In half an hour my son will bring me to the station – the journey to India begins. This afternoon I’ll fly from Zurich via Dubai/Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam to attend the seminar and Guru Pooja celebration of the World Teacher Trust (WTT). It’s my 13th journey to Visakh and the 17th to India, but each time it is a little adventure.

Yesterday a Swiss friend skyped me from Visakh and told me that because of the scarceness of rooms in the Retreat Centre I will be “camping” in a hall. OK, I thought, better to be there than to stay outside. There are more people coming this year than the other years, mainly from Argentina – I saw the lists of participants and look forward to meet a number of old friends. I’ll try to blog a bit about the journey.

I’m really looking forward to this journey – very turbulent and challenging weeks at my office kept me on high speed the last months, with a climx in December. 2 days ago I talked with our director and he understands the difficulties – we will deal with them in February. Directly after my return. I will have a talk with him and my superior to see how we can find a solution. So for the moment the job has a little pause and I’ll take off…

The last weeks I enjoyed digitally restoring my old paintings from the 80ies – fruits of an intense inner experience in 1981. Every day, also this morning, I had been publishing a picture with some lines of comment. There will be a bit over 100 paintings, 70 have been published on Flickr and about 35 are still waiting. I wonder whether I will find time to continue my project in India.

Here is one I did in August 1987 – “Spiritual Hierarchy VI – The Ascent”. You can read my comment on Flickr, if you like – and also post a comment, or on my Facebook profile. Enjoy

A video with the sublime sounds of Tibetan Singing Bowls (48 min.). Sit down and relax.

An Indian friend sent me the following nice story:

A man was sitting by a lake. He was throwing small pebbles into it from time to time. A young boy happened to cross by. He was intrigued to see that after every few minutes or so, the man would toss a pebble into the lake.

The boy went up to the man and said, “Good pastime, this stone throwing, he?” “Hmmm,” said the man. He seemed to be deep in thought and obviously did not wish to be disturbed.

Sometime later, the man said softly, “Look at the water, it is absolutely still.”

The boy said, “Yeah, it is.”

The man tossed a pebble into the water and continued, “Only till I toss a pebble into it now do you see the ripples?”

“Yeah,” said the boy, “they spread further and further.”

“And soon, the water is still again,” offered the man.

The boy said, “Sure, it becomes quiet, after a while.”

The man continued, “What if we want to stop the ripples? The root cause of the ripples is the stone. Let’s take the stone out. Go ahead and look for it.” The boy put his hand into the water and tried to take the stone out.

But he only succeeded in making more ripples. He was able to take the stone out, but the number of ripples that were made in the process were a lot more than before.

The wise man said, “It is not possible to stop the movement of the water once a pebble has been thrown into it. But if we can stop ourselves from throwing the pebble in the first place, the ripples can be avoided altogether! So too, it is with our minds. If a thought enters into it, it creates ripples. The only way to save the mind from getting disturbed is to block and ban the entry of every superfluous thought that could be a potential cause for disturbance. If a disturbance has entered into the mind, it will take its own time to die down. Too many conflicting thoughts just cause more and more disturbances. Once the disturbance has been caused it takes time to ebb out. Even trying to forcibly remove the thought may further increase the turmoil in the mind. Time surely is a great healer, but prevention is always better than cure.”

Before you allow a thought or a piece of information to enter your mind, put it through the triple filter test of authenticity, goodness and value.

At a little nearby river, spring 2008

An Indian friend forwarded me an e-mail from his doctor-friend who introduced a beautiful video with a hymn by Adi Shankara:

“Both the videos are similar. Please insert the name of the God that you worship in place of “Shiva” at the end of each stanza. Adi Shankara believed in no caste or religion. His God was himself (Shiva), who is none other than the God you and I worship. Call Him by any name that you want to. For those who do not understand Sanskrit, the meaning is given in English.
I find it very enchanting and beautiful. Thanks, Anand.

The introduction to the video says:
“The great Adi Shankara of the eighth century summarized the entirety of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic philosophy) in six stanzas. When a young boy of eight, while wandering in the Himalayas, seeking to find his guru, he encountered a sage who asked him, “Who are you?” the boy answered with these stanzas, which are known as “Nirvana Shatakam” or “Atma Shatakam.” “Nirvana” is complete equanimity, peace, tranquility, freedom and joy. “Atma” is the True Self. The sage the boy was talking to was Swami Govindapada Acharya, who was, indeed, the teacher he was looking for.”
These few verses can be of tremendous value to progress in contemplation practices that lead to Self-Realization.”

