My wife and I today went on the Jungfrau (“Top of Europe“). Since the Jungfrau Railways now offer free birthday trips till the end of the month, we used the occasion of my birthday for this “pause” (see the sign on the post van in Grindelwald…). It was a beautiful sunny day, relaxing and full of a clear winter air. Quite a lot of tourists from all over the world were going into the same direction – Chinese, Japanese and Indian travellers, Buddhist monks in ocher colours and a Jew in a traditional dress, skiers – and also a number of “normal” Swiss people…

The air at the top (3450 m or 11333 ft) was rather thin and made us breathe consciously and walk snowly. Here are some impressions of the journey.

A “pause” in Grindelwald – good sign for the day

Radiant sunshine above the Jungfrau, at the “Top of Europe” (3450m)

Object of an art exposition at the Jungfrau of Housi Knecht.

A daw above the “Mönch” (Monk) mountain

Icy winds blowing over the Jungfraujoch

The 11th moon phase at the Eiger North Face

An alphorn at a chalet on the wayside

The valley of Lauterbrunnen at the foot of the Jungfrau on the way back

Yesterday late evening I went into the city of Berne to shoot some Christmas mood photos, here is a part of the series – to give you a feeling of Christmas and shopping romance.

The Christmas tree in front of the office of our village authorities

A Christmas tree at a nearby old people’s home

5-pointed stars over a street in the old town of Berne

A star at the cathedral

The Nutcracker Parade in the window of a shop with traditional arts and crafts from the Erzgebirge, Germany.

The Angel’s reception

Shop-sledging

Warm snow

Winter scenes from wood work

An angels’ choir

Santa Claus and singing angels

Hark, the herald angels sing…

Oh when the Saints go marching in…

Church-goers in the shop-snow

Riding a carrousel

Buddha’s Christmas

The Food Angels

Teddy Bears driving through the shop

The “Zytglogge” (Time-Clock) Tower with feistive decoration

Only the beautifully decorated huge Christmas tree in front of the Government building, which I wanted to shoot first, was no longer there, just the pedestal and a short rest of a broken trunk: The night before a storm had swept over the country and probably knocked it over…

Yesterday was the World Volunteer Day, an important day for fostering free commitment for the well-being of humanity. Volunteer work is not just a one-day festival, but a way to pay back to life what we have got for free.

The United Nations have just launched a redesigned platform, onlinevolunteering.org, where volunteers can find opportunities for activities and organisations can find volunteers (site in English, French and Spanish). The Red Cross here in Switzerland, where I work (as a professional, not as volunteer – my volunteer work is in other fields) is also chairing a forum, in 3 languages, for volunteer work in different organisations. And they are running an ad-campaign for thanking all the volunteers for their work and inspiring more volunteers to take action. Volunteer work is one of the 7 principles of the Red Cross organisations world-wide.

Volunteer work is often a silent activity not noticed by the masses. But it is most important to keep our society well functioning – particularly in fields where no money is spent to do the needed activities. Especially women do a lot of free work – and so Volunteer Day is a good occasion to commemorate these activities – not only on World Volunteer Day.

A poster of the ICRC-Campaign: “Our World – Your Move”.

I today came across a site, (Eco-friendly living tips from Pocono Records, from Northeast Pennsylvania), about the ecological and economical effects of plastic bags. An impressive presentation:

Many countries world-wide have banned plastic bags due to their disastrous effects on the oeco-system: Between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags were produced annually and less than a per cent recycled. Innumerable bags land in nature, in the oceans they float from Arctics to Antarctics, killing animals and polluting the environment.

Have a look at the presentation and draw your conclusions…

A “forgotten” TV in the forest, near Berne, October 08

Today I came across the blog of “Don Croner’s World Wide Wanders“, with impressions from Mongolia and Buddhist monks and monasteries, Thangkas and people (scroll through the blog…). He has published a book on Zanabazar, (1635-1723) the son of one of the rulers of seventeenth-century Mongolia, and a distant descendant of Chingis Khan, whose spiritual propensities were apparent almost from birth and in 1639, while still a small boy.

