I yesterday witnessed a strange and moving story of light and darkness:

In a previous blogpost, I mentioned a friend from Germany originally from Belarus. Two days ago, she told me that a friend of hers had contacted her “with the wish and courage to translate the English text of the biography of Sripada Srivallabha into Russian. She is a nun, and the Avatar Dattatreya is the main deity in her ministry… She is a pure soul and also speaks both languages well in the spiritual direction…”

I was thrilled that another step in the direction of the prophecy in the book that some hundred years after it was written it would be translated into many languages and go over the world.

When I read that this Russian lady is a nun related to Dattatreya, immediately images of Russian websites came to my mind where some years ago – it was in August 2016 – I had seen pictures of a beautiful ashram east of Moscow with a big golden statue of Dattatreya and other saints. (If you have the Google Chrome, go to the following pages -Russian- with automatic translation – I only use this browser for such cases…. you can download it here). I am not putting the images in this blogpost but please do see them.

They had done 108 sculptures of mahasiddhas and gods, they wanted to create a mandala of one hundred eight temples of unity of all religions. For this, they had created already a beautiful Avadhutta Dattatreya Temple, a Rishi Vasishtha Temple, a Temple of Seven Rishis and planned to do a Temple of Refuge. See here about their spiritual head, Swami Vishnudevananda Giri.

And here is another website about this Center of Vedic Culture ‘Divya Loka’ as a community of Russian-speaking followers of Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma).

When I told my friend of my findings, she sent me a picture of the destruction of the ashram by Russian autorities… I googled for images of the ashram – and found a Russian TV report of NTV.ru entitled, in English translation, “The temple of Nizhny Novgorod sectarians razed to the ground”. And: “The bailiffs decided to demolish three so-called churches at once in an abandoned village in the Nizhny Novgorod region, where members of a strange religious community have recently settled. Services were held there by the newly-minted and self-proclaimed guru. He is known in the world as a former political officer of the Ukrainian army. Regular trances, hypnosis, and cruel punishments for the smallest offenses drove adherents crazy.” See here the printscreen of the Russian original website and here with English translation. You can read more background information on the original site. See also the page about a series of suicides related to this place in 2014.

Fact or fabricated story? I had to think of persecutions in the name of state and religion in present and past and of spiritual aberrations. In the Indian scriptures, there are many stories about how the king of the devas (the beings of light, of spirit) became proud (behaved wrongly) and so the asuras (the forces of matter) attacked and destroyed the world of the devas. Only after turning to Narayana (the highest God or the pure existence) for help, they found the way back to the rightful path…

My friend wrote me, “Nothing new for Russia. The Roerich Museum was also closed.” (I had blogged about the museum before, see here and here.)

Thoughts came to me what Sri Kumar had repeatedly told us, that outer forms can be destroyed but the inner truth will manifest where time and space demand. That we do not build much outer structures to remain “light” and that we should try to live “normal temperament”, not creating special attention: “Much working can be done in silence provided there is ‘Normal Temperament’.”

I had a little exchange with the Russian lady. She is at the moment living in Nepal. She started reading the biography of Sripada Srivallabha and is willing to translate it. May the endeavour be blessed.

P.S. from February 2020: The lady told me in December that the book is already translated (wow!!!) and they are about to print it.

A friend of mine from France told me that she is now going on a journey to Mongolia, also to meet shamans. When I asked her to bring back some nice photos, she replied that she had already been there in 2013 and, “Here some photos from the sacred place called Shamballa.”

Photos from Shamballa (also spelled Shambhala, the White Island) I thought? I had written blogposts about this mythical place, also about parallels in the African language Kikongo; I had done several paintings about the glory of Shamballa and composed some texts on the basis of the Wisdom teachings; however, Shamballa, the seat of Sanat Kumara, is a place in the etheric plane in the area of Mongolia, near the desert Gobi. It is invisible for the normal eyes, but visible for people who have gained the etheric vision.

These photos were not something etheric but of a physical place. So I googled for “Shamballa Mongolia” – and found many similar photos of a place called the ‘Khamariin Khiid Monastery‘, or as it is called in Wikipedia, the ‘Khamar Monastery‘ in Mongolia.

