I today got this link to a video about a presentation of an astonishing new development of the application of computer technology to virtualisation, another step of entering into the realm of etheric manifestation through technology.

Photo of a computer installation in Zurich main station, May 08

This impressive photo from July 1918 shows 18,000 soldiers in uniform forming the Statue of Liberty. They were preparing for war in a training camp at Camp Dodge, in Iowa. It is an authentic photo, and one of a series of group photographs taken by the photographers during and immediately after World War I at U.S. military training camps. Each took up to a week to compose and shoot. The purpose was to unite the people for America’s involvement in the war.

The involvement was meant to fight for liberty. Whatever the kind of liberty was they were aspiring for, it is a manifestation of a common thought. Working for a common goal in spiritual matters is of great power and inspiration.

Photo by Arthur S. Mole & John D. Thomas (1918). Source of scanned image unknown.

A friend just sent me this remarkable article about the touching speech of a father who lost a daughter at the Columbine High School massacre, the 10th anniversary of which will be on April 20th:

Guess our national leaders didn’t expect this, hmm? On Thursday, Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful.

“Since the dawn of creation there has been both good & evil in the hearts of men and women.. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

“The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.

“In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA – because I don’t believe that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent.

I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy — it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.

Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question “Why?”
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!

“Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.

“As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA — I give to you a sincere challenge. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone!

My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!”

Old daggers. Photo of an exposition by my son.

An Indian friend sent me a very beautiful and touching powerpoint about an old Chinese story called “The Cracked Pot“. It is about the value of the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. Enjoy!

A cracked pot, from an art exposition, photo of my son.

A friend living in the States sent me the link to the presentation of a film called “Playing for Change: Peace Through Music“, described as “a pan-global survey — and marriage — of varying styles of world music…” On the site there is an inspiring video with the soundtrack “Stand me by”:

“Starting on the pedestrian mall in Santa Monica, Calif., helmers Mark Johnson (who narrates) and Jonathan Walls made a recording of street singer Roger Ridley performing “Stand by Me” then took that tape all over the world. They added singers in New Orleans and Amsterdam, a guitarist in France, a Congolese drummer, some Zuni drummers in New Mexico, making musical collaborators out of people who’d never met.”

(c) from the website Playing for Change
“Long-range partnerships of singers all around the world are being formed: A singer sings in Buenos Aires, and his female backup trio, the Oneness Choir, is in India… A lot of the musicians are not seen playing in their own homelands — sometimes by choice, sometimes by the choices of others.”

(c) from the video

My friend also sent me another link, to the blog of Gita Saraydarian, with a beautiful recent post “Ode to Joy. The Power of Music”. Gita Saraydarian is the Founder and President of TSG Foundation, an organization dedicated to the Ageless Wisdom Teachings. Year ago I read some books of her late father, Torkom Saraydarian, to whom the organization is dedicated.

An Indian friend sent me a powerpoint with the following beautiful story, which you also find on the web. It is about wrongly directed good will causing harm and the value of obstacles and troubles.

”One day, a small oppening appeared on a cocoon; a man sat and watched for the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then, it seems to stop making any  progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and  it could not go any further. So the man decided to help the butterfly: he took a pair of scissors and opened the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a withered body, it was tiny and shrivelled wings.
The man continued to watch because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would open, enlarge and expand, to be able to support the butterfly’s body, and become firm.

What the man, in his kindness and his goodwill did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Sometimes, struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life  without any obstacles, it would  cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been. Never been able to fly.

I asked for Strength…
And God gave me  difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for Wisdom…
And God gave me Problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity…
And God gave me a Brain and Brawn to work.
I asked for Courage…..
And God gave me obstacles to overcome.
I asked for Love…
And God gave me Troubled  people to help.
I asked for Favors…
And God gave me  Opportunities.
“I received nothing I wanted…
But I received everything I needed.”

Live life without fear, confront all obstacles and evince that you can overcome them.

Butterfly, silk painting, 1984

By the way, today is the 3rd birthday of the blog, which started on March 31st, 2006.

A friend, president of Houston Theosophical Society, sent me the link to a beautiful slide show on world religions represented in Houston, he received from a friend:  “It is a wonderful picture log of world religions.  For those of you who are not from ‘around these parts,’ it lets you know that Houston has become quite an international city and more than the ‘brass buckle on the Bible Belt’.” He added: “Glad that Houston is home to so many faiths practiced in peace and tolerance mainly. Rightly missing was Theosophy because it is the primordial esoteric spiritual tradition underlying other religions, without being one, like colorless white light hides seven colors within it.”