Wikipedia says about him: “In 1640, Zanabazar, was recognized by the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama as being a “Living Buddha”…. Miraculous occurrences allegedly took place during his youth... Zanabazar has been called the “Michelangelo of Asia” for bringing to the region a renaissance in matters related to spirituality, including theology, language, art, medicine and astronomy. He composed sacred music, mastered the sacred arts of bronze casting and painting, created a new design for monastic robes, and invented the Soyombo script in 1686….

“He is probably best known for his incomparable sculptures, which rank among the greatest works of Buddhist art ever created.” These are really very beautiful sculptures of Buddhas and stupas. There is a short online biography of Zanabazar. and more information about him.

In his blog Don Croner wrote today from Mongolia about the beautiful Venus-Jupiter constellation which can be seen in the sky. Also here I saw it yesterday evening as a beautiful, clear picture over a nearby mountain. Don Croner is also running an interesting website on “The Legend of Shambhala“, with photos of stupas in the Taklamakan desert.

Zanabazar, from Wikipedia commons

Last weekend when traveling to Germany I found some time to read in the book on Religious Communities in the Canton of Berne. I found some interesting descriptions of today’s esoteric culture or new religious communities, confirming or clearing several observations of mine. In general most people don’t want to commit themselves to an organisation or structure, and the new groups are often also not so organised like the traditional religions – though there are other examples, too.

In the book it says that degree of organisation is not an adequate criterion for people, and often they don’t want any organisation at all, or structures are of a fleeting character. This is a really Aquarian mode of expression – decentralisation and issue-focus is more adequate. Many groups don’t define themselves even as religious, but prefer terms such as spiritual (like I do), philosopicial or esoteric, or even “scientific”.

Last monday I read in the New Zurich Newspaper an interview with Dorothea Lüddeckens, professor of the University of Zurich on Comparative Religion, about a meeting on changes in the new religious movements. She said that now 30 to 40 per cent of the Swiss population think that reincarnation is possible – a question denied by orthodox Christians. She pointed out that even many church goers today appreciate the offers of the churches, but are also interested in other spiritual ideas and practices, thus changing the popular Christian religiosity. Esoteric literature has invaded the main stream bookshops or alternative therapy systems the therapy market.

Many people don’t want an all-inclusive system, but take specific offers, like a patient using alternative medicine, a manager going for a time-out into a monastery, parents searching an alternative school for their children… It is a kind of self-determination, where people take what they value and leave away what they don’t. You can compare it with a shop, where you select what you are interested in – you don’t buy the whole shop.

Seeing the sun through the forest is like seeing the truth through a multitude of concepts.

Today I saw the presentation of an ITC networking meeting in two weeks ago in Berne, and one presentation started with the following lines, which contain a deep truth:

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

Mirroring mirrors in a train compartment, last Saturday.

This weekend I went by train up through Germany to a place in the north of Frankfort, where a cousin of mine  had organised the annual meeting of my highschool class – now 36 years after leaving school. We had been together during 9 years and then spread into different directions and professions. I hadn’t been at the meetings of the last years, and so I was looking forward of seeing some of the old classmates again.

At the fast train station already three friends were waiting for me. A big black Mercedes was ready to pick us up: One comrade with whom I had been together a lot during school times is now head of Munich Airport and had managed to come for part of the weekend. In the car he told us that it is a rare occasion for him to be just with normal people who don’t want anything from him or who don’t look at him as something special… My cousin replied: That’s the destiny of alpha animals…

We were just a small group of 6, from a class of originally 14. Some had sent a short-turn negative reply due to health or family problems.

Some weeks ago one of the classmates had converted an old film on DVD, which was made at the end of our school time – a portrait of each of us. It was like a message in a bottle, to see me and the others after so many years. It was astonishing to see that in our behaviour you could already see the traits which had just been worked out over the years.