Tripfreakz.com has an article about the background of this monastery in the south of Mongolia (“The mystical Shambala of Mongolia“), where they explain that in the beginning of the 19th century there lived Danzanravjaa, a Mongolian monk of the Red Cap Sect, who was very gifted and regarded as a reincarnation. He gave many predictions and also instructions on where to find Shamballa. At the vicinity of this place he erected a monastery in 1812 (or 1820 according to other sources, Wikipedia) near the town of Sainshand in Dorno-Gobi-Aimag  in the eastern Gobi. It was destroyed by the Stalinists in 1937, who killed many of the lamas. Danzanravjaa also predicted the date of his death; he was poisoned by his wife in 1856. Legend tells that he knew he was going to be poisoned, but he took the drink to fulfill his destiny.  The current monastery was built after the 1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia.

You find the place on Google Maps, even with Street View of the surroundings, and there is a nearby round structure on a mountain called “Energy Centre“.

I told this my friend asking if I can use the photos for a blog-post, and she said yes:

“It is necessary to make this place known to people in search of spirituality. It is not a place for tourists !!!! although the visit can make them evolve. It is a magical place in the Gobi Desert. For me it is not the real Shamballa which remains mysterious and inaccessible to humans for the moment. Maybe I’m mistaken. However, everyone talks about it like Shamballa and in any case the vibrations are very strong and it doesn’t explain how I felt.”

Yes, this centre seems to be a physical reflection of the etheric Shamballa on the subtle planes. A physical Shamballa structure can be destroyed by attackers. The spiritual reality of Shamballa, however, is indestructible. It is the highest world as per the living beings on this earth, the plane of pure existence and of perfect knowledge existing in us as the diamond consciousness in the head centre.

So this Khamariin Khiid Monastery in Gobi desert can well be regarded as a body of the reality of Shamballa.

Here are some more impressions from my friend’s journey:

10 days ago, I was invited to a summer party of the WTT group of Lake Constance. It promised to be a warm but not hot weekend. I took the highway via Konstanz (Constance) to cross the lake via ferryboat to Meersburg – a little holiday feeling.

A quarter of an hour later, around noon, I arrived at the home of my friends in Heiligenberg (‘Mountain of Saints’), with a castle overlooking the vailley. Manfred had to do some errands in preparation of the garden party and he invited me to lunch in an anthroposophic restaurant in Überlingen.

When we returned to their home, Sabine, his wife also had just arrived from school – she is a language teacher. Manfred is a retired industrial engineer and now an enthusiatic herbalist and wisdom teacher. (We had recently met at the May Call seminar in Mount Shasta.) He is focused on promoting knowledge about the healing power of plants. He has developed a huge network and is organising workshops on making herbal products for home use. And since both are also profoundly related to the wisdom teachings, another network of meditation and study developed. Over the years, I had participated in some of their group meetings. It is very inspiring to see how such a “flower-garden of seekers” can grow when it is well and regularly nurtured in a spirit of openness and synthesis. As an outer reflection Manfred has developed a beautiful lush garden with many different types of plants, especially with many different species of fragrant roses. He told me that he is inwardly relating to the plants and they grow there in all glory.

Friday evening around sunset time Sabine and I went swimming in a nearby beautiful bathing lake – summer fulness. The couple had already done quite a lot of preparations and I helped with some final arrangements. Saturday around 3 pm the group arrived, around 20 persons. We started with a meditation and some exchange and then the group went into the garden.

There were sprightly conversations – you could feel that the group connections had grown over the years. I enjoyed talking to various friends and especially exchanging with a new person and her daughter originally from Belarus but now living since many years in Germany – they had visited me the weekend before at our home in Switzerland. They told me about many Russian speaking people they know who are deeply interested in the wisdom teachings of WTT and we discussed of how this could be further developed.

Sabine had prepared a little slide show about the Mount Shasta and the May Call there and she asked me to give a short talk about it. Time quickly ran by, and when the guest had left we tried to clear up the garden as much as possible – an intense thunderstorm came during the night bringing lots of water.

In the morning, there were clouds hanging over the nearby hill and the flowers were still decorated with raindrops. We finished the clean-up work and had some conversations. Such group exchanges are always a good networking time, and so we discussed some ideas. When I set out for the journey back to Switzerland, the temperature had risen high again but I felt fulfilled with the impressions of the beautiful weekend.

