The last weeks in my office had been filled with a lot of intense new developments. Last Tuesday I was in the management board of my office (Red Cross) together with a colleague presenting ideas for launching social web activities for making our activities better known besides the main website. Three years ago, at the time I started this blog, I had tried to convince the officials to open up for blogging, but there had been a lot of reservations. Now the time had changed. The International Federation of Red Cross Societies has given out recommendations to the national societies to actively take part in Web 2.0 and they just had run a campaign around the celebrations of 150 years of Red Cross (Solferino) accompanied by a lot of activities  in blogs, Facebook, and the like. Our management board was now very open, and the new director very much in favour. So we got a green light for starting activities, of which I’m now in charge. Wednesday I set up a blog at the Google blogger platform, but it only will become more active in the later part of the summer. Then I started a Facebook account for my office.

Personally I’m very reluctant about using such a platform: a month ago I got an unrequested invitation by Facebook – spamming me – to join them. The wrote: “Hi… The following people recently invited you to be their friend on Facebook: (and there were six names of persons from my mailing list contacts all over the world, who had sent me invitations in the past, to which I had not responded)…

And then: “Other people you may know on Facebook:” and there were 6 names I all know, from South America, who never had contacted me about Facebook. So they are profiling my contacts, though I never had entered into any contact with Facebook. A very aggressive web 2.0 marketing strategy. Of course they mentioned, nearly illegible, in grey letters: “This message was intended for xxx@good-will.ch. If you do not wish to receive this type of email from Facebook in the future, please click here to unsubscribe.” I never had asked them to subscribe me.

On the insistence of a colleague from the ICT of my office I had joined some weeks ago the professional contact platform Xing, because there is a Swiss MS-SharePoint community and I’m in charge of the SharePoint-based intranet of my office and document management. Hardly had I registered in Xing that I got a phone-call from a web agency offering me support services. And a information technology courses provider contacted me several times to get me into their mailing lists or on some courses. I declined these contacts…

I’m very much interested in good, relevant contacts, but at the same time very selective as per what is relevant. Friends are not gathered the fast way the social webs promise with “friends” and “followers”.

Last Wednesday I was at a presentation in our office about the latest Microsoft Fast data search technology. Fast had been acquired by Microsoft in 2008 and will be part of SharePoint from 2010 on. A specialist from Munich gave us an introduction into the working of this most modern search engine with a lot of fascinating features. Since I’m just running a pilot project about document management together with an external agency to implement a new system, this was particularly thrilling for me to see. The ways we had been searching up to now require quite a lot of work from the staff to relate the documents with so-called meta data. Now this new search engine promises to extract the meta data automatically. We will set up in August/September a test environment to compare the different solutions envisaged. By October we will decide which way will be the most viable…

Reflections on the globe in the court of the Cité des Sciences at Paris, photo by a friend.

Some days ago a friend from Canada sent me a text with pictures about Mudras, the subtle art of hand position, which I also found on the web.

I looked up my seminar notes and found something my spiritual teacher Dr. Sri Kumar said in a seminar about White Magic, Arosa 2001, about mudras / the hands (my notes):

“Holding the hands is a science by itself, the science of mudras. There are many ways of holding the two palms of the hands: First establish the necessary purity and second the power of thought to direct the energy and third the use of hands for direction of energy….
When not used, keep the hands locked, in whatever way. When it comes to the posture of Namaskar, it is to bring the left and right energies together. The posture of Namaskar is to offer oneself to something higher then you. Holding the right in the left, the right by the left, meaning, you are looking for ascension, higher energies. The contrary is to bring down the energy. There are 16 mudras used in higher states. The right hand relates to the soul, the left to the personality. In any posture the thumbs have to join. In Namaskar the bottoms of the thumbs have to join. Many other usages can be learned later. All postures will be taught, when you have really begun. For the time being, use to close the hands and offer them to acts of good will. Mental, emotional and physical cleanliness and purity is necessary. Be aware of the power of the hands and hence keep them clean. … When we gain the necessary energy, the other postures can be given slowly. Also the eyes. First we work with the throat, which speaks of the personality. Normally we speak flattering ourselves and critical of others. We speak from the personality standpoint. The speech is constructive. The energy centres related to the hands relate to the throat. You speak with the hands. Many people do a lot of dances when they speak. First working with speech, silence, OM. Stop speaking about the personality, about oneself. Normally you speak about yourself much more as you are, about others less than what is there. These distortions must go. The true work of healing will come when man has learned how to speak and think: Thinking from the heart, not from the solar plexus.
Many of the group members lose energy for nothing. It would be helpful to join the hands or close the legs or feet. If you sit open, the energy flows out. When we are habituated to keep ourselves closed while not at work, the rest of the process can be safely explained.

