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Pisces is the fourth mutable sign. Pisces is also a water sign and related to emotions which can lead us into states of confusions and illusions. As the final sign and goal, Pisces also offers us the revelation of the true and the real.
The Circle of Good Will and Night Light News invite you to the first Aquarian Salon of the second cycle, Saturday, April 27, 2024. Theme: Beginning a New Astrological Year 2024 – A Triangle, Three Festivals, Goodwill & the Sound of the Divine Word.
The meeting on Zoom will start 7pm 07 pm, CEST (UTC +2) / 12 pm, CDT (UTC -5), 10 am PDT (UTC – 7). Opening is 06:45 pm with guitar music.
In various paintings by Nicholas Roerich, Chintamani is depicted as the treasure of the world. He also painted Chintamani as an extraterrestrial jewel which, according to Tibetan and Mongolian legends, is brought to the humans on the back of a white horse, Erdeni Mori, to enlighten the consciousness of humanity in times of darkness.
According to the wisdom teachings, Chintamani, the Philosopher’s Stone, is a beautiful self-radiating jewel that is kept in Shambala, the ashram of Sanat Kumara, and is sometimes given to the Hierarchy.
There is also a dormant centre of Chintamani in every human being. We can visualise it as the jewel on the crown of our head in the centre of the thousand-petalled lotus. From there, this energy is sometimes brought to the forehead. It is a state of being that gives us bliss and enables us to realise the purpose of our life. The jewel of Chintamani reminds us of this goal.
To visualise the centre of Chintamani on the head, I used photos of a Buddha statue, a crystal and a gemstone as well as flower elements. The sparks of light connect with the stars and indicate the cosmic nature of Chintamani’s origin.
In the background of the picture is an opening spiral, the beginning of which is not recognizable. It symbolizes the evolution of consciousness. From the center between the eyebrows, lines form a vessel that opens up into space. They indicate the opening of the personality to the soul and the merging with the Supersoul. The sign of Pisces stands for oceanic union with the cosmic consciousness.
A true Aquarian is a person whose consciousness is no longer centred on the self but has become universal. His guiding principle is to enable others to prosper and develop spiritually.
It is now a week ago that I started the journey back home from India and nearly five weeks since the start. Through the fog of inner and outer impressions, the contours of what I experienced slowly become clearer. In this mist, there is a light shining through which becomes stronger when I contemplate on it, and I might call it the essence. It is inside but it is shining into the outer as well. It has been impregnating me and keeps doing so.
The journey itself is like a multi-dimensional cinema experience – I go in and I go out again. And the intensity fades when the cinema show ends. With a cinema show, there is mostly no lasting impact. And it is the same with many things I encounter in India – they are not of relevance for my life in the West and face away again. But each journey is like a “reset” of my life which is not possible when I stay comfortably at home. It is a transformation experience. Such a pilgrimage journey helps me to better align to the purpose of my life. And gain fresh vigour and determination.
Abu Dhabi airport
There were many exchanges, I saw saw many forms of community/communities and coherence/being together. With the group members and other people I encountered, I perceived an intense striving for divinity, expressing spirituality in daily life. It was much stronger perceivable than in the surroundings of my Western life. And this was very inspiring. Although I cannot and do not want to live and work and express myself in a way I saw in India – and I also saw forms which kept me at a distance and were disgusting – it gave me fresh resolve to express divinity and spirituality in my life and through the ways and forms which are possible in my surroundings. It is a matter of inner attitude. This fresh impulse is most essential for me.
The Triangular Book of Count Saint Germain
At the beginning of the journey, on the very first day, Sri Joshi showed Mark and me photos from a manuscript which he and Shreya had taken at the Getty Research Institute in LA, the Triangular Book of Count Saint Germain (Master CSG). I was very thrilled to see the beautiful drawings and writings in perfect handwriting mostly in cipher language. It was a touch of the great Master who had built a bridge of the wisdom of Hierarchy from the East to the West – although it still remains a mystery. I didn’t know about this book but we are reading in a German study group the “Most Holy Trinosophia” of Master CSG, which Master EK had mentioned, and Sri Joshi wanted to send the photos. I didn’t receive it but the information came in other ways, by sharing with group members and some further search: the entire book is scanned and online; it is translated into English here. There are two manuscripts of the Triangular Book, one dated 1775, the other 1750. There is a very interesting website about it, “The Triangular Book“, by an anonymous author, giving an aura of mystery. He hinted at a book and he might be the author himself, since he writes about “my publication of Triangular Book of St. Germain (Ouroboros Press, 2014). So, it is probably Nick Koss, who produced an exquisite limited edition reproduction published in Seattle, from where my friend Mark Ray came and where he passed over at return of our journey, completing his cycle on earth.