Leo is the royal sign of the zodiac. Gold is its metal and the splendour of the golden sunshine represents the lion’s force of creation. The symbol of Leo symbolizes the cave of the heart. The principle of the heart is the principle of pulsation; it is linked to the soundless sound called anahata, the Sanskrit name for the heart centre. In the cave of the heart, the initiates tune into the pulsation as the music of the soul. The radiant golden face of the lion with golden rays emanating from his heart is a meditation on the qualities of this sign.

The central star of the constellation Leo is called Regulus and it is also called the heart of the lion. Through Regulus the transmission of Sirius’ spiritual energies into our system takes place.

I used a photo of a statue in Rajahmundry, India, to design the figure of the lion. I placed a radiant sun and the glyph of the sign at the heart of the lion. Coloured concentric circles indicate the pulsation. Above the head you see the constellation Leo; Regulus is directly above the head of the lion.

See more pictures on the site with my paintings. If you want to print the image, you can download the file in medium and high resolution format.
The different zodiacal signs are clustered in groups – you can see here all my Leo paintings.

The last blogpost of July 2nd was about “Biography of Sripada Srivallabha now released in English“. I would like to tell you how the story has been going on.

June 15th, there was the Indian release of the book by Sri K. Parvathi Kumar during the Guru Purnima celebration (at Cancer full moon, the full moon of the Teacher) in Hyderabad.

And yesterday I received photos from Sri Gopal, the head of the WTT centre in Hyderabad. Together with other group members, they went to Kuruvapur, an island in the Krishna river of strong spiritual vibrations, where Sripada passed the second half of his life (see here about my visit in January 2017.)

Mr Gopal wrote, “We are blessed that you thought of us to deliver this Most Sacred Book in the Sripada Srivallabha Sansthan (the temple). There was absolute Master’s cooperation wherein we received wonderful reception and we could participate in the Water Ritual to the Sripada Srivallabha Sila (the seat on which Sripada Srivallabha sat and did penance), performed by Sri. Manjunath Bhat, himself, who is the incharge of that Sansthan” (temple).

He further added: “In India we carry Guru Padukas ( symbolic Chappals -sandals- of Master) on the head with reverence. That is how we carried Gurucharitra (the book) on the head. The whole group carried the most Revered Book on head one by one till we reached the Guru Sansthan. Just for your understanding of the pictures sent.”

Thus, this English version of the Sripada biography, published in Germany, reached its “home” with great reverence: Major parts of the book had been written at Kuruvapur around 1350. And it contains the prophecy that centuries later it would be translated into many languages. See more about the book here.

Regular readers of the blog have already heard a number of times about Sripada Srivallabha, his biography and my journeys to the places of his birth and his stay.

It was a long adventure how the revised English edition of the “Sripada Srivallabha Charitamrutam” developed together with the German translation (published in 2016). I don’t want to go into it now; I just was very happy that during the recent international May Call celebration at Mount Shasta, California, Sri Kumar released the book. (Read more about the release during May Call here.)

And since today, the English book is available in the USA from Amazon.com and in India from Dhanishta Editions (you might not yet find in on their site, write to info@dhanishta.org). In Europe, you can order it from Kulapati.de; however, the parcel with the books is still on the way from India. It will also be soon available at the distributor Syntropia.de, who also sells the German version. More about book distribution see here.

You can also download the book for free (20 MB); however, it is good to have the book in paper form.
The Spanish and the French translations, on the basis of this English version, have been finished and are in process of proof-reading. See also the website www.sripada-srivallabha.org.

In the biography, Sripada said about the book: “I will remain in a subtle form in every place where My biography is devotedly read.” “Don’t think that Sri Charitamrutam book is a mere book. It is a live stream of a glorious consciousness.”

January 2015, at the beginning of my contact with the Charitamrutam, Sri Kumar told me: “Don’t think that it is a book; it is pure fire.” And indeed, it caused a lot of transformation with me.

In 1991, when Sri Kumar on a journey to Switzerland came to know that it was the 500th anniversary of Paracelsus (1493-1541), he did a hike with two friends to the birthplace of this great alchemist initiate. At this birthplace next to a bridge across the Sihl river (known as Teufelsbrücke, Devil’s Bridge) near Einsiedeln, he had the vision of an eagle, symbol of an initiate and that it is a very sacred place.