Buddha with teaching mudra, Ajanta, India. Photo of a friend

Last week I went to North Germany, for a seminar with my spiritual teacher, Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar and his wife, Kumari-Garu. For 2 weeks they had been on a tour visiting all groups of the World Teacher Trust in Germany, and the WTT-Group of Bünde, North-Rhine Wesphalia, had invited me to come to the meeting with the Master at their. They had worked a lot to beautifully prepare the house and the garden. In the evening of June 18th, Sri Kumar and Kumari Garu arrived, travelling from Berlin via Hamburg and Bielefeld.

After a hearty welcome we had dinner together. Next morning after meditation there was a question and answer session with the Master.

One question was about healing: “We want to work with healing, at the beginning we decide to first heal ourselves before working with others.”
Sri Kumar answered: “First healing ourselves and then healing others doesn’t have to be like that. In our effort to heal others we are healed. You can think of difficult situations on the globe where people are suffering, that can be our patient, where there is suffering on the globe. That is the object for healing. Then you feel that the healing energy is all around. That is the truth. There is the healing energy and then you are there, you can receive into you and transmit to the object of healing through the triangle. In this we don’t use any name, so it can be given to the people also. We relate to the God energy, healing energy. God is omnipotent, so healing is also omnipotent. You can call it healing energy or healing nature or God, whatever. That can enter into you with the view to receive. So you receive into your heart, you transmit it to the object of healing and also link it up to the healing energy. So it gets into you, the energy is transmitted to the object of healing and he is also connected to the healing energy. You can connect to the triangle. With every inhalation you receive, with every exhalation you transmit the energy, and in the gap before you breathe in again, it leads the energy . Like that you can do it 12, 18, 24 times, and later you can link it to the energy and come out.”

After breakfast the Master and Kumari Garu conducted a fire ritual on the terrace of the house. At the end the fire was brought around the house as a blessing. Later the Master gave some consultations, and in the afternoon we departed to Bad Essen, where the summer solstice seminar was taking place.

The group living started with a beautiful candle ceremony, followed by a short lecture about summer solstice and evening meditation. Later in the evening a group member gave a jazz concert with his saxophone.

Next day and Sunday morning the lectures continued:
“What is the magic that happens around summer solstice? The magic is true to some, as true and tangible as our eating breakfast. To some it would be an illusion. These are the dreamers who dream that they have had breakfast. Every question carries its answer in it. Some put themselves into an imagination and feel the related relief, and then they feel much about themselves, but the one who as eaten know those others who have eaten, because they are all around. When the dreamer says, I have eaten breakfast, those who all had breakfast know that he hasn’t eaten breakfast, but is dreaming. Imagination can lead to illusion, when there is no activity of service.
So there are those who experience it really, there are those who experience it through their own imagination and those who carry it as information into their head. They only speak of it to others. Let us experience the visit of the solar Lord in the heart. By tomorrow this time the solstice is around a quarter to 8 European time. This preparation should lead us to re-orient firstly to service, to help the suffering humanity even in a very small way….”

It was a heart-thrilling encounter, with many good exchanges. Filled with inspiration and joy we afterwards returned back home.

I just got an extremely beautiful powerpoint presentation in Spanish (4 MB) about Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”. I made a quick translation of the intro with the help of automatic translation. Enjoy.

Photo of a friend

A friend today sent me this pictures (c) unknown, showing beautifully the relations between the size of our earth and the cosmos and giving a humble feeling of the immense vastness of creation. Wait a moment to see:

The United Nations have just officially announced the “University of the People” launched in April 09. It is a new online university, which for the moment is still free, but later will charge some modest study fees to maintain the university. The  UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) wants to show how an online university can improve the formation situation world-wide with modern information and communication technology, as the German online magazine Heise.de writes.

While up to now many people on the planet cannot attend a university, the Web 2.0-technologies now allow students to study at home, using open source technologies and open course material as well as e-learning methods and methods of peer  to peer teaching. They offer classes with 15 – 20 students each with one lecture per week and a weekly work and learning schedule of at least 8 hours.

Up to now they have about 200 students from 52 countries in computer science and economics. For the first semester they don’t take more than 300 students. In the course of 4 years they want to extend it to 15’000 students. The final exam will correspond to that of a Bachelor for the moment, they hope to be accredited as a full university in the next years.

A very inspiring development.

Info-kiosk in front of the Swiss Federal Palace during renovation

One week ago a beautiful thrilling seminar with our spiritual teacher, K. Parvathi Kumar, ended. About 500 group members from many countries all over the world assembled in the beautiful village of Engelberg (Angel Mountains) for the celebration of the 100th May Call Day (see the blogpost about the preparation). Nearly 130 members had come from India, most of them for the first time leaving their country.

For four days there were celebrations, lectures, concerts and presentations, and of course a lot of talks with friends. The common meditations created a strong energy field uplifting all. It was astonishing how smooth everything went. Our team of organizers at first had not thought that so many people would come, and more and more hotels had to be included. We had transformed a huge curling hall into the seminar place, so that there were no problems having enough space for all.