I do not know which is the relevance of all these impressions and all information about the “Triangular Book” of Master CSG for me. But I mention here this story because it shows well how mysteries reveal themselves when the time is ripe, even if it takes centuries. I learn not to rush but let things develop themselves.
And this is, where the end of my blog-posts about the “Journey to Group Livings of WTT in India” touches the beginning. The mystery of the extremely intense experiences of this journey.
Drawing of Master CSG, from the Manly Palmer Hall heritage collection, manuscript 209, at Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (c)
The recording of Saturday’s 4th Aquarian Salon has just been published:
This recording of the fourth “Aquarian Salon” about Art, Astrology and Wisdom Teachings, 20 Jan. 2024, is about an experiment of online group exchange on spiritual topics with the power of the group. All was done just for the joy of doing as a free and non-commercial initiative.
The entire recording is 01:49 h. If you would like to see a specific part, go directly to:
Welcome, explaining the schedule: 0:20 Guitar piece: 02:02 Prayer for group coherence: 06:52 Introduction: Intuition – The Raincloud of Knowable Things… : 08:15 Exchange on image: Capricorn – The Mount, the Star, the White Robe and the Gate of Death : 18:40 Exchange on image: Aquarius – The Mother with the Aquarian Pot : 38:15 Exchange on image: Pisces – The Great Fish and the Seed of the Universe : 54:20 Exchange on image: Leo – The Tree of the Universe and the Cosmic Teaching Principle : 01:09:30 Exchange on image: Capricorn – The Column of Consciousness: 01:21:26 Tribute to Mark Ray: 01:39:40 Musical Closing: 1:45:00 Violet Flame Invocation: 1:46:30: Violet Flame Invocation, followed by Next Dates & Invitation to After Hour
The virtual exchange was prepared and presented by a team of 5: Slides (operated by Lauren), participants care (Rosa), musical inputs (guitar, Frank), introduction talk and moderation (Risa), “Images of Synthesis”, explanations (Ludger). Further: a Prayer for Group Coherence, and an Invocation of the Violet Flame
About 28 persons from 8 countries participated and contributed with their thoughts as much as they wanted. Feedback from a participant: “Beautiful paintings and very thorough and brilliant explanation of all the elements! Love it.”
Reyes had brought the newly published Spanish Sripada biography from Spain. Together with Marta and Adele from the WTT Sripada group from the area of Girona, we wanted to bring the book to the temple. Soon after the morning prayers on the 14th we started with a taxi, accompanied by Sandeep as a guide and translator. It is a journey of about 180 km and the temple closes at 12 am, so we didn’t want to be late. Pithapuram is in a way a labyrinth, and it took again some time to find the Maha Samsthanam temple. It is small and there are nearly no signs in the town indicating how to find it.
As Master Kumar once told us, it is a place of highest energy but veiled. We need to align and orient inside. And so we did. Srī Sajjanagada Ramaswamy (1925 – 2018), the late spiritual head of the temple did not install any follower; there is a temple administration taking care of organisational affairs but it is not a spiritual head. And there are priests conducting ritualistic activities.
Sripada statue at the Maha Samsthanam temple
Statue of Lord Dattatreya in the centre of the temple
Reyes handed over the Spanish book to the director of the temple, who invited us to a coffee in his office. We spoke a bit about our earlier visits and the German and English Sripada biographies published by the WTT.
Handing over of the Spanish Sripada biography to the director of the temple
In the office
When driving back to Visakhapatnam, I was in a state of digestion. There had been so many impressions, exchanges and experiences the last days. I felt that it now needs time to digest. The next day, most of the group members from the West left again, going back home or to other places. There were intense talks with those who stayed back and couldn’t leave due to flight connection problems.
I slept very little in the last night and tried to pin down some impressions. Around 10 am, Murthy and Ravishankar came to bring me to Visakhapatnam airport. On the way I thought, it is still 3.5 hours until departure. They brought me to the entry of the airport. When I wanted to enter, the security guard informed me that my flight connection to Bangalore was cancelled and that I should go to the counter of Indigo airlines. I was shocked. I didn’t have access to my e-mail accounts the last days due to a technical problem. I was not the only one waiting at the counter. I came to know that the only way to reach my international flight at 9:30 pm from Bangalore was to catch the 12:30 am Chennai and in the evening a flight to Bangalore. Arrival would be late. I inwardly called for help and guidance. And it was there.
