Today I got an e-mail from a Canadian friends with pictures about what people eat during a week’s time in different countries of the world and how much money they spend.

I googled it and found that the pictures are from a photo gallery from time.com: “What the World Eats – What’s on family dinner tables in 15 different homes around the Globe?” The photos are from the book “Hungry Planet” by Peter Menzel. It’s worthwhile having a look at it! They show us a mirror image of our lifestyle and the global imbalances.

Though the photos can be found on many blogs, the author writes they are copyright protected, and so I don’t produce them here. The photo below is from an Indian friend.

Last week I saw an article in the latest number of a German web-marketing journal about measuring user engagement on websites. The question which occupies the marketeers is: How to get people into an engagement, for example on a website, and start to do something.

The marketing specialist agree that it is most important to incite engagement, but it seems to be quite difficult to measure it: If you can quantify engagement, then you can put a price tag on it and benchmark the reactions you get, invest in raising the level of engagement and the like.

A comment in a blogpost by “Scobleizer” (Robert Scoble, the ex-Microsoft “evangelist”) from 2006 entitled: New audience metrics needed: Engagement, lists, what engagement is about and what might be measured:

1. Reactions (they heard you)
2. Learning (they understood and retained)
3. Transfer (they took in the information and can apply)
4. Results (they use the learning to achieve a goal)

There is a lot of discussion about this topic on the web, but these simple lines very well hit the point of engagement, also in the context of wisdom teachings – though measuring is more than strange in this context: Many people hear something about the inner path (point 1), some get interested and start reading about it (point 2), and this for a longer time.

A few of these transfer it into a practice (point 3) and start training themselves. Of these few again a small group really commits itself to continuous engagement, taking up a regular schedule, combined with some kind of service activities and diving into a deeper understanding of the teachings with studies.

Many quit their initial engagement half way through or get lost in some side-track or the other. In the Eastern scriptures it says, out of 1000 one person changes from one level to the other – from hearing to getting interested, to starting practice, to getting into engagement. So it is 1000 x 1000 x 1000.

The percentage of those who set upon a focused spiritual journey along the guiding lines seems to be very low (marketeers would be very much frustrated…), and hopefully it scores a bit higher. But it also says that the goal of a spiritual teacher is reached, when he finds a fistful who really apply and reach the goal and take up the torch of teaching themselves.

Have a look at “Basics of Spiritual Life” on “The Teacher-Student Principle“.

Which way to take with engagement – turn to commitment, or pass on, or stay undetermined?

Through a link on the Kalliopeia site I found CharityFocus.org, an innovative volunteer initiative:

“CharityFocus is an experiment in the joy of giving. Our services enable inspired people to contribute in meaningful ways to the world around them. Together, we hope to ‘be the change we wish to see in the world’.”

The organisation is fully volunteer-run. they aim to “act in concert to create service opportunities for each other and to support each other’s service journeys.”

They have some very interesting service approaches:

• They provide technical help for small nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to develop a web-presence.
• They inspire people to create inspiring content, such as writing success stories of nonprofit organisations, creating videos about something uplifting, providing photos for good stories, writing songs or realising some kind of art to make the world a better place.
• They motivate people to do acts of kindness or make somebody smile (they have created Smile Cards…)
• They guide people to set up local event activities, either alone or in partnership with other NPOs.

In order to help other service related NPOs to realise websites themselves, they have developed CFSites, an instrument to help the nonprofits to get on the web more quickly.

They have collectively designed hundreds of free websites for nonprofits and allowed some thousand sites to be created with their CFSites tool.

The CharityFocus project clearly shows that intelligent service is more than just a good intention, but requires skills and group work. Then you do efficient good will work with an attitude of professional quality, with a dedicated focus.

A friend sent me a link to an article on Live Science called: “Earth’s Hum Sounds More Mysterious Than Ever“, by Charles Q. Choi. He writes:

“Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery. Now unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum. These new findings could shed light on the source of this enigma.

The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn’t shaking from an earthquake. … Now oscillations have been discovered making up the hum that, oddly, are shaped roughly like rings. Imagine, if you will, rumbles that twist in circles in rock across the upper echelons of the planet, almost like dozens of lazy hurricanes.”

In the Eastern scriptures the humming sound of creation is called OM, which causes all creation to happen. Intonating this sound in the right way transforms the matter of our body and makes it more receptible to the light of the soul. The OM we sing is an utterance of the underlying continuum of the vibration of existence. This is also called the soundless sound or the Voice of Silence. Have a look at the Lunar Messenger on “The Power of OM“.

