At the meeting in Iguazú for the May Call celebrations from May 26th to June 1st, there were about 300 persons from different countries from East and West: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Honduras, India, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, United States, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland as well as from Venezuela attending the seminar. Most faces were new, but many I knew from previous group livings.

Besides the seminar lectures on “Coexistence” by our teacher, Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar. There were very interesting encounters with many different members – but this isn’t much for the blog. In case you are interested, I have typed the seminar notes…

One exchange was quite particular: I was sitting next to a lady from Honduras. When I asked her, what she was doing in her home country, she answered in a short, precise way, in perfect English: “What do you mean? I don’t speak English very well, but first I am a mother with two children, then I am a lawyer, and a politician. I am member of a Latin American international assembly, similar to the EU. I am in the commission working with the European Union, o.k.?”

I replied: “Oh, so you have a lot of responsibilities. How do you integrate all this with spiritual life?” She hesitated a moment, and I was wasn’t sure if she understood me well, but then she answered in a clear, decisive way: “First in my life there is God, since always, then come other things. I am a politician because I think it is right that I am at the place where I am. If I weren’t there, there would be someone else who might not do it as well as I do. o.k.?” Then she turned over to the other side, leaving me back a bit baffled.

Passion Flower in the Argentinean national park of the Iguazú Falls

In the afternoon of our arrival some friends asked me if I would like to join them for an excursion to the Cataratas, the falls on the Brazilian side. They are in a beautiful national park, full of luxuriant vegetation. I had been there 7 years ago, but now the weather was fine.

The public bus brought us right to the entrance of the park, where we changed into another bus which brought us closer to the falls. And then we saw them, the overwhelming range of cascades, large and small ones, falling from different heights over brown rocks, embellished by green spots.

Clouds of spray hovered over the falls, and the sun painted beautiful rainbows.

At the upper part of the Brazilian side of the falls looking at Garganta do Diablo / Devil’s Throat

It is a most enchanted scenery, with the continuous roar of the falling waters resounding over the valley. The path lead us closer and closer to the “Devil’s Gorge”, the big hole at the beginning of the falls, where huge amounts of water tower down into the abyss. The water sprinkled over us and gave a cooling feeling. The soul feels uplifted and inspired by all the natural beauty. Some coatis were running around, watching us tourists, and waiting for some food to be picked up.

The next day we went with some small busses to the Argentinean side, where you can go even deeper into the cascades, through forests full of tropical bushes. A little train brought us to a catwalk leading to the other side of the Devil’s Gorge. The waters seem to be so quiet before rushing down into the abyss – like in life, where surprises often come unexpected.

At the end you can look from a platform down directly into the white of the thundering waters, without seeing the bottom.

Flocks of birds were dancing in the clouds, sometimes disappearing in the waters. A friend said he had seen a film about these birds having their nests behind the falling waters, a safe place without any natural enemies.

We later went with a little ferryboat to the St. Martin’s island in the middle of the falls.

A boat in front of the rocks of St. Martins Island

Some huge black birds circled over our heads or sat in trees.

Some lizards darted over the rocks or enjoyed the sun. Signs warned of serpents, but we didn’t see any.

On St Martin’s Island there is said to be a power-spot, an entrance to the subtle Devic kingdom – and you could really feel the sublime presence, surrounded by the torrential cascades.

The sun painted horizontal rainbows into the mist over the rocks.

The energetic center is said to be around the rock in the middle – a superb, but inaccessible place.

For hours after the return there remained the impression of the thundering waters in my subtle bodies. It had such a strong impact of purification, power and upliftment.

In Eastern wisdom teachings the descent and ascent of water is seen as the movement of involution and evolution of creation. It is described with the “Narayana” mantram. A friend from Miami who was at the group living in Iguazú sent me today a picture of the falls writing:

“I selected this photo because for me it represents the synthesis of the message of the past group living: NARAYANA: Waters from heaven and waters from the earth. For me the mist that is produced from the fall of the water represent our souls going on the return path. Thousands and thousands of little drops that at the end merges with the immense, unlimited blue sky.”

A long blogging pause of two weeks. The reason why:

We had already packed everything for the journey to Iguazu, Brazil. I just wanted to do a backup of my laptop before leaving. For some reason the software I had installed didn’t recognize the external harddisk. Oh, I thought, that’s time to install the new version which I had bought some weeks before.

When strying to re-boot the laptop after installation, nothing happened, the screen remained black. My son said: “You have taken out the installation CD too early”, he inserted it and got the laptop running again. Fine, I thought, finished some mails, shut down the computer and put it into the rucksack.