At Chennai airport
I got a very last minute place at the 12:30 flight to Chennai and rushed as fast as possible to check-in and security. The boarding was already in process. In Chennai I had to wait some hours in a mass of travellers. I tried to stay aligned and focused inside, doing some spiritual practices.
Shiva statue at Chennai airport
The evening flight was late and also a bit delayed. In Bengaluru, there is a new international airport, where I had to catch the shuttle bus with my luggage. I ran through the airports. At the Etihad counter, the check-in had been through but I came still in time for the flight to Abu Dhabi. In the plane, the travellers were encouraged to use their mobiles for getting access to information and entertainment – there were no more information screens in the plane and I couldn’t understand the announcements but thought, we will arrive in Abu Dhabi anyhow and it’s time to sleep.
The flight to Zurich was fine but it had strong counter-winds. I somehow noticed that we were passing over Iran and Turkey – below some global conflict zone. But we were like in another dimension where I either slept or was carried away by a movie. I saw Dune, the third adaptation of 2021 of an epic science-fiction film with partly occult scenes.
At Zurich I lost a train connection because customs controlled me and checked the Brahmi boxes….. they phoned to someone and found that it’s ok… But soon, there was another connection. It was raining and snowing outside when my wife picked me up at the railway station. I arrived home, very tired.
I felt that I was very much protected and guided by the MASTER – several times, I had experienced incredible short term “openings” to the next steps of the journey. When my mind became restless, I listened inside and always felt: “Everything will be fine and OK” and so it was.
A turtle-shaped stone with lotus flowers at the entrance of the Maha Samsthanam temple in Pithapuram, turtle being a symbol of the cosmos and the lotus a symbol of unfoldment. It says that deep below this stone and in the inner planes, there is the centre of highest energies, where sages are continuously meditating in deep contemplation
From January 10th in the evening to January 13th, 2024, there was the celebration of the 63rd Master CVV Guru Puja Celebration at a festival site in Visakhapatnam. The tradition of celebrating a global Yoga Festival was initiated by Master EK in 1962. The yoga of Master CVV is the central theme of these gatherings, and truth seekers from East and West are invited to experience collectively the One Master who manifests in many ways.
Opening the Guru Puja ceremony
Group livings similar to the Guru Pujas are celebrated in many countries on astrologically important days such as full moons, new moons, equinoxes and solstices or the May Call Days to tone up their practices and deepen their understanding. Like in previous years, books and other teachings were available at the Guru Pujas and accommodation, food and other facilities were offered with Love and without demanding monetary contributions. The participants offer their services and resources and learn to transcend mundane considerations by their self-offering. Thus, the Guru Pujas are a grand ritual in the spirit of the Yoga of Synthesis and in tune with the hierarchical Plan.
The core of the Guru Pujas is that the World Teacher Trust worships Lord Krishna as the World Teacher presiding over the universe and Lord Maitreya as the head of the Teaching Hierarchy on this planet. Master KPK had conducted the Guru Pujas from 1984 until 2022, the year of his passing. Now, a team of the managing council of the WTT in India conducts the Guru Pujas as a group activity.
Navaneetam conducting the opening ceremonies and the evening prayer
The main focus was on the morning and evening group prayers/meditations. Like in other years, there was a fire ritual, a water ritual and the Lalitha Puja for women in honour of the World Mother, a naming ceremony for small children and initiation to literacy as well as initiation into the Gayatri mantram.
Guru Prasad and his wife Gayatri during the Fire Ritual
During the Lalitha Puja
There were lectures by speakers from various centres and book presentations by Kulapathi Book Trust (publication of books by Master EK on “Suparna Suktam”, “Spiritual Personality Development” and “Masters and Disciples in the Modern Age” – PDFs of the books will be published later), by Dhanishta Editions (K. Parvathi Kumar: 108 Names of Kumara) and a booklet from Sadguru Tapovana group, Bengaluru, of a lecture of Master KPK on “Merry Life Day”. There were cultural contributions such as musical programs or group singing.
Release of new books of Kulapathi Book Trust
On 12 January, there was the section on “Fusion of East and West.” Guru Prasad had invited Reiner from Germany, Dona from Spain and me on the dais. He introduced us to the audience and presented the new publications brought from Europe.