Rings on the waters of a pond. Photo from last Sunday’s excursion

I read today an article about a meeting of German newspaper publishers on April 16, where they spoke about the interaction between print and web. Norbert Bolz, professor of the TU Berlin said to the publishers that the battle going on in the internet is the battle of reputation: People are confronted with a tremendous amount of information which they cannot assimilate, and the newspapers help them to orient: “They decide what is important and unimportant. Nothing is more important in the 21st century than discrimination.”

What gives the guideline of discrimination? Who decides about what is important and what can be left away?

The situation is the same on the spiritual path: there is so much information around, that people get irritated by this and easily get lost in sideways. Some therefore prefer staying in belief systems they somehow have outgrown, like those of the mainstream churches.

Orientation by reputation might be helpful, if the authorities are farsighted and knowledgeable. Otherwise it is dangerous – the blind following the blind man.

Who are the authorities, what determines the right kind of reputation and who is creating it? In the case of orientation on the path into the subtle worlds the mainstream is of no avail, for they blind out the inner dimension of reality. The media as such seem to be ignorant of the signposts to the path of light. The same is true with the academic persons. They cultivate the intellect, but not the heart, the doorway to the higher worlds.

Discrimination is a quality of the soul, of the Buddhic plane of light. He who is centred in the soul knows how to discriminate, and more so if you have learned it from an enlightened teacher. In India there is a saying that the one who has found a wise teacher who has realised what he is teaching is really blessed.

You might want to have a look at our powerpoint presentation The Importance of a Teacher on the Path, from the series on Meditation – Experiment and Experience. It is also available as a PDF file, though not animated. There is also the number from Basics of Spiritual Life on “The Teacher-Student Principle“.

Picture of a Buddha statue at sunset. I took it last year in the garden of the friend.

Some days ago I came across the website of the Kalliopeia Foundation, a private philanthropic foundation, located in San Rafael, California. (Kalliopeia or Kalliope is one of the Muses of ancient Greece, the goddess of music, song and dance. They chose this name as a symbol “of the intuitions and faculties centered in the higher self which call on us “to remember.”).

Kalliopeia is giving grants to support a cultural shift towards a recognition of oneness of life within diversity: “Kalliopeia Foundation contributes to the evolution of communities and cultures that honor the unity at the heart of life’s rich diversity.” They “support projects which bring together the voices of those who are inspired to create, express and define an emerging consciousness of oneness through many areas of human endeavor”.

They have very inspiring principles and areas of sponsorship:
“Kalliopeia supports projects that contribute to a growing awareness of what unifies, rather than divides, all people. Through our grantmaking programs we support the work of people committed to holistic personal, community and planetary transformation and healing based on the recognition that we are at the core one humanity, expressing itself through myriad ways and forms.

We are particularly interested in projects that help to deepen our understanding of what it means for humanity to live in harmony with the whole of life. Central to this question is the need to evolve local to global systems of living that are founded upon a recognition of the oneness at the core of life and what that means in terms of how we live, both individually and collectively.”

You find interesting projects when looking at the page with the organisations they sponsored. One of the projects they supported with grants is the Kosmos Journal (“An Integral Approach To Global Awakening” – ” KOSMOS is an ancient Greek term meaning the harmony and beauty of the universe wherein all parts have their place within the Whole”).

An Argentinian friend living in Spain yesterday sent me a link to this journal writing: “I know the people and they are well-intended seekers, to my humble understanding.” I also saw that a lady whom I met 8 years ago at a seminar is working for the journal … A small world.

A forest cosmos of anemones

Yesterday we had another public evening theme, this time about “Silence, Speech and Sound”. Sacred sounds and certain kinds of music are very effective means of inner transformation and also for energizing the space around us. Speech and sound can have an uplifting effect, but can also be destructive and painful. It depends on the way we use them.

We were a small group only, but there was an inspiring atmosphere. First I presented a powerpoint show with many photos related to sound (in German, it will be translated in the next weeks), also available as a PDF-file. After a pause my wife guided a meditation with an introduction into the Gayatri Mantram (an ancient sound formula, “The Light of the Thee Worlds”) and experiencing silence. The rhythm of mantric singing enlivens the experience of silence afterwards. It is somehow refreshing and makes us come again more in line with our higher self.

You might read the blopost on “The Power of Sacred Sounds” or the or the Basics of Spiritual Life on “Working with Sound“.

A hermit in the Himalayas, photo of a friend

Some days ago I read in the NZZ Folio-Magazine an article by Luca Turin on “The sound of impossible objects” (also translated into English). It is about William Sethares, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin at Madison (“Each of us plays several roles in life. Some of my favorite are: researcher, teacher, and musician”) .

Sethares did experiments where he electronically stretched the musical octaves and observed what happened with the chords: Some combinations sounded very dissonant, while others produced an astonishing consonance. Some scales he used were more harmonious for the ears than others. So in 19-tone, the “octave” on the keyboard is a fifth larger than the normal one.

