowledge. That’s only mental. We have everything inside, and whatever I need to know will come to me by way of intuition.”

I thought, well, if a child thinks, “I have everything inside, I don’t need a teacher”… Or a pianist: “All comes to me by way of intuition, I don’t have to practice, I don’t need a teacher”… you can imagine the output. It is my experience that if you don’t have a right and profound understanding of what you are doing with meditation or on your spiritual path, you’ll quickly land in a deadlock or in the wilderness. A right understanding and a wise teacher help clearing the obstacles on the way to experience.

A friend sent me some days ago a powerpoint presentation about a huge beautiful temple in India, near Delhi, which has been constructed from 2000-2005. I forwarded it to another friend in the States remarking that it is better to construct temples of the heart than of stone.

He replied that he had seen the temple last year and that the presentation does not do full justice to the scope and grandeur of the “Swaminarayan Akshardham”, called a spectacular, thematic symbol of eternal life. He added a saying of H.P Blavatsky, from one of her Aquarian axioms, “You cannot build a Temple of Truth by hammering dead stones. Its foundations must precipitate themselves like crystals from the solution of Life.”

Another giant temple called “Sripuram“(: see pictures) and made of 1.5 tons of pure gold has been constructed near Vellore and inaugurated in August, 07. It is now the biggest structure made of gold. You find a description with some photos here. It reminds me of the megalomania of the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, the biggest church of the world at Ivory Coast.

The urge of man to idolize God to aggrandize himself and his own belief-system is much more powerful than the urge to work for silent self-transformation and selfless service for the needy.

For copyright reasons there is no picture of the temples, the picture here is from a friend, of a palace in Northern India.

Today I came across the website of a film called “Mystic India – an incredible journey of inspiration“. The description says:

“Mystic India rediscovers India, a land of many mysteries and fascinations, the one land that all desire to see. Home of the Himalayas, the tallest mountains, India is our world’s largest and oldest democracy, and contains an amazing wealth of wisdom, culture and spirituality. And within this earliest civilization known to mankind, lie hidden mystical secrets. It lies hidden in India’s silent spirituality, making her a mystic land of meditation, contemplation and enlightenment.

From 1792 to 1799, Neelkanth walked alone, barefoot and barebody, 8000 miles for 7 years through the length and breadth of India. Carrying no maps, no food and no clothing, how he crossed the roaring rivers, faced ferocious animals and survived the freezing winter of the Himalayas, is still a mystery. It is a story of struggle, of kindness and of courage even when face to face with a man-eating lion….

Neelkanth became one of the greatest spiritual leaders of India. His lessons continue to inspire millions. His vision, work, and wisdom echoes the essence of Indian culture – its unity in diversity. This is the greatest gift India can offer the world.
Mystic India is an epic journey into the land and soul of India…”

You can see a trailer or hear soundtracks from the film.

Photos: (c) Mystic India

Yesterday evening we had the second public evening of our evening themes on Meditation – Experiment and Experience. It was Scorpio New Moon, and the atmosphere was quite different from the first meeting: At new moon times you might feel more more oriented to the inner, to letting-go. So some people let the meetings go, and we were 10 persons, four externals, three of them from last time.

Fitting to Scorpio I spoke about difficulties and hindrances on the spiritual path: So when you start meditating, you might think of beautiful experiences of light, inner silence, expansion, harmony and clarity, but instead you often experience fog, dullness, drowsiness, bubbling emotions, thoughts jumping like monkeys or blocked energy and the feeling that the inner light is switched out. There is quite a lot of personality filth covering the lamp of the soul, and the inner light cannot shine through. In our inner being we are the soul, the I AM expressing through the personality, but living in the personality we get quickly totally lost in activities and all kinds of fancies. We had a look at the 10 obstacles Patanjali explains in his yoga teachings (read more about them here) and how to overcome them with the help of spiritual instruments. However, the work with the instruments such as sound, colour, mantrams, doing activities of good will, isn’t a magic wand giving instant enlightenment such as many hope for and others promise to give.

Afterwards my wife guided the meditation, including the observation of respiration. There was a deep silence present in the room, and the noise from the restaurant was suddenly far, far away.