Every year we publish from WTT-Global an Astrological Diary running from Aries to Pisces. I just published the information about ordering the diary 2012/13. It is helpful if you want to work with the subtle rhythms of time and use the constellations for meditation – a fascinating inner work.

It is quite an intense work to prepare the diary with all the daily ephemeris and indications. I did it once some years ago – it needs a lot of concentration… The Astro-Diary is published at cost price just in a small number for those who order it. You find more information here. Orders are possible till Dec. 14th.

For interested persons who cannot afford the print version we will also make it available in PDF form. The monthly important dates – not the daily ephemeris – can also be found here.

A page of the calendar:

A friend teaching in Oregon, at Bastyr University, wrote me today:

It is my lot to be teaching World Religion starting in January. In preparations for this class I came across a rare group of interfaith friends and colleagues. They call themselves the “Interfaith Amigos.” This might interest our group members as well (they have a YouTube site).”

Their website presents the Interfaith Amigos with the following words:
“Known for their unique blend of spiritual wisdom and humor, Imam Jamal Rahman, Pastor Don Mackenzie and Rabbi Ted Falcon openly address the usual taboos of interfaith dialogue — the “awkward” parts of each tradition — in order to create a more authentic conversation.”

And they ask: “With so much divisiveness splintering our world, how do we Get to the Heart of Interfaith?” And one of the interfaith amigos, Imam Jamal Rahman, answers: “As the Prophet Muhammed said, we need to move from ‘knowledge of the tongue’ to ‘knowledge of the heart.'” – Perfectly true.

Here is a video from TEDxDU

A good initiative of “Life Vest Inside” about the power of kindness. They say: “Kindness is a universal language that has tremendous uplifting power. Life Vest Inside is based on the philosophy that increasing kindness in society will lead to more connectedness and a better, happier world” – how true. They have an education program to introduce living kindly into schools, for it can be taught and should begin in one’s youth. See the video inspiring video and read more about the campaign.

I just came across a piece of text from my notes of the seminar with Sri Kumar in India, January 2006, where he spoke on The Secret Doctrine. You find there comments on the Stanzas of the Book of Dzyan. The notes said:

“We should read the first stanza of Dzyan daily and then go to sleep. This would be very helpful – pick up the OM NAMO NARAYANAYA, read the 8 steps of the first stanza (not the 9th one, which is a question) and go to sleep. We need to think it to get it sinking into the core of our being.”

The stanzas beautifully describe the state between two creations – like the state of sleep between tonight and tomorrow morning. Enjoy the depth:

STANZA I of the Seven Stanzas Translated from The Book of Dzyan:

1. The Eternal Parent, wrapped in her Ever-Invisible Robes, had slumbered once again for Seven Eternities.

2. Time was not, for it lay asleep in the Infinite Bosom of Duration.

3. Universal Mind was not, for there were no Ah-hi to contain it.

4. The Seven Ways to Bliss were not. The Great Causes of Misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.

5. Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were once more one, and the Son had not yet awakened for the new Wheel and his Pilgrimage thereon.

6. The Seven Sublime Lords and the Seven Truths had ceased to be, and the Universe, the Son of Necessity, was immersed in Paranishpanna, to be outbreathed by that which is, and yet is not. Naught was.

7. The Causes of Existence had been done away with; the Visible that was, and the Invisible that is, rested in Eternal Non-Being – the One Being.

8. Alone, the One Form of Existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in Dreamless Sleep; and Life pulsated unconscious in Universal Space, throughout that All-Presence, which is sensed by the Opened Eye of Dangma.

A week ago we entered into Sagittarius – my birth sign… I’m trying to paint an annual cycle of the female aspects of the divine in relation to the signs of the zodiac. When I pondered upon the qualities of Sagittarius, Jupiter, fullness and expansion came into my mind. The animal related to Jupiter is the elephant, and the Indian goddess of wealth represented with elephants is Lakshmi. The two lotuses in her hand stand for the unfoldment into the subjective and objective light. So I thought it must be the divinity related to Sagittarius. I painted the following picture. In the upper part I visualised the descent of blessing energies from higher circles.

Expansion and Fulfilment

I sent the picture to Sri Kumar, and he answered that the divinity related to Sagittarius is Lord Narayana. I thought, oops, this is neither the female aspect nor is is possible to change the picture. I took the challenge and looked in the transcriptions of seminars Sri Kumar had given on topics of spiritual astrology and I found that there were other Gods related to Sagittarius as well: Lord Dattatreya, represented in Indian mythology with three heads of an eternal youth, the higher potency of Lord Maitreya, and Ganesha, my favourite, the one with the elephant head. The tree related to Sagittarius and Dattatreya is the Ficus Religiosa. Lord Narayana stands for the descent and ascent of the waters of life, the great cycle of creation.