Reiner, the treasurer of WTT Germany, spoke about group activities in Germany. Dona, a homoeopath and Ayurveda practitioner from Spain, spoke about her path into healing activities. I gave a talk about the stages of the Externalisation of Hierarchy and the role of Master EK and Master KPK in this regard. Here is the YouTube recording of my talk.
I mentioned that the Guru Pujas had always deeply impressed me ever since I started regularly coming in January from 2001 on. Several times, Master Kumar had pointed out to relate to the Great Ones through the images trying to perceive their invisible Presence. The pictures help us to link to the Masters and the divine beings, and maybe we can experience them when invoked in the group livings through the prayers, the rituals and the wisdom teachings. This way, the Hierarchy inspires our activities and interactions and uplifts us to the planes of experience and be-ness, beyond mental concepts.
Besides these Fusion of East and West talks, all other interactions were in Telugu only – besides an English word or sentence here and there, all was in Telugu only. So, we could only follow by inner linking and turning inside. It is a Saturnian discipline. Last year, I had mentioned the importance of the use of English as the Aquarian language and some had spoken English and Telugu – I didn’t want to bring up this topic again.
I do not want to demand anything or to tell what should be done. But in individual talks I mentioned that I am coming from a small multi-language country where translation is very normal in many social interactions, and that at the last May Call celebration in Germany most of the activities were translated into English to include a few non-German speakers, besides regular translation of WTT Zoom transmissions. And I expressed my hope for an opening of the “Telugu language bubble” to possibly include also people from other Indian language groups and from overseas, to make the group livings global. There is not need to translate everything – it was very helpful and necessary with the teachings of Master Kumar. But may an inner urge be felt by the speakers themselves to make the import of their words also available to a larger audience by integrating English. And that this way, the Guru Pujas might become more inclusive.
In the afternoon of January 12th, I felt the “Indian washing machine” approaching – the yoghurt from the Westerners’ lunch had probably been left in the heat for too long. I started to have diarrhoea – and not just me. So I missed one day of the celebration, stayed in my room and slept a lot until Saturday lunchtime. when I went back to the Guru Puja – and continued drowsing there. This is also one of the Guru Puja experiences I am familiar with – it is a cleansing process with bodily re-adjustments. When in the evening the melody of the “Guru Padukam” sounded at the end of the celebration, I was tired, but felt happy about the experiences and encounters.
Eastern scriptures describe how the sage Agastya drank the waters of the oceans in order to save humanity. There were demons hiding under the oceans. At night they came out and ate the humans. The devas felt helpless and asked Agastya to help them. So Agastya absorbed the waters of the ocean for six hours. This enabled the devas to kill the dark forces. The Master then released the waters and the ocean was filled with water once again.
This story is an allegory about the ascending path of the waters. When the Sun moves again northwards after the winter solstice, the warmer rays cause the water to rise up from the oceans. The drinking of the oceans is associated with the evaporation of water, which occurs through the activity of Aquarius.
In the Age of Aquarius, humanity, which has sunk deep into matter, is lifted up again to spirit. Agastya, the cosmic Master Jupiter, releases the energies of Aquarius and thus, contributes to the upliftment of the earth. Symbolically, Agastya drinks up the oceans to help overcome the demons of the lower regions. Agastya always comes to help the earth in great crises.
For the design of the picture I worked with an old Indian drawing of Agastya’s feat and with photos of the Iguazú Falls in Argentina/Brazil.
Over the last months, Mark Ray and I had developed the plans for our journey to India. Mark was a third generation theosophist from Seattle, USA, in link with the Wisdom teachings since his youth. He studied psychology but preferred to work with his hands, so he specialised on renovating houses. For years, he was very active in the Theosophical Society Seattle, be it as president, be it in development of Indralaya, a theosophical center on Orcas Island committed to community and spiritual development.
Ever since he came into contact with the WTT he increasingly committed himself to build a bridge between theosophy and the World Teacher Trust teachings of Master KPK and Master EK. He met Master KPK at a group living in San Jose, California, in 2018 and again at the May Call 2019 at Mount Shasta, California. There, we shared a room together and very quickly became friends. For me, it was like meeting a brother in a deeper sense of the word.
We had been in regular monthly contact via Zoom. These were intense exchanges about many spiritual topics. And nearly at every exchange, Mark gave me profound astrological insights, be it from the perspective of Western or of Vedic astrology – in both, he was very well versed.