Sethares calls this “Xenotonality” (from the Greek word for “strange” combined with tones). The results are described on his website as “strange and somewhat eeri. The effect was so different from the tempered scale that there was no tendency to judge in-tuneness or out-of tuneness.” Some of the songs sound quite normal, some leave an alienating feeling.

You can listen to some example from his CDs, like Incidence and Coincidence. I got a strange feeling from these sounds, like being a bit “off the track”, and the effect lasted for quite some time afterwards. It is not just the kind of vibrations I would love to expose myself to over a longer time, but and interesting transgression of the boundaries of the sound-range of physical instrument. In this context see the next blogpost on “Silence, Speech and Sound”.

Loudspeaker in a little forest ashram in Andhra Pradesh, India

Today I was in Geneva at the office of the UNHCR, the UN organisation for the protection of refugees.

Together with Google Earth they launched for Switzerland the new online mapping programme, Google Outreach (up to now it is only available in certain countries), and at the same time unveiled the outreach programme for the UNHCR:

“It’s absolutely fantastic. The potential for us and the potential to serve our interests and to serve the refugee interests round the world is quite substantial and we need now only seize the opportunity and move ahead with it,” Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone told more than 250 staff and invited guests at a launch ceremony in the atrium of UNHCR’s Geneva headquarters. Johnstone said the pilot UNHCR layers, which are now live on Google Earth Outreach and available from the UNHCR-site, made it possible to zoom in on specific refugee situations

L. Craig Johnstone

And indeed, it was very fascinating to see the the scope of possibilities this new technology offers. Rebecca Moore, manager and founder of Google Earth Outreach, gave an insight into the new application, showing different examples already realised.

Rebecca Moore from Google

With layers you can place information and media into Google Earth (a downloadable program) and Google Maps (online version). Now Google Earth Outreach gives non-profits and public benefit organizations the knowledge and resources to greate maps and virtual visits to projects.

This way you can directly show people what is at stake at a place and not just speak about it. You thus can raise the awareness and reach a broader audience – at the moment there are more than 350 million Google Earth users world-wide. You can use the tool to educate people, inspire action and influence decision-makers.

To show the impact of photos to sensitize people to what is happening in other parts of the world, Zalmai, internationally reknown photographer, born in Kabul and and refugee himself, who had just returned from Afghanistan, showed very impressive pictures of the horrible living conditions of internally displaced people there.

In the afternoon there was a tech-session to explain how the magic works, and a a manual for developers (pdf) was handed out. And we did some experiments with the spreadsheets to create information for Google Earth – it’s really not difficult to use.

Google also just launched an initiative together with “The Elders” – a gathering of world leaders coming together to guide and support the people – called “Every Human has Rights“, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Google is now placing the 30 Articles of the declaration into the download version of Google Earth, so that you can see them at different parts of the globe, where they are at stake. This way also the knowledge about the human rights is spread all over – a very inspiring initiative.

At my office we are already using Google Maps to show the areas of world-wide activities. And since yesterday the Circle of Good Will can also be found on Google Maps. But I don’t know yet whether in my office or privately Google Outreach will come to a use… Nevertheless it is a great tool for inter-connecting the world and thus bringing in a fresh air of the Aquarian age.

This afternoon when walking along a straightened brook, my wife and I observed that in our society you often think you also can straighten all kinds of processes, like it is done with the optimisation of workflows in an enterprise.

In life, however, things often don’t develop in a straightened way, but meandering. For example, if you have a serious disease – and we were speaking about a friend’s situation – the doctor might propose a surgery, as a “direct solution” to remove a tumor. Normally the milieu in which this disease has developed is not questioned – removing the effect is seen as removing the cause.

Searching a solution without having a ready-made shortcut is much more like a meandering river – you go in one direction, then find other aspects and turn to another direction.

My wife is just reading a new book by David Servan-Schreiber, professor of Psychiatry, on “Anticancer – A new way of life“, where he describes his search in dealing with cancer, also his own (here is a site of him).

In one passage he writes that when dealing with inner inflammations in the body you can reduce them with natural methods by reducing influences and poisons which promote inflammations, such as dietetics, establishing an inner balance and body exercises.

He ends saying: “A doctor probably won’t give you these counsels. Changes in the way of life cannot be patented, so you cannot make medicine out of them and prescribe recipes. Therefore many doctors don’t see themselves responsible for it, and it is up to each individual to inform himself.”

This means, you have to search your way, and this is a meandering path – there is no magic shortcut. And the way you chose depends on the information you get and also how you judge the quality of the information.

A straightened brook at the beginning of the Emmental, canton Berne, Switzerland

Meandering water