During the May Call celebration 1999 on Mount Rigi he did an excursion with the entire group to this place and proposed that it would be good to have a centre there to enable being in the presence of the energies of Paracelsus.

Some group members picked up the proposal and within two weeks they had rented a small apartment in the house at the site of the birthplace. In June, we visited the rooms and planted some trees on the meadow near the house (which a bit later goats used for their meal….). And then we furnished the apartment.

In December 1999 around the birthday of Paracelsus, Sri Kumar gave a seminar on Paracelsus in Einsiedeln and the entire group came for the inauguration of the Paracelsus Centre. And with Sri Kumar as editor-in-chief, an international team started to publish the “Paracelsus Health and Healing” magazine from 2003 on.

In the beginning, we did regular weekly meetings at the Paracelsus Centre to study the teachings of Paracelsus and other wisdom teachings. It was a lot of travelling, and about 10 years later, the frequency of these meetings got less. Since 2014, we have been meeting there during equinoxes and solstices. And also the team of the Paracelsus magazine does an annual retreat at this beautiful serene place.

On summer equinox morning, we met on the nearby mountain ridge for a fire ritual and later celebrated this cardinal point of the year in the Paracelsus centre – with meditations, little rituals, study of the importance of summer solstice, cooking and eating together as well as a walk to experience the solstice energy. At summer solstice, there is a subtle change of energies in nature and in us – witnessing it is a good preparation for the transformations it brings.

Around the house at the birthplace of Paracelsus, there had been some changes: the Cultural Heritage and Historic Monuments office has recently renovated the place with the Paracelsus memorial plate and some civil service workers had built a new fountain at the roadside. Hikers now stop there to drink some fresh water.

Spiritual Astrology regards Cancer as the time of dusk and as the moment where the soul enters into the body and thus, gets sealed in matter. Our mind corresponds to moonlight. It can reflect the soul, the Sun. Moon is the ruler of Cancer and Neptune is exalted in this sign. Like Earth is receiving the rays of Neptune via the Moon, our mind (Moon) is receiving the music of the soul through deep meditation (Neptune).

The image is inspired by the occult meditation no. 16 of Master CVV (see: Ekkirala Krishnamacharya, Spiritual Psychology; and: K. Parvathi Kumar, Occult Meditations): “Moon is silver. I AM the lake. Lake is moonlight, I AM healed. I AM silver. In me the moonbeam awakes. I AM moonlight. In me the Sun is sealed.”

The painting shows the Moon reflecting on the surface of the lake of mind, illustrated by the glyph of Cancer. And down below the Sun is sealed, spreading its light through matter. Behind the Moon you can see the bluish sphere of Neptune, and on its left you find the constellation of Cancer.

See more pictures on the site with my paintings. If you want to print the image, you can download the file in medium and high resolution format.
The different zodiacal signs are clustered in groups – you can see here all my Cancer paintings.

Saturday morning after breakfast, last exchanges and saying good-bye to one and all, we boarded the buses which transported us back to San Francisco or San Jose. And the team of organizers started closing the site of the group living and packing….

It was quite hot when we came down from the mountains to the central Californian area. Our bus driver drove with high speed, he seemed to be in a hurry to come home… The bus stopped at the Courtyard Hotel in San Jose North. While the others checked in, I waited in the lobby together with three friends to be picked up.

Some hours later Murali came with his neighbour Gurjinder and they drove us to Morgan Hill. For two nights, we stayed in the house of Gurjinder and his wife Kusum, a very amiable couple from Punjab in Northern India. They live in a beautiful huge villa, newly constructed and well decorated inside and outside with Indian art. He is an IT specialist, she a dentist. She helped in Anu’s and Murali’s house in the kitchen, where the Master and his travel group stayed and where many of the Indian brotherhood came for the prayers. A small footpath through the garden connected the two houses.

Gurjinder and Kusum gave us a warm welcome. It touched me very much that they gave their own bedroom to accommodate Rosy and Mathilda. And I slept in the room of their daughter, who was rehoused to her twin brother (both approx. mid-20s) – one would hardly find such hearty hospitality in Europe.