The slide show is introduced with the words: “Your neighbor is a what!?! What is that? Yes, there are Zoroastrians, Wiccans and Jains in Houston. And people of lots of other faiths too.”

Source of Light, Dec. 1981

An Indian friend sent me the following beautiful story about honesty and seeming failure transforming into success, it is worthwhile pondering upon:

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to chose a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.

“It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO,” he said. “I have decided to choose one of you.”

The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. “I am going to give each one of you a seed today – a very special seed. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO.”

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Every day, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn’t have a plant and h felt like a failure. Six months went by – still nothing in Jim’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn’t say anything to his colleagues, however. He just kept watering and fertilizing the soil – he so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection. Jim told his wife that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick at his stomach. It was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right.

He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful–in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed. A few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives. Jim just tried to hide in the back.

“My, what great plants, trees, and flowers you have grown,” said the CEO. “Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!” All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the financial director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, “The CEO knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!”

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed. Jim told him the story. The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, “Here is your next Chief Executive! His name is Jim!”

Jim couldn’t believe it. Jim couldn’t even grow his seed. How could he be the new CEO the others said?

Then the CEO said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me
today. But I gave you ll boiled seeds; they were dead – it was not possible for them to grow. All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive!”

If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.
If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.
If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.
If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment.
If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective.
If you plant hard work, you will reap success.
If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.
So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.

The seed – Silk painting, Jan. 1985

Yesterday a friend sent a link to a YouTube video about a guerilla dance show (though it is a commercial designed for spreading through the bloggosphere and I now fall prey, it is a very good one). He wrote:

“This happened at Liverpool Metro Station on January 15th, 2009. Everyone went to work in a greatest positive mood afterwards. 70 Dancers mixed up with the commuters that were slowly integrated to the ongoing dance. The show had been rehearsed for 8 weeks without the public knowing. It all for a T-Mobile commercial. “Life’s for Sharing” reads the final motto. If we could only comprehend that Spirituality is all about BEING; not Doing…”

It reminded me of the video on Dancing around the World I blogged about some time ago.

From the video (T-mobile)

Another very nice commercial I got today is Coca Cola Open Happiness.

Enjoy!

From the Coke-Spot

On a friend‘s suggestion I wrote down these experiences; she said, others might learn from them. So I give them free by way of publishing, since these seem to me to be archetypal and not “personal” experiences.

In the depth of the personality are hidden wounds, causing pain and fear. In the process I went through during the last weeks I encountered deep hurts which had accumulated over many years, going back to the foundations of my material existence. These fears had been there lying dormant, well hidden below mental barriers clothed in concepts and self-justifications. The barriers had caused strong walls, protecting from the abyss of fears, but at the same time blocking me from the influx of light and fresh air of the subtle realms.

In needed a fiery crisis for breaking up some of the walls, and beforehand a deep, long-lasting process of grinding in my relationships. The grinding had caused some kind of suppuration process, but not the purifying outbreak. Unconsciously for me, it was also supported by a long homoeopathic treatment I am undergoing. At our last meeting the homeopath told me that the signature of the remedy he gave me was marked by sudden outbreaks.

The fiery crisis came in the aftermath of witnessing and accompanying another person’s crisis. It had a catalyst function, which was in the beginning not easy for me to understand and to separate my part from the seemingly “other” part, subtly, however, linked by karmic ties.

With the help of my wife and another woman, not physically, but only present in the subtle, giving support and creating a space, where the inner events could happen, I entered into a series of long visualization journeys into the depth of layers of consciousness, each journey lasting for about one hour. During the entire process I was describing my experiences in all details to my wife, who listened to them, thus following and observing the development. My wife had proposed to go into the depths of psychic pain. We had been talking several times about past wounds, where I had caused and experienced hurts that are partly very long times back, partly, however, of a very recent date. The deep plutonic subject of culprit and victim, the yin and yang poles.

In the beginning I was a bit sceptical about these journeys. I always had thought that the inner blockages, which over a long time I even did not realize, could be overcome best by meditation and prayer, which I’ve been doing regularly for several decades, but not by going consciously into re-experiencing the blockages and the related feelings. I doubted about the healing impact of this kind of work. However, it seemed that by meditation alone I could not get into the core of the wounds and release the related pain.

I am not a “psychic”, but have a “down to earth” approach to spirituality and inner experiences. However, since the psychic pains of the crisis continued without losing their strength, I was ready to go on this “inner journey work”.

