The last weeks my wife and I reflected about several situations and one’s own projections. The way you see a story is coloured by your emotions and past experiences. You project your understanding upon others and upon the related situations, and mostly you aren’t even aware that it is just your personal perspective which gives you the way you experience. “How it is for me” I see as the truth but it can greatly differ from how it is for others. The different facets of interpreting lead to very different ways of experiencing. Especially when emotional wounds or convictions are involved the view gets strongly impregnated.

My wife is doing a coach formation in the Tipping method of Radical Foregiveness, and they work with understanding one’s projections. It is astonishing to see that when you overcome your victimhood you also get out of the related pain. You start understanding the situation “as it is” and see it as different from what you have thought it to be.

The following is not a direct example of projection, but of misunderstanding out of the personal perspective out of the inability to recollect, but the effect is quite the same – two stories of Sri Kumar told at the seminar in Altheim / Heiligenberg, Germany last June:

“The ability to recollect is a facility the mind uses. In olden times when there was no recording system and when there is no pen and paper to write people registered what is said much better. Today the ability to recollect is very little. To recollect and to renarrate is not easy unless the mind has the required facility of remembering. What is recollected is generally a distortion of what is said. When there is an improper recollection what is left out is what is filled with ones wrong perceptions. Therefore when it is renarrated it comes out in a different manner. There has been an experiment in management students in relation to communication. In a group like this one student told another a small story and it goes from mouth to ear, and when it comes to the original it is totally distorted. When the original story was related to the heard, it comes at the end totally distorted. The danger of distortion comes from a wrong perception. Mind suffers from inability to recollect. It hears what is not said. The one who said says, I did not say so. Such is happening through mind.

A person asks another person, “Would you like to have a cup of coffee?” If he says, yes, the second persons tells the third person, he wants coffee. Liking is one attitude, wanting is another attitude. If I say, “I like this crystal”, it will come back as he wants that. There is a great difference between what you like and what you want. And what is received and given out with the speech is a distortion. Many times groups invite me to speak to them and what comes out is that I want to speak. This is related to an improper recollection to what is said. There are many things I like, but this does not mean that I want them. This is improper recollections to what we have received. Likewise there are improper inferences from events. I also have such experiences with even very educated persons. I give you two stories to give you the point.

I and my guide Krishnamacharya, we used to go every weekend to a remote place, since we had an idea to develop a model village. Almost regularly every weekend we were there, and later we heard in the city that the two go out to drink alcohol. They thought that others do the same what they do. In our group there was a good friend by name Jesus Diaz. Once I had to go to a group in the north of Spain, where there was one bed to sleep and we were two persons. The group members suggested to my friend Jesus to sleep at a place one kilometre distance to that. It was not practically convenient, so we decided to sleep together in one bed. Six months later I heard that we were gay boys.

How do you deal with that? Today we have so many media which keep on spreading such gossip. When two men sleep in the same bed they infer that they are gay. You develop the wrong logic relating to the two persons. All these inferences they have no basis, number one, and they are unnecessary. If you buy a cuckoo clock, they ask, did you buy it in Switzerland, but you can buy it in Spain or in Germany. These general inferences come when the mind is not clean…”

Mount Kailash, Tibet, reflected in the Manasarovar lake. Mount Kailash is a symbol of Spirit, Manasarovar a symbol of the planetary mind. The distortions of the mind give a distorted view of reality.

Last week I received a nice spiritual story in Spanish containing a profound truth:

“At a remote place in the east there was once an ascetic who reached a high grade of spiritual discernment after long years of spiritual practice. He had a young pupil of 8 years.

One morning the ascetic looked at the pupil’s face and saw that in a few months the boy will die. He was sad about this circumstance and he told the pupil he should visit his parents during a certain time: “Don’t return soon. Stay with them some time.” the ascetic told him because he felt that the boy should be accompanied by his family in the moment of death.

His surprise was very great when after three months he saw the pupil returning. He looked into his face with intensity and he saw that the boy would live until an advanced age. Then he said to the boy, “Please tell me in detail all that happened to you while you were away. ”

The boy told him in all detail what had happened to him –  crossing towns, rivers, fields and mountains. “One day,” the pupil said “I arrived at a stream that was overflowing because of the strong rain in the mountains. While I tried to cross it carefully, I observed a colony of ants on a small mound amid the stream that was about to be swept away by the water. I felt compassion for them, I took a big branch of a tree and I made a bridge from the mound to the mainland, holding the branch strongly until all the ants had crossed. Then I continued my way.”

Then the old ascetic started to understand that this act of compassion was the reason why God had prolonged his pupil’s life.

Acts of compassion can change our destiny for the better, just like a disrespectful attitude towards the Universal Law can have an unfavorable impact on our destiny.”

Photo of a friend

At the right moment for Scorpio time: A friend sent me the link to a video with photos of a cobra in Kumbhakonam, slipping to a Siva Lingam and lifting its hood. This modern time miracle happened on January 15, 2010, the solar eclipse day. At the same time in the WTT-retreat centre in Visakhapatnam we had for several hours a very intense solar eclipse meditation with Sri Kumar.

