Two days ago I was at the University of St. Gallen for the final presentations of the term papers of a seminar on Web 2.0 communication strategies. A project team had elaborated an issue coverage with communication and fundraising proposals for my office. I had several preliminary talks with the professor, coming from Berlin, and the team and was now curious about their proposals.

Two students of the team picked me up at the station and accompanied me to the campus. In the seminar room a young person said hello, presenting himself. I first thought he was a student, but he was the professor from Berlin. 4 teams were presenting their issue coverages for 4 different NGOs. The presentation of my team was the first.

They had analysed that we are only partially using the possibilities of the new social media instruments and that networking between different platforms like blogs, Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube would enhance the effectiveness of communication activities, making proposals for the next steps.

The students did a good job, in view of the fact that they still have little experience of the professional world and its mechanism. There was quiet an optimism about the possibilities these social media offer. In my office there is more scepticism around, as per the real use for our purposes, though the intererest is rising in the management. A collegue and I are working on doing experiments with social media platforms. Maybe together with the inputs of the students and some more discussions the management will decide about a “go”.

The way to the university

I today got the link to the short YouTube-video “Bodhisattva in Metro“. It is a fantistic film without words, showing the contagious influence of a radiant good mood. Enjoy!

From the video

Some time ago I had the experience of a deep, sublime encounter with someone, where I felt a profound touch with my soul. It was a very uplifting time of a flow of exchange.

Through some strange incidences the exchange was suddenly interrupted, leaving back a strong irritation, overshadowing the fine thread of the soul like with a dark cloud.

Last weekend my wife expressed in a drawing what seemed to have happened: She drew two butterflies, expressing the lightful, uplifting experience, and two angels, symbols of the souls. The sublime seemed to have evoked the uprise of a dark layer in us, with a conglomerate of fear, hurt and deception. My wife visualised it with two phantoms, overshadowing the previous experience in a way that even the reality of it seemed to be annihilated and the memory reversed into a poisoned contrary. The souvenir of it became fearful and full of suspicion.

My wife explained how she, in a similar experience, consciously built up again the contact with the quality the first experience had given, in all purity, and at the same time realising the dark side as the phantom without blocking it out.

This explanation helped me a lot. The knowledge of the mechanism of the phantoms gave a visual understanding of the overshadowing experience. It enabled me to come again into contact with the pristine quality of the sublime experience in me, which the first encounter had conveyed. The experience of the presence of the quality is not a souvenir of the past, but a quality present in me I can restore anytime. I enjoy the subtlety of experience, which is independent of the person and even of the first butterfly experience.

Thus the clouded veil got lifted up and the butterfly is flying again.

A butterfly and its shadow, Planetary Healing Centre, Visakhapatnam, India, 2008

Today, like in the previous years, I would like to remind of the great spiritual messenger, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, whose day of passing-over is celebrated as the White Lotus Day, the white lotus being a symbol of highest spiritual striving. The White Lotus Day coincides today with the Vaisakh Full Moon, which is commemorated as the day of birth and of enlightenment of Buddha. It is a good time to commemorate both of them in meditative alignment to the great Messengers of Light. So here are two poems, the first I got today from a friend, the English version of Rainer Maria Rilke‘s “Buddha in Glory”, and the second H.P. Blavatsky’s “Golden Stairs”.

Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet–
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

Buddha statue in the Planetary Healing Centre, Visakhapatnam, India, 2003

And these are the verses by H. P. Blavatsky

Golden Stairs

A clean life, an open mind,
A pure heart, an eager intellect,
An unveiled spiritual perception,
A brotherliness for all,

A readiness to give and receive advice and instruction,
A loyal sense of duty to the Teacher,
A willing obedience to the behests of TRUTH,
Once we have placed our confidence in,
And believe that Teacher to be in possession of it;

A courageous endurance of personal injustice,
A brave declaration of principles,
A valiant defense of those who are unjustly attacked,
And a constant eye to the ideal of human progression
And perfection which the secret science depicts-

These are the golden stairs
Up the steps of which the learner may climb
To the Temple of Divine Wisdom.

H. P. Blavatsky (1831 – 1891)

Here are some photos with spring impressions from our last Sunday afternoon walks in the nearby surroundings. Enjoy the beauty of spring.

