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

I today received the following old and beautiful Sufi story in Spanish, which I got translated automatically and I “purified” it.

“There was a man who once lived in Turkey. One day he heard speaking of a great teacher that lived in Persia, and that he possessed the secret of wisdom.

Without thinking twice, the man sold his things, he said goodbye to the family, and he left in search of that secret. After years of traveling, he was able to arrive at the cabin where the great teacher lived. Full of fear and respect, he came closer and he waited for the sage to return from his morning walk.

“I come from Turkey”, he said as soon as the sage had appeared. “I have come here only to ask you a question.”

“Well. You can ask just one question.”

“I have to be very clear in what I will ask. Can I make it in Turk?”

“You can”, said the sage. “And I have already responded to your only question. Any other thing that you want to know, you ask to your heart. It is not necessary to travel so much to discover that that is the best consultant that exists.”

And he closed the door….”

Old caves in Turkey, photo of a friend

I yesterday dropped over a website on Buddhist jokes called “A Lighter Side of Buddhism”, by a Buddhist software engineer working at Google. His motto is, “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” Though not all jokes are easily understandable for non-Buddhists, you find a lot of funny staff.

You can also go to “Beliefnet” (“Inspiration, Spirituality, Faith”) where you find a daily joke, and you can group the jokes by faith (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Pagan, Everybody, More… ) or by topic … They have put a “Bad Joke Disclaimer” on their side, as a protection against bigots and others: “We recognize that religious humor can be risky. It is our hope that by laughing at ourselves (and others) we can make this subject more approachable. If you find any of these objectionable, we apologize. As with most jokes, the original authors are unknown – but we thank them.”

Jokes and humour are a great skill of teaching. Our spiritual teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, often brings laughter to his listeners and thus opens the doors of attention.

Also Master EK’s talks were full of humour. Photo of a friend.

In a pause during the workshop on image language I had a talk with a colleague who is interested in yoga and spirituality. She just has finished a psychological formation over 2.5 years and is now planning to participate in a formation in esoterics, as she said. I found out on the web that it is a “spiritually oriented therapy“, by a retired pychiatrist who was head of a clinic and is working together with a healer. He is quite known here, because already before his retirement he broke the barrier between orthodox psychiatry and spiritual healing, something part of his colleagues didn’t appreciate. My friend said that for the next year the course is already full, she is trying to get into it for the following year. The spiritual psychiatrist is going with the times: You can have telephonic counseling for € 2.16/Min. …

Though still marginalised, it is interesting to see how subtle topics are slowly getting into the mainstream of attention: Last week I came across a website of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam, where you now can study Western Esotericism. They have a major studies trajectory “Mysticism and Western Esotericism”, with topics like Neoplatonism, Manicheism, Sufis, Kabbalah, Mesmerism, Occultism, Illuminism, and they offer courses on “Heksen, Ketters en Neopaganisten” (Witches, Heretics and Neo-Paganism), “New Religious Movement and New Age”, “Filosofen als grenswachters” (Philosophers as frontier guards)…

Having gone through long years of studies in similar fields, I don’t think that an academic approach of studying different concepts of esotericism is the right path into fields of the higher mind and beyond, for it demands more inner work than outer (mental) studies. But may such an approach inspire people to enter into a path of self-transformation.

Building an enlightened house of life. Photo of a room in the house of a friend

Last Wednesday I participated in a workshop of my office on image language and the way we use images at the Red Cross. Though three years ago I had built up the image bank we use, I hadn’t been much into the topic of images, especially not the last year.

The meeting was held in the rooms of a media agency in Berne, by a photographer and an art director, specialist of visual  design. After an introduction to image theory, image language and picture assessment, we had a look at our publications. It was very interesting to see these visual specialists “from the outside” giving a critical look and showing flaws and shortcomings. We see the pictures with your own intentions, without noticing that they might stand in the way of the perception of others. When pointed out, you understand the questions arising, but as a lay person you normally just feel that there is something not at optimum with a picture or a detail, be it in the composition or its placement in a publication.

They showed us a number of examples of how enterprises or other organisations have defined their “image language” and present themselves according to it, giving thus a visual message linked to their vision and mission – in the form of colour selection, emotional tones or image composition. They showed us extracts of photos from which everyone immediately recognised the related organisation, without seeing any brand sign.

In the afternoon, after an input about image rights and models of  licensing we did some picture research in image banks like Gettyimages, Fotolia or Corbis. It’s not easy to find pictures for visualising a given theme.

Then we tried to define some basics of the picture language we want to use. It was an interesting discussion, to describe some do’s and don’t’s without becoming too rigid in regulations. It made me think about the way I work with pictures for the Good-Will website, especially when I am preparing powerpoint presentations on different themes of the wisdom teachings.

Seeing the costs of professional image licensing gave me an idea of the great treasure I collected with the pictures given to me by friends from all over the world, which I use for illustrating the teachings. Of course, they are not done by professionals with their high-tech equipment, but nevertheless many of them have quite a high quality standard.

Shooting or seeing photos is not just a process of the eye, but of the mind, the photographer. The way he captures a scene or how he selects a detail expresses very much of the consciousness with which he is working.

Photos of an iris, by a friend. The iris is also part of the eye and a Greek goddess of the rainbow, messenger of the gods, like Hermes. In Wikipedia it says, As the sun unites Earth and Heaven, Iris links the Gods to humanity.

Last weekend my wife and I went to see the new German film “Krabat“, after a novel by Otfried Preußler. In English the book was published under the name of The Satanic Mill. There is a movie trailer with English subtitles, and you find an interesting interview with the producer, Marco Kreuzpaintner.

We read the book in our youth and my wife again some years ago.  A fascinating story of a young orphan boy who becomes an apprentice of a miller-sorcerer who teaches his group of assistants black magic, but also subjugates them under his will – and each year one of them has to die.

The movie is esthetically well done, also the more subtle aspects are presented without getting into cheap tricks. So you see a presentation of an out-of-body experience of the main characters, traveling in their subtle bodies to a village. Though this experience was connected with black arts, it was presented in a very natural way.

The plot of the story – the miller-sorcerer imprisoning a group of students through black magic and forcing them to work – provoked thoughts about experiences we had in a group setting where someone was holding the group over a longer time in his sway. It wasn’t easy to see through the mechanisms and find a way out – just like in the film. It took us years to digest the experiences. The story in the movie didn’t discuss the traumatic dimension of the apprentices, it nevertheless reflected in their behaviour and outlook.

Keeping others’ free will under your control and manipulating them is impeding the inner connection to the soul. See the Lunar Messenger on Free Will and Freedom.

Old millstone in Sweden, photo of a friend