On 22 December early morning, we met at Bengaluru airport, he coming from Seattle via Frankfurt, me from Zurich via Abu Dhabi, arriving by chance at the same moment at the immigration counters.
Together with Mark and Sri Joshi, the head of Sadguru Tapovana, Bengaluru,before departure to the Nilagiris
Next day, we went to the Master Mountain Retreat Center in the Niligiris, the Blue Mountains of South India, the place of the ashram of the great Rishi Agastya, where we spent 4 days. Then we returned to Sadguru Tapovana, the WTT center in Bengaluru, where we participated at the December Call celebrations.
Mark, on arrival at Master Mountain Resort in the Nilagiris
Afterwards we flew to Visakhapatnam and participated in the group living there.
We shared the room together over the entire journey and had intense exchanges. These were very harmonious days and Mark was continuously active speaking with members about their astrological charts. He had a GoPro camera with him and we did a number of video interviews about WTT activities at different places – we planned to do a report. And he recorded a gorgeous sunrise in the Nilagiris and we planned to do a video with an Indian bamboo flute player, Kaliprasad, whom we met in Bengaluru and in Vizag.
On Tuesday, 9 January, he started his return journey. From Vizag airport, he wrote to me at noon time: “I didn’t get to say goodbye but we will see each other again soon on Zoom. I am at the airport and went through check in a security without problems. Then I found my hat upstairs and something western to eat. No more rice for a while. 🙂 There is now a blizzard warning over the mountains to my home so I may have to stay overnight at my sisters again. India has been very kind to me on this trip. I never felt afraid to walk on the streets and had no problems except for the bronchitis. It is hard to leave so many kind and spiritual people.(…) Now I have to formulate my thoughts on the trip and how to make the World Teacher Trust more universal. Meanwhile I will rest and reconnect with family. Thank you again for this great opportunity!”
About 3 hours later, he wrote: “I am in Bangalore now and at Terminal 2. The plane was about 30 minutes late but that is not a problem for me. My Lufthansa flight leaves at 3:30 am so I have a long wait.” Then he wrote from Frankfurt: “I caught my last flight and am about to take off. Seattle in nine hours.”
This was the last e-mail. On arrival in Seattle, on the way through the customs, Mark (26 April 1954 – 10 Jan 2024) left the body and took the flight to the subtle planes of Light. It was the time of the new moon of Capricorn -Capricorn being the time of the beginning of the solar ascent symbolizing the ascent of the Soul out of the conditioning of matter. And the time of new moon symbolizes the beginning of a new cycle of further development – a very auspicious time for passing over to continue the path on the subtle planes.
Mark had been absorbing the impressions in India like a dry sponge, also with his video cam – I asked him, “will you find time for viewing all this?” But it was a profound soul experience he had – which also made him a bit careless about his health – not only me had warned him to protect his body better and that the warmth here is rough, carrying the energies of winter and affecting the bodies, esp. those from the West. He got a bronchitis the last days and a doctor at the seminar and healing practitioners gave him medicine. His body was somehow weakened before the return flight but he seemed to be OK. There must be a deeper reason for his sudden passing. There were signs that his soul knew about the passing already: He told several friends from the group about dreams he had during the last nights where he saw faces, esp. of his mother, staring at him, and he asked a friend of mine, “What do they want to say to me, I do not understand.” She told him, “Ask them to tell you.”
These premonitions show that the veil between the spheres was becoming thinner already and that, though a great surprise on the outer, there was a knowledge in the inner of the coming departure.
Before his departure, he gave me all his video recordings, and we had planned to do some report about the journey He had recorded a most splendorous sunrise in the Nilagiris and I had contacted a very well-known bamboo flute player here who wants to play a morning raga for the sunrise video – in a way, this is for me an expression of the gift of Mark’s inner radiance as an inspiration to others, and as his life had been for many.
Mark on arrival at the Master Mountain resort on 23 December 2023 afternoon
Mark, farewell and have a good continuation of your journey!
Capricornian sunrise at Christmas morning 2023 in the Nilagiris
Early this morning Indian time, I came to know that another dear friend from Germany had passed over exactly the same day as Mark, Renate Vincent from Germany. She was one of the early German translators of the books of Master EK. About 2 years, Master Kumar asked me to keep actively contact with her, so we had a few talks and she joined my English online study group for a short while, but then other tasks made her resign. Renate, also to you a much blessed journey to the subtle spheres of Light!