So the following picture came about:

The Tree of Wisdom and the Waters of Life

You see Ganesha reading at the bottom of the tree, representing the Tree of Wisdom, through which you see flowing the waters of life, and the heads of the youthful Dattatreya are looking down. It says, that Ganesha is representing Dattatreya on the physical plane. The eyes above symbolise the cosmic Lord, Narayana. You can download a high-resolution version at the gallery “Images of Synthesis“.

Two weeks ago I started to publish the paintings I did from 1981 to 1990, on Flickr and in my Facebook account, one picture per day. I take them in a random sequence and give short comments.

Though the beginning of this phase of painting was quite sudden – I experienced a tremendous inpour of energies 6 September 1981, when I first came into contact with the Great Invocation given by Master DK, using it in meditation – I had painted  already since my school-days in the early 70ies, first influenced by drugs and psychedelic art as well as surrealism. I dissolved all these pictures in the early 90ies – feeling that they were too imperfect and chaotic. I realised only some days ago that in these early images there were colour elements and motives which still appear in a transformed form in my recent paintings.

The pictures are all expressions of a long inner spiritual search for light and an oscillation between eastern and western expressions of wisdom. They reflect inner experiences and phases of growth. Being entirely autodidactic, I felt that my technique was always far from being perfect, just an outflow of creative expression and a search for manifesting light / fire on paper.

Many of the pictures of this cycle came out with a great inner intensity and a desire to “paint in fire”. Often they were done quite fast and in a kind of rapture.

During the 80ies and 90ies I hardly met an understanding from the persons to whom I showed the pictures and I wondered what they were good for – just filling the basement. In the spiritual group in which I was during the 90ies they were considered with distrust, as an expression of personality. So my wife and I dissolved nearly all of the paintings in 1997, only photos of the originals remained. I kept the photo documentation in a diary. But also this book carried for me some kind of a stigma. I wanted to throw it away and told Sri Kumar about it January 2003 in India. He said, don’t destroy it, give it to a friend for safekeeping. And this I did.

It was only in January 2009 again in India that, for the first time, a young lady showed a deeper interest in the pictures, and  I told her that I’ll give her the diary as a present. I asked the friend who had it to send it back to me – after 6 years of safekeeping. But before I could give the book to the young lady a strange violent confusion made it impossible. So I started scanning the photos and presented a selection of them at the 100th May Call celebration in Engelberg, Switzerland.

November 2009, the young lady gave me some deep hints as per the paintings. This first appreciation opened my inner doors to a creative expression which continues since then – a restart after 19 years of pause. The contact, however ended a short while afterwards, again with some strange violent confusion, so that the diary with the pictures is still with me, but no longer belonging to me.

The pictures of the “Early Paintings” are from scans of the photos. I tried to work on them a bit, but some weren’t very sharp. I’ll continue to publish them over the next time, not more than one per day. It is an “appreciation” 30 years later.

Choir of Angels, 10 Nov. 1981 – 30 years ago. A4, liquid glazing paint

P.S.: I only realised this morning (27th Nov.), after having slept on it, that there is a pattern behind the paintings: Like Brahma, the Indian god of creation, destroyed various of his creations because they weren’t perfect, I destroyed the very early paintings because they were too dark, filled with expressions of anguish and inner strives – though inner seeds remained, silently continuing to sprout.

Also the next series, which now are being published, was destroyed, but there remained outer seeds in the form of photos, from which these pictures now got restored. The first (I think 18) pictures of the present series, Images of Synthesis, I gave away to the young friend immediately after having painted them, just keeping the digital version. Since the contact with her broke down, I then kept on putting away the paper versions into a folder directly after painting and worked on the digital version. So the digital image became for me the “quinta essentia”, the end-product of an alchemical process of refinement, where the matter undergoes a process of fiery destruction to  later get distilled and potentised to the final perfection.

I also realised that after the close of the cycle of “Early Paintings” there were some intermediary and very ephemeral images drawn on a blackboard and wiped out a short time later. Below you find one of these drawings, which mostly I didn’t even document with a photo. You find a detailed description of the symbolism on Flickr. See also on Flickriver.

Globe Chains – Incarnations of the Earth. Blackboard painting, 1991