I leave here aside the details of our meeting – too many non-bloggable personal things. We didn’t stick much to old memories, it was a lively discussion about the different paths and experiences, with a familiarity which is rare with other people – in spite of the wide range of different attitudes.

When I was asked about my way, besides the profession, it was not so easy for me to explain the essence of the journey through the subtle worlds. Speaking about the Circle of Good Will, someone asked, What do you mean with good-will? What do you understand with spirituality? What is… I tried to explain these fundamentals, but felt that it is difficult to convey processes of inner transformations and experiences with collegues who are partly not familiar with similar experiences, and words cannot convey them. It was the first time I could speak to them in some more detail about what is moulding my life, though just in a short outline. And so I came to know that one friend also is sometimes doing buddhist meditations, and he had a book with him about a talk of a scientist and a buddhist teacher.

This morning we had a last exchange before we broke up, back to our different places in life.

Sewing machines from the collection of my cousin, of nearly 30 machines of partly historic value: A good symbol for the class meeting.

Friday evening we had the second meeting of our series of evening themes on „The Call of the Soul“, in a seminar room of a nearby hotel. The theme of this evening was “The Journey” (will be translated soon) Several of our friends weren’t able to come, and so we thought it would be a small round. Three newbies dropped in – an elderly lady, and two younger persons – and some friends of us, all together a group of eight persons.

We started with singing an invocation to the unity of all life, as a reminder to keep the awareness connected with it. There was a good energy of presence to be felt, and when I started talking a smooth flow of thoughts came in. I had prepared a powerpoint presentation with beautiful pictures, mainly from a series from a journey of friends to Ethiopia. The presentation was about basics of the spiritual path, about possible challenges and how to overcome them, and about entrance into the realms of the subtle worlds. After a little paus my wife conducted a meditation, starting with singing 21 times OM, and then some guided visualisations.

Afterwards we had an exchange about the experiences. Again it was astonishing how people had deep and similar experiences, though it was neither induced by us nor did we know each other before: There is a path to the inside, to the experience of inner experience – consciousness diving into itself. In his Mystic Mantrams Master CVV calls this “Dip deep” – dipping into one’s own awareness.

The next morning a photo of the presentation came into my mind: I had spoken about how it needs discrimination and mostly also help to orient on the path, not to get lost. And that it isn’t easy to discover the signs, which we easily fail to see. On the photo you see a scene from a street in Hyderabad, with people and motorbikes crossing – just a street scene. But when you have a closer look at the picture, you see on the walls occult signs, a most sacred symbol, the Swastika. It is a symbol of the “Wheel of Life”, the power of progressive evolution. But it is also a message about how these signs can get distorted and their sense perverted, like it has been done with the Nazi system, and so it became a symbol of power and dominion. Now it is seen in the West as a forbidden symbol, highly emotionally charged by pros and cons. You cannot just look neutrally on it in public without stirring partly violent reactions.

On the photo from the street in Hyderabad you hardly perceive it. It is the same with the messages from the subtle world, which you easily miss to note in everyday life, but which can help you open the doors to the inside when the awareness is open.

I today received at my office a press release of Save the Children about a joint statement of 31 winners of the Nobel Peace Prize calling for urgent action to implement quality education and build peace in conflict-affected countries. Since it is a really urgent and worthy matter, you find it also mentioned here in the blog-post.

The Nobel Laureates have come together to call for change, as part of a campaign, “Save the Children”  Rewrite the Future” which fights for education for all children affected by conflict. The very true slogan is: “Peace begins in the minds of children” – and adults as well, you might add.

It is impressive that so many Nobel Peace Prize Laureates have joined to support this cause. The laureates, including President Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, urged world leaders to pay more attention to the educational needs of more the 37 million children who live in fragile states and are unable to go to school.

You can find here some statements of Nobel laureates about the need for education of children in conflict.

Children in Ethiopia, photo of a friend