At Zurich airport I wanted to check something on the laptop, but the screen remained black. The CD with the software was at home and we were ready to take off, and me with my black laptop.
I wanted to take notes from the seminar with our spiritual teacher. O.K., I said to myself, it seems this time your laptop wants holidays from you. A bit sad I put it back into the rucksack.

We had a beautiful, smooth flight, where everything went like in a big flow. It was a big jump through the night, via Frankfurt, Sao Paulo further on to Iguazú Falls near the Argentinean border. At the hotel there were already several friends, from Germany, Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, a cordial welcome like in a family meeting.

I mentioned the story of the broken laptop to a friend from Berlin, and she said: Oh, I have mine with me, but I don’t really need it during the seminar, you can use it.

So I could write my notes, but didn’t blog. We came back last Monday night. I got the laptop running again on Tuesday, but the week left no time for posting anything, though there were so many impressions. So here it goes again.

Approaching Iguazu – over the city

A treetop full of orange flowers in front of our hotel window.

I frequently observe that similar topics come across my way at home and at my office. It is some kind of synchronicity, which superficially seen seems to be accidental. Of course it is not identity, and there are many strings of themes and activities quite different from each other.

In the last months the relaunch of the intranet system at my office kept me quite busy (I wrote a blogpost 14 months ago and another in October 07, when the project officially started). I’m the project manager and have to coordinate the internal processes with the external agency. At the moment we are in the process of finalizing detail concept, and the new intranet hopefully will be launched in October.

At home I’m working since some months – besides other activities – at the relaunch of the Good-Will website. My youngest son, 15, is helping me with the technical side, and I do the content migration and photo layout, scanning etc. It took a long time until finally the project started. My son needed overcoming technical, but also motivational obstacles. But since some weeks the fire has got him and we are making good progress. I hope that in a few weeks we are through.

I started the old site in 2000 and re-worked it a bit with the site layout 2 years ago. It grew over the years, but the coding, done by a WYSIWYG-editor, is full of mistakes. Since I’m a “layman” as far as the technical side is concerned and don’t have much time to go deeper into it, I wouldn’t be able to do the relaunch myself. Now we have a very good co-operation, where I can realize quite some ideas which my son is adapting into the techical side. You’ll see more of the results in the near future. Also the blog will be integrated into the layout and structure of the new site. Here is a screenshot of the English page on “good will”.

Two days ago I received a beautiful powerpoint presentation from an Argentinian friend with incredible pictures of the waterfalls in Iguazu, near the border triangle between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. We will be there next week for a seminar with our spiritual teacher, Dr. Kumar.

A photo of the Iguazu Falls, from a friend.

A member of our local group had yesterday birthday and invited us for breakfast and a little excursion this morning after our group meditation.

The outing went to a nearby hill, the Belpberg (more in German) which in previous epochs had been the end moraine of a glacier. Our friend wanted to show us a surprise and didn’t tell us what we would see, we should just experience.

From the western side of the hill we took a little road, entered a forest and came along a beautiful waterfall.

A little further on there was a house directly next to the forest, with a magical ambiance around.

Our friend told us that until recently a man lived there, who used to do rituals and ceremonies in nature. She once was invited by him into his house. She was fascinated by the friendly way he lived in tune with nature. Only the nearby farmers didn’t like it, they were a bit irritated by this strange guy and so the owner terminated the contract. Though the man tried his best to stay there, it seemed that now he had left the place and other people were living there.

Someone of our group mentioned: “It is quite hard to live in a non-orthodox way in Switzerland, it’s very different from India, where everyone can live the style he likes, without irritating the others.”

We continued our walk and took a small, steep path through the forest,

and then saw some chalk cliffs with a little cave overlooking the valley, called the “Pfaffenloch” (Parson’s Hole):

Between two rocks there was a small entrance into a tunnel. We went in, but the passage got more and more narrow, and after some meters you had to creep.

I felt uncomfortable and returned. While the others crept to the other side, I looked around and saw remains of some rituals – candles, fire etc. – a beautiful place for celebrating nearness with nature.

And there was a fantastic view over the valley to the Alps. The cars and the railway down in the valley looked like little toys.

When the others came back, we sat down and intonated a few times the holy word OM – quite a contrast to the shooting going on in the valley – Swiss marksmen training.

Back at the foot of the hill we saw some farm houses, which now serve city people to live in. I’m always astonished how much energy some people put into making their houses representative dwellings. So much vital energy is being absorbed by these activities.