A friend sent me the following photos of a little miracle Rishi Agastya made some days ago (1st september 10). Rishi Agastya is a sage being with the earth since times immemorial. The first photo shows a poster of Rishi Agastya in the home of seven young devotees:

In the second picture taken during prayers Agastya is then captured opening his right eye:

My friend wrote: “He keeps an eye upon his devotees…” A rishi, being a “seer” looks inside, and from the inside out …

You might read a bit about Agastya in the book by Sri K. Parvathi Kumar: “The Aquarian Master“, which is about Master CVV, being from the ashram of Agastya. Agastya is also called Master Jupiter, the eldest member of Hierarchy, and there is some thing about him also in the book about “Jupiter“, where it says:

“The Master Jupiter is the Avatar of Synthesis who presides over the Aquarian Age. He conducts himself with the triangular force of Neptune, Mercury and Jupiter. He is called the Master of the Nilagiri Hills (Blue Mountains) in the Theosophical Society. He is called the great Sage Agastya in the Vedic tradition. He is the Master whose abode is in Sirius, whose functioning place for our earth is the Blue Mountains of South India. Agastya is the great sage and is the counterpart of the 7 seers of the Great Bear.”

Last week I came across a transcription of a seminar given by Sri Kumar in the Nilagiri Hills in 1996 about Agastya, Master Jupiter. He said that Agastya is very different in profile and in appearance from the other Masters of Wisdom: Whereas Lord Maitreya or Master Morya and Master Kuthumi are described as being of a tall stature, having long hair and a beard, Agastya is small and a bit round, radiating smile, of a golden-yellow complexion, bald-headed without any hair (unlike the presentation on the poster…), being dressed scarcely with a lungi, never wearing anything else. He has great, round eyes, is often traveling with his disciples and loves to cook and to serve. Through serving food he likes to spread himself into the people and thus to adjust any imbalances in the mental, emotional, and physical bodies. In his spiritual activities he never treads any trodden paths, but gives new trends and directions, being full of freshness. His live is always accompanied by will, spreading be-ness and presence. He is very humorous and his teachings are very powerful, but nevertheless humorous, thus uplifting the people.

In the scriptures there is the story that once a group of disciples in the Himalaya had the questions who is the one fasting most, and Maitreya told them, “It is Agastya, he never eats.” They wanted to see Agastya and went to him. Agastya said: „Observe me for three days.”
They were very surprised to see him cooking, eating and serving. He was not missing any meal, and every meal was from our standpoint very excessive in its quantity. After three days the group asked: „We have not understood your way of fasting.” He answered: „Insofar as you don’t feel that you are eating, it is fasting.” He does not think he is eating. He lives in tune with the universal consciousness and in such a tune-up the food is given to all the elementals around him with himself as the channel.

A friend sent me this most beautiful Islamo-Christian composition that was created as a song to religious co-existence by a Christian female Lebanese singer named Tania Kassis, accompanied by two Muslin male singers, Mohammad Shaar and Maen Zakaria who, in addition, frequently sing Christian songs at the mosques and in front of the Sheiks. The arrangement is inspired of an Ave Maria accompanied by the Adhan “Allah Akbar”.

Yesterday was Libra new moon. New moon is the darkest point of the month, also concerning psychic energy. And in spirituality Libra is regarded as the darkest point of the year, where it is more difficult to keep the thread to the light of the soul.

So this time is compared to a bottomless pit into which you can easily fall. It stands for the impermeable Nature causing a veil of illusion. In the east the impermeable Nature is visualised as Durga, the “Mother Impermeable”. Durga means, “impossible to move”.

It says it is very difficult to overcome the illusion of the Mother or the matter, and she stands at the threshold of the illusion of life. Sri Kumar says, “Unless you are in a program of discharging your karma you cannot enter into the inner chambers, and Durga blocks the way.”

Durga is depicted as a lady on a lion, the wild energies of matter. The mantram related to Durga is Dum, or Dum Durgayi Namaha (MP3). The most propitious time to invoke the mantram is on the first 10 days of the ascending moon in the month of Libra.

Last year Sri Kumar wrote, “People interested may contemplate upon the Mother with the lion, with the mantra ‘Dum Durgayei Namaha’. It can be said 108 times in the morning and 108 times in the evening after a shower, putting on fresh clothes and a fresh mind. …. It is an elaborate ritual, which people do not need to pick up. It is enough if they chant the mantra, morning and evening.”

When Durga is invoked, she protects and gives access, we are given the way through.

Statue of Durga in the house of Sri Kumar

In Eastern wisdom teachings there is the concept of Pralaya, the state after one creation ended and before another one starts.

A week ago I experienced a “computer pralaya” – suddenly during writing my PC went down. Two, three times I could start it up, but after a few minutes it crashed again, and then it didn’t start up anymore. We were speculating about what was the reason for these crashes – the hard-disk was running on my son’s PC – and so I asked the service desk at my office. Describing the symptoms, the verdict was: The motherboard must be broken, nothing to do.

So while I was at the office, my wife set out with my eldest son to a computer store, where a friend of his is working as a salesperson – and they got a good bargain, a display item.