The last weeks, even months, had been a time of deep inner and outer processes, where not much time was left for reflection in the blog. The work in my office brought some transitions: Last Tuesday I presented to the management board the final report of the introduction of the new intranet, after over two years of work, and at the same time the proposal for the next big step, a pilot project for the new document management system. There were some intense discussions in the board – but in the end I was given discharge for the first project and green light (and money) for the new pilot project…

There had been a lot of work beforehand, not only in preparing the papers for the presentation, but also setting things in a good way: Though the launch of the intranet had been already in December 08, there had been a number of technical troubles in March and April, and though there is quite a progress with the new Sharepoint-based system, some adaptation works are still causing some problems. When two weeks ago I had been talking things out with the head of the agency who had done the implementation of the system, I came to know: on that very day they had fired their project manager with whom I had had problems from the very beginning… Their new project manager is a very competent person from their management board. Two days ago I cleared all the open points with him to set a good basis for the future collaboration.

A second agency is involved, who are delivering a software for the document management system. In my office I had a number of talks to explain the questions facing us at to set up the new team. It is quite a complex matter and not so easy to “translate” the different aspects into a form which can be understood by the persons concerned.

In a way it is a very spiritual process: Weaving together all the different aspects of a complex matter, which will deeply affect the way of working of all collaborators in the house, is a very fascinating process. Many things are still hazy, but planning, meditating, asking questions, putting together the information from different sources and trying to construct the “final view” is building a way into the future. Never before I was left so much left to my own pre-decisions and laying down the structures, taking responsibility for the process. Others, the “decision makers” followed the prepared path, supporting the indicated direction. At the same time I feel that it is not “me” doing this weaving, but that there is an underlying “process intelligence” which has to be discovered and brought to manifestation. So from my viewpoing things sometimes take a sudden turn, but seen from the thread going through the “tissues”, a deeper sense is unveiling.

I today got an e-mail from Spain with a link to a YouTube video about a lecture given by Hira Ratan Manek at Sant Vicens de Montalt in Spain (English with Spanish translation). Hira Ratan Manek (HRM) was born on 12th of September 1937 in Bodhavad, India, and since June 18th, 1995, HRM has and continues to live only on sun energy and water. He has been examined by medical teams in India and the States for very long periods. He explains that more than 3000 people world are subsisting on light. A friend of mine tried it for a while, but stopped again. I doubt whether I will go into that kind of a diet, but it is fascinating to see this demonstration of living with the energy of prana by sun gazing, leaving the materialistic scientists perplexed.

Sunrise, photo of a friend

I today got an e-mail from an Argentinean friend informing about a fantastic project of the UNESCO, the World Digital Library, which has been inaugurated in Paris on April 21st, 09.

It is an on-line library that will have as its content the knowledge of the cultural patrimony of all the countries added to the initiative. The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.

The navigation and content descriptions are in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Many more languages are represented in the actual books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and other primary materials, which are provided in their original languages.

The portal has been created with famous institutions from all over the world such as The Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Egypt, the Library of the Congress of the United States and the national libraries and some cultural and educational institutions of more than ten different countries. Have a look at the description on Wikipedia.

The Ch’onha chido (Atlas of the world), the traditional Korean atlas produced in the early Ch’oson dynasty (1392-1910), derived from a map produced during the Chinese Ming Empire (1368-1644). From WDL.

A friend sent me some days ago an impressive video about a chameleon changing colours, which I also found on YouTube, tought the music there is not my style… I then came across the following passage of my spiritual teacher, Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar from a seminar last year in Iguazú, giving us a lesson of the chameleon:

“You may play the role of a human, but you are consciousness. Our real identity is that we are units of consciousness. Each one is a column of consciousness playing different roles. So many different roles, so many false identities. Your original identity is lost. We generally believe what we are not by repeated information and repeated action. That is identifying with an objective situation and becoming that, like a chameleon. Depending on the colours if the surrounding, it loses its colours. You have lost the original identity through the many modifications…. . The purpose of yoga is to gain original identity. That is what is called self-realisation. That is the purpose, and then there is a process of transformation from the present state. We have to transform many states to regain our original state of consciousness.”

Photo from the video (c)

I today got an inspiring text about a legendary 97 years old Japanese doctor, Shigeaki Hinohara, who is working since 1941 till today at a hospital in Tokyo and who since his 65th year of age works full-time as a volunteer. Very impressive ! The article is published in The Japan Times Online.

Homoeo-medicine in an Indian homoeopathic dispensary