Afterwards people spoke about their experiences, which ranged from sleepiness to feelings of great expansion and light. It’s always again surprising how in a group generally the meditation experience is easier and more smoothly then when you do it alone.

The last weeks there had been several contacts or situations, where couples were separating, divorcing or going through a crisis, some of them after long years of marriage. Everywhere there was a process of becoming aware that there wasn’t anymore basis for the relation. They had drifted apart or realised that it would be better so end the situation by one of the partners leaving the common flat.

My wife observed: “Over years they had suppressed emotions or closed the eyes to certain situations. It is like putting them into a storage room, or rather putting them into a safe, locking them thrice and then loosing the key.”

But you cannot cut away by means of surgery parts of your life, they start leading a life of their own: In some of the cases unwholesome forms of behaviour had developed, in another there was an emotional ice age freezing certain parts of perception.There remains a more or less subtle feeing of sickness of the situation, and like with cancer, emotional metastases develop. The origin isn’t the metastasis which you perceive somewhere in the relation, but the underlying blockages of life energy.

My wife said, that in the talks with the persons she feels like a mining rescuer going down into the mine with a headlight and bringing miners back to light: “I had to learn not to interfere with the concrete situation by way of giving advices, but by helping them to align to their soul, to the light. When this alignment is gained, they themselves find their way.”

And even if the way seems to be painful at the first look, it is like re-integrating long lost parts of life back into the greater whole. And this has a deep healing impact.

Figure of a troll in a Norwegian museum. Blocked emotions sit in us like in a cellar.

Yesterday evening we had the first of our evening themes on Meditation – Experiment and Experience. I was a bit nervous in the beginning: It took some time until the beamer was set up and the room well prepared. By an by people came in, at the end we were all together 17 persons filling the small room: members of our group, friends of friends, a colleague, and one person who came via the newspaper advertisement.

When starting to talk, slowly the inner tension dissolved and after a while the words came more like a flow. Using the powerpoint presentation was a good help, though I think next time I will go more to free speech. It was a bit dense: My wife commented afterwards: “You have done a concentrate of a concentrate, it can be a bit less dense. But one could feel that it is a result of long years of pondering, and it was genuinely you.”
The input took 45 minutes. Then, after a little pause, my wife continued with a guided meditation, so that people could experience what had been said before. A deep silence and relaxation entered the room, from far only the noise from the restaurant above resounded. I hadn’t heard my wife do this kind of guided meditation before. It was inspiring, for it gave a step-by-step intro, good for the new-comers.

Afterwards she asked each one, if he or she would like to say a bit about their experience. Some just drowsed away, some experienced relaxation, some a deep silence. One person couldn’t relax due to a cold. So we had a bunch of experiences, reflecting the individual dispositions.
Some points could be cleared: We don’t try to stop our thoughts, yes, it’s ok to sleep, for afterwards you feel refreshed. And don’t try to keep an uncomfortable position… It seemed to me that on the face of a lady a question mark of scepticism, which before meditation was very visible, had dissolved a bit. The face had relaxed and showed a tinge of a smile…

The time was quickly over: People expressed their thanks and slowly left. When clearing the room I thought of the energy expressing through the group. There was a certain coherence, which was carried through by the whole group. It was a beautiful presence, and I felt, it was a gift from higher circles.

An inner experience can be the start for a new direction on one’s path.

Today a friend of us, a young student and daughter of a long-time friend, came for a visit. Some weeks ago she started her studies at the university, and one of her subjects is philosophy. In the 70ies and 80ies I had studied philosophy for about 10 years. I stopped reading  philosophy books after my high school teacher graduation 21 years ago, and a head reeling from theories. I felt much more attracted to practical spirituality than to mental concepts, though an inquisitive nature and a joy with words have remained.

A big box with philosophical books had been slumbering over the years  in the basement. My friend was happy to take a number of books, which might help her in her studies, and I was happy that finally there was somebody to whom they could be of help. I felt relieved. Taking the books into my hands, images of old came up – battles of ideas, searches for meaning, discussions, irritations. Giving the books away was like freeing blocked energies in the “basement” of my mind and putting them into a flow.

Waterfall at the Beatus-Caves, Bernese Alps