During the weeks of the climax of the crisis there was a constant pressure and tension around the area of the solar plexus, like a heavy block of concrete.
Before or journeys, we invoked the presence of the Master and a stabilizing triangular structure of blue light, linking the hearts and minds of the persons involved, visualizing the energy of the Master above the triangle, which thus became a triangular pyramid, holding stable the energy. From that part of the visualization I went down into the area of the solar plexus, entering into the sensations of violent pains and tensions.

We did this for 8 days, each time before or after evening prayer/meditation. Every journey was distinctly different from the experiences of the other journeys, taking surprising turns, bringing other pictures and energy qualities – but all of the sessions ended in giving relief to a certain layer of fear and pain.
In these experiences the knowledge I have from the wisdom teachings was of utmost importance for orientation and for the progress of the process, particularly the book “Music of the Soul” by Master EK (Dr. Ekkirala Krishnamacharya) (the “Lokayata-experience”) and the book “Hercules. The Man and the Symbol”, by Master KPK (Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar) (particularly the works of Hercules in Virgo, Scorpio and Aquarius).

On the first two journeys I encountered layers of great suffocating darkness in the centre of which there was something like an onyx-coloured, egg-shaped black stone formed by impenetrable fear, around which there were layers of black turbulences, through which I went on the way to the stone. When reaching the stone, I could not dissolve it visually, but buried it into the ground, the earth, for “maturation”. The next day it dissolved into powder dissipating into space. At the end of the journey I experienced a lift-up through the spine by a light, upward-drifting air into the area of the head. It was a very soothing experience of lightness and purification.

The next two, three journeys I encountered oceans of black, stinking waters in a Hades-like surrounding, at the areas of the solar plexus and the spleen centre (Manipuraka and Swadhishtana chakra). They seemed to drown me, they were nourishing a root-meshwork in the solar plexus, living from fear and pain. It was an experience which was so intense that partly I could nearly not continue the visualization journey, for intense tears were coming up, but with the help of my wife and the stabilizing energy of the light structure I continued, and then the waters seemed to be suck away, absorbed into space. It reminded me of the Puranic story of Rishi Agastya drinking an ocean of poison.

In the next journey I encountered a violent ravaging fire in the area of the solar plexus, burning my inside and giving physical pain at the outer sides of the diaphragm. It was like fire having leaked out of the tube of the spine, and in the following visualization the fire was gathered repeatedly with a bluish, conically formed matter, to bring the fire back into the vertebral column, from where it had leaked, and the spine was being isolated and fixed by a dark-bluish mantle. Not all of the fire could be extinguished, the experience ended with perceiving a burned field like after a huge forest fire.

I went down below the field of burned ashes, back into the hall (space) where the black waters had been– it was all empty and burned. Again I went deeper down, to the area at the end of the spine, where again a space opened up with a field of a lava-like ground. From there the ashes seemed to dissolve, but not totally. I felt a certain relief. I went up to the area of the heart centre, stayed there for a while, connecting with the structure of light, thanking the persons who had helped facilitating the experience and came out.

I felt fatigued and asked myself how long this work would continue, for it was very intense and emotionally exhausting. During the eight days I went through the experiences I was continuing my normal daily routine with work at the office etc, though feeling shaky.

The next day, last Saturday, we began again visualizing the triangular structure, the persons involved and the presence of the master, supporting and enabling the process. I went inside, into the space around the solar plexus. There was a feeling of a void, after the ravaging fire of the last day. It was cold, everything extinguished, like in an extinguished crater. No life, no sign of fresh sprouting, but also no more pain or wounds. Deeper and deeper I went until I touched the ground in the great hall at the level of the base centre. There too, it seemed to be all cold, dark and without any sign of life. Remembering the scene of Lokayata with Krishna in the hall at the base centre, in the book “Music of the Soul”, I thought of Krishna, whose name also means black, but as the background of existence. Doing so I suddenly experienced a tremendous widening into space, leaving me with no orientation of up and down, no notion of any limitations, but of a vast, living expanse of space I called “universe”. It was a silent, very blissful experience, where I stayed for a while, full of gratitude.

All my hurts and wounds, all my feelings of emptiness and limitations were gone. Thinking of the body, the personality, gave me a picture of something like an illusion of negative, limited space, real and not real at the same time. The body was near and at the same time not linked to me. Nevertheless I went back into that field being “my body”, localized me consciously there, expressed my deep thanks and came out after a while. I felt like being newly born, integrated again into the flow of life. This experience is now a week back. There was no more “backlash” of the “dark side of the moon”, as I called it. I was “back to normal”, but relieved of a heavy load of the past.

Silk painting, October 1984