Sunday morning after meditation there was a Pada Puja, a traditional worship of the Teacher and his wife by members of the Indian brotherhood of California in the house of Anu and Murali.

Later, the Master and his companions made an excursion, while I sat down to write the minutes of the General Assembly. Afterwards, Mathilda and I walked through the gardens of the two houses and enjoyed the flowers and the smell of the eucalyptus trees. And we had interesting exchanges with the parents of Murali. Although in the 80s, they are very spirited.

Next morning when we wanted to prepare for departure, Gurjinder was showing the rooms of his house to the Master, just looking into the room where I had spread my belongings for packing… Shortly afterwards, a driver from Lyft came to give us a ride to San Francisco airport.

Mathilda’s flight was in the early afternoon, mine was in the evening, and finally delayed for 2.5 hours. I spend the day in the airport, reading, writing, watching some expositions of the SFO Museum in the airport. While I was out on a terrace at the Gates, I saw the Swiss airplane coming in with much delay from Zurich. It was nearly 10 pm when the plane took off again for the flight back.

In the plane, I sat in a row together with a mother and her daughter, about 8 years old. They were from LA but of Italian ancestry and on their way to Italy. The lively daughter gave me a welcome chewing gum and recommended me to watch the “Captain Marvel” movie about a superwoman, which she had already seen, and so I did.

Flying through the time zones, looking down once while passing from Greenland over fields of icebergs and then again just before the Hebrides, I tried to consciously realise what was just happening. Yes, the melting icebergs around Greenland have something to do with my flying above them; but the unfolding network of light and spiritual awakening and of an attitude of service witnessed during the group living is a strong promise for better relations between humans, nature and the globe.

When my wife picked me up at the train station and I finally was back home, I felt profoundly grateful for the safe ending of the journey and filled with an abundance of impressions.

Saturday morning after meditation, there was the final meeting of the big group.  Sri Kumar presented all the organisers of the group life – 13 couples, mostly the second generation of the WTT, had carried out the work:

“Their parents have been associated with either Master EK or me during the last 40 years. They grew up in a spirit of service, got married, secured their job and also have children. The Indians believe in greatest importance of education and to settle in society. Then they think of marriage and it is all carried out by 35 years’ time – the first cycle of Saturn. They do not set the cart before the horse; they make sure that they are good enough to pull the cart and then set out to enjoy the life in a good manner. They grew well in the presence of Master EK and later of me. They are very well oriented to service. They have the good luck of not being selfish from childhood because they have the touch of the hierarchical teachings and the hierarchical teacher. Whenever we relate to this 2^nd generation group, it is always full of the spirit of offering and service.”

Then the Master presented his entire family that had accompanied him on this journey.

As an expression of thanks, the group offered to the Master and his wife Kumari-garu as traditional gifts coconut and clothes. For the closure of the group life, Sri Kumar spoke the Group Invocation: “It is for the group protection, group sharing, group enlightenment and ensuring there is no malice between the members of the group.” A beautiful and profound group life thus came to a close.

Normally, with a superficial glance, you might think of such group livings as easy-going, but when writing these lines, some challenges and obstacles group members had encountered came to my mind:

A dear friend who had planned to come had to change plans and flew from the US to India because his father just had died at arrival in Kumbhakonam for May Call and my friend wanted to assist his mother. Another friend fell at Frankfort airport on a moving stairway, broke some bones and had to stop her journey. Another friend had to return home during May Call due to severe pain; some time before, she had broken a number of bones when during skiing she dashed into a tree instead of into her daughter. She nevertheless came but had to go to a hospital even during May Call. Many caught a cold or even fever during the group life or on the journey back. Another person, when helping with cooking for group members burnt her hands in boiling oil. Some friends could not come from India because the American embassy did not give them a visa. Many had to struggle to overcome financial or private difficulties before the journey. And many group members did great sacrifices to help making the May Call celebration successful.
Such group livings can ignite profound spiritual aspiration; they give strength and determination for continuing the Path.

One group member, a dear friend aged 85, wrote me that he will stay at Mount Shasta until mid-August – he is determined to climb to the top of the mount ( 4,322 m) and is training hard. He just wrote, “I was today at over 3000 m”. Strive to the top!