What came now reminded me of the description of “post-death-experiences” – where the soul withdraws all impressions into the memory stores of the permanent atoms to come back to another landing place / body for continuing its path of experiencing.

For the PC reincarnation we took out the old hard-disk drive and installed it in the new PC to have the data and files saved. But like with reincarnation, not all the many programs ran on the new machine – and all the software with registry entries didn’t do. So – downloading, buying, reinstalling. It was like the soul getting hold over the new body step by step.

Now the new machine is running well, and much better than the old one. How long will the “cycle of manifestation” of this PC incarnation last?

In Eastern wisdom a fish drawing some kind of an ark is the symbol of saving the seeds of one cosmic creation to the other. A work of art of an exposition at a nearby river.

We had a beautiful autumn equinox seminar with Sri Kumar in Kandersteg last Tuesday to Thursday, with about 85 persons from Germany, Spain and Switzerland. It was a very familiar meeting with profound lectures, nice exchanges and clear autumn weather over the mountains.

View from the hotel window

Here is a short extract from Wednesday’s morning lecture about the energies of Libra:

“Living in balance and also giving that balance to others enables us to receive the grace of the Most High. You cannot give the balance, you can only give the know-how to work it out. That has to be done without exception if you stand balanced in every aspect of life. Even an act of goodwill can become a glamour. If you get excessively connected to the books without the related action you become a bookworm, they don’t give you the balance. You can also get the habit of listening to teachings without practicing, it is also a grip, People can be obsessed with book reading and writing or seminars. Obsession is not desirable in any aspect of life. The law of alternation brings you back to balance.

If you are excessively obsessed with money you lose it, if you are excessively obsessed with health you get sick. If you are excessively obsessed with slim it supplies energies to the weight. Obsessions are avoidable, that is a law. Too many healthy habits can land you in sickness – be moderate. Moderation is strongly recommended. Excess is avoidable everywhere, in every aspect of life.

Don’t be excessive, be moderate, when you are moderate you tend to be nearer to the centre. Balance is in the centre. Centre gives you unfoldment. Only when there is unfoldment you call it a centre. Be in the centre and relate to the circumference. The centre of your being is I AM. You move into the surrounding through your personality with the help of your body. Do not lose the help of the centre. When the centre and circumference stand connected that is when you are in action you are conscious of your action, your speech, your movement. When you are centred in consciousness and move into objectivity there is a retaining the centre-circumference relation, that is wisdom.”

Libra Full Moon, Wednesday night

Fire ritual, Thursday morning

Today at noon Master KPK (Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar) and his son Sekhar came to our house for lunch, together with some group members. We had a very nice time together. I was again fascinated to observe how he spoke with the group members, giving his full attention and uplifting presence. After the meal we took some group picture in the garden and sat for a while in the sun. A little later they left again to go to Zermatt, where they wanted to pass the night at the foot of the Matterhorn.

Half an hour later we got a phone call: A bag with some belongings had remained in our living room; so I took the car and went off. I met them again in Spiez  and joined them for a cup of tea at beautiful place on the board of the lake Thun. We said good-bye, but only for a short moment: Next Tuesday will start the group living for autumn equinox in Kandersteg. Friday I had already been there to bring the flowers for the altar to the hotel.

Showing a map of a project.

Last weekend a new painting came, called “Lotus of the Soul”. You can download here the high-resolution version or see it in the gallery “Images of Synthesis”.

The symbol in the middle is Sanskrit for OM, the primordial sound. The picture is inspired by lines of Sri Kumar from The Teacher, N°. 46:

“In the previous attribute the spiritual permanent atom was spoken of. It is the centre of the electric blue beyond which there is the seeming nothingness which expresses as the subtlest point. This subtlest deep blue point expresses like an electrical blue. Beyond this is the Absolute Existence and this blue point is the primary emergence. A Self-realized one anchors in this point and remains blue. Sound and light remain its attributes. This is the threshold between seeming nothingness and apparent something. It is the point of emergence of Existence as awareness. It is the trill, the first spur that emerges from which all apparent existence comes through. In scriptural terminology this is called the cosmic centre. It is from this centre, from out of the deep blue, other manifestations happen. After this blue there is the manifestation of red and yellow. As explained earlier when man enters into subtle fields he first encounters the golden-yellow light followed by orange and later aquamarine and then blue.
All this can be experienced in the heart lotus which is four-layered. The heart lotus is but four triangles placed one above the other in different directions. It appears like a twelve-petalled lotus. The four triangles appear with their angles as a twelve-petalled lotus. The outermost triangle carries the light of golden hue. The one interior to it carries the light of aquamarine. The next interior triangle shines forth with the colour of blue. The finer, the most interior triangle carries the colour of deep blue.
All these four triangles are connected through the centre like a rosary. Through the centre of the final triangle it leads to seeming nothingness which is everything. Through the central channel the energy beyond flows and takes to different sound notes and colour notes.
When one enters into this central channel he listens a naturally vibrating sound which is like OM. It is OM unuttered (Anahata). Uttering OM is only to orient to the unuttered OM. The culmination of all utterances is into deep silence, and in that deep silence the eternal sound is to be heard.”