This morning my moped suddenly started to roar – the rust had eaten a hole into the mouth of the tail-pipe. With a lot of noise I continued to my office. On the way home in the evening I took the direction to a motorbike mechanic. When I crossed the bridge from the old town of Berne to the other side, I saw an old steam engine tramway going along, an extra-ride blowing white steam into the air.

The tram was quite slow, so I could easily double it with my moped. I stopped and took out my camera, but it passed by a bit too fast. I drove on and made some shots from the moped and then a last one from the side of the road, here they are.

On the plate of the engine you can read it’s from 1894. I thought about the incredible speed-up of technical evolution in these 114 years. In esoteric parlance this is a result of the starting Aquarian age – though in mainstream society they are laughing it off and give other kinds of explanation concepts.

A few minutes later I arrived at the motorbike shop, where just 2 ladies were returning from a test drive with latest models e-bikes – a new generation of city transport means getting quite frequent here.
And in the newspapers and on the web I saw today pictures of yesterday’s show of the “fusion man” – a Swiss pilot who, with small airofoils and little turbines on his back had given a demonstration for press people, flying at 300 km/h over the Alps – another air of the Aquarian wind.

Yesterday we went with a relative and her friend to the Niederhorn, a peak in the Swiss Alps in the Bernese Oberland near Beatenberg. The friend was a clairvoyant from Germany, who was for the first time in these mountains. Our relative had been at a geomantic seminar at Beatenberg some time ago and wanted to show us an energetic power place.

We first walked along a private road, through a series of tunnels, where the friend said she felt overwhelmed by the multitude of subtle beings in the rocks. I just felt a bit small under this huge mass of rocks. Afterwards the road went along the mountainside and after a few hundred meters we came at a place where a fault had cut a drop between the rocks. There was somehow a special energy around, which, when you paid attention, felt different from the part before.

We stood there for some time feeling the quality of the place. The friend started guiding us into a visualization of what she was perceiving. After a while I preferred not to go into the descriptions of her experiences, but to stay with my own experiences, and so I took a stand a bit apart. I tried to keep the stance of an observer and not to get into some fancies of imagination. Better just some small authentic experiences than a bunch which isn’t my own.

Afterwards we returned and took the gondola lift up to the summit of the Niederhorn. At the top there was still quite a lot of snow on the way, and a snowblower was cutting a new way. But it was warm and the view was fantastic. Daws were flying around the cliffs and paragliders jumped down into the valley, circulating over the precipice.

On the way back at the middle station we hired some scooters and rolled down through forests and meadows – a beautiful descent.

Daws observing the visitors

Paraglider with view of the Eiger mountain

Way down into the valley

Friday I was in a suburb of Zurich for a meeting with the web marketing agency with which we are cooperating in my office. On the way back I had a short stop at Zurich main station, where I had a look at the work of art about which I had read in the American tech-blog Engadget (and about which I had heard before…)

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH has installed in the main station hall a huge 3D LED display for its 150th birthday. There are 25,000 bulbs containing each 12 LEDs which are constantly changing colours and patterns. The project is called NOVA and wants to give the travelers a new visual experience: In a surrounding where people are flooded with visual stimuli they want to appeal the people emotionally, remembering them of dreams and visions. The NOVA-team has a fascinating website, which you can also explore with different shapes and colours.

The structure reminds me of group relations not only in technology, but also with human beings. When their patterns harmoniously cooperate, a beautiful lightful structure can appear.

Today is the White Lotus Day, in commemoration of the passing-over of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, also called H.P.B., the great messenger of spiritual wisdom of the 19th century. Till today she is much disputed, mostly by people who  haven’t prepared themselves for understanding the teachings. She had a fascinating life full of extraordinary venturing. Some years ago I published a little brochure, “H.P.B. – Trailblazer for the Aquarian Age” (PDF). Her Opus Magnum, the “Secret Doctrine“, belongs to my daily reading, one page a day –  I find it very uplifting, though not easy to read. My spiritual teacher, Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar, has given some seminars about the book, which have opened an eye for a deeper understanding. He also has published a little booklet called “The White Lotus” (online version), about the symbolism of the lotus.

There is also another jubilee today – this is the 500th blog-post, which started on March 31st, 2006. With the time blog-writing became a favorite pastime of mine. May the inspiration continue.

A third anniversary today is the 180th birthday of Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross movement. In his commemoration we celebrate the World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day today.

Helena P. Blavatsky (1831-1891)