The lectures of our teacher were very inspiring. The main celebration on May 29th was a gorgeous feast with many presents brought by groups for the groups, a mutual exchange of joy. Next day there were a number of musical presentations. In the evening I had a special highlight for which I had worked a long time. I had prepared a presentation, “The Song of Fire. A Journey through Macrocosm and Microcosm” (now also on the website), with texts from the wisdom teachings and pictures I had painted over 2 decades ago and later destroyed. I had recovered the pictures from photos and presented them for the first time to a public. I was deeply moved of this occasion. Many people afterwards told me that the presentation had profoundly touched them. Also after the seminar I got quite a lot of feedbacks. For me it was like crossing a threshold, though I don’t know yet where it is leading to.

Path of Light, March 1982

Dawn over Engelberg

I got the following story from an Indian friend:

A saint asked his disciples, ‘Why do we shout in anger? Why do people shout at each other when they are upset?’

The disciples thought for a while, one of them said, ‘Because we lose our calm, we shout for that.’

‘But, why to shout when the other person is just next to you?’ asked the saint. ‘Isn’t it possible to speak to him or her with a soft voice? Why do you shout at a person when you’re angry?’

The disciples gave some other answers but none satisfied the saint. Finally he explained, ‘When two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance a lot. To cover that distance they must shout to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other through that great distance.’

Then the saint asked, ‘What happens when two people fall in love? They don’t shout at each other but talk softly, why? Because their hearts are very close. The distance between them is very small…’ The saint continued, ‘When they love each other even more, what happens? They do not speak, only whisper and they get even closer to each other in their love. Finally they even need not whisper, they only look at each other and that’s all. That is how close two people are when they love each other.’

When you argue, do not let your hearts get distant, do not say words that distance each other more, else there will come a day when the distance is so great that you will not find the path to return.

Two loudspeakers, showing into different directions

There are quite a lot of electronic gifts showing up at the moment. Here are some link miscellanea:

1. A friend from Houston Theosophical Society sent the link to a new page of the site of Theosophy Watch, where you find a number of photos of new crop circles from 2009, and a “Crop Circle Documentary 2009” video, from YouTube:

2. The photographer and environmental artist Chris Jordan does a fascinating work of sensitizing people for environmental concerns in a very aesthetic way (I have already before blogged about Chris’ work). You find new series of photo mandalas about “Portraits of Global Mass Culture” (-> Running the Numbers, 1 & II) and a new large scale mandala. It is depicting the names of one million organizations around the world that are devoted to peace, environmental stewardship, social justice, and the preservation of diverse and indigenous culture. He has taken the names from Paul Hawken’s “Blessed Unrest” project. The mandala is called “E Pluribus Unum”, meaning “The Many become One”.

Have a look at these other websites:

3. Freydoun Rassouli: a beautiful flash intro to the fascinating paintings of the Iranian artist living in California. There are some e-cards of him on the Good-Will website.

4. And another interesting flash on “Awaken Visions” by Daniel B. Holeman. On his site you find a section about animated art.

Iris – Photo of a friend

Today I came across two beautiful videos about the majestic beauty of the Himalayas. The first is showing impressions of a flight over an unaccessible mountain range with a sublime music (3:00):

(Press here if the picture doesn’t show)

The second (2:50) is about “Himalaya – The Live God”. Though you don’t understand the text (it is, I suppose, in Hindi), you will understand the pictures – giving short impressions of saints and sacred places.

(Press here if the picture doesn’t show)

And here is a short story playing in the Himalayas, by Master EK, from the end of the book “Occult Anatomy”:

“In the Tantra books, it opens like this: Siva and Sakti sit on the high cliffs of the mountains of the Himalayas. Always, it starts like this. There is no one in the vicinity, proximity. They can talk nonsense, they want. (Master said this as a joke, to the laugh of the students). Siva was a bit grim, serious. Sakti looked at Him and smiled. Then Siva smiled, because He is also a male fellow, tempted by female. (Laugh). His smile was captured as reflection in the eyes of the Mother-Goddess. This created the whole world. That means creation came as the solar energy called Siva reflects on the moon and comes down as the Moon’s Light called the smile. Then Siva said, “My darling”, (because there were two fellows. There was no third fellow). He said, “Some people in the creation worship you and get liberation. Some people worship Me and get liberation. So let us divide the worship into two, so that there may not be any disputes. The disciples may be divided into two”. He said these words. So there are two types of devotees. Some are the devotees who worship God as ‘You’ and some others are the devotees who worship God as ‘I AM’. So some people meditate ‘ I AM’ and some people meditate “You are”. So with this conversation, the wonderful fellow Siva started the Creation, when Himself and His darling were lonely. That is how the Tantra books start. So may these two parents bless you in every way, before we meet again and even after. “