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

A friend from America sent me the link to the “Global Oneness Project”, a very interesting web-based video initiative, which is “committed to documenting what is being born during this time of planetwide transformation. While we are confronted with unmistakable signs that our current way of life is no longer sustainable, inspiring and innovative people and programs are blossoming in all areas of our collective society.”

They are portraying everywhere in the world “subjects live and work with many of the following values, attitudes, and beliefs:

• We are responsible to each other, the earth, and future generations.
• There are enough resources for us all, if we share.
• Free exchanges of information allow for greater, collective creative potential.
• Love, care and compassion have the power to transform the fabric of society.”

“The Global Oneness Project is exploring how the radically simple notion of interconnectedness can be lived in our increasingly complex world.”

You find a number of short films and interview on their site “showing the diverse ways oneness is expressed—in the fields of sustainability, conflict resolution, spirituality, art, economics, indigenous culture, and social justice— others will be inspired to create solutions to personal and community challenges from their own lived understanding of oneness.”

The Global Oneness Project is a special project of Kalliopeia Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation committed to honoring the unity that lies at the heart of life’s rich diversity. On the Kalliopeia site I saw links to a number of inspiring projects dedicated to good will activities, which I will highlight in some other blogpost.

In a German internet marketing magazine I saw a note about the American site “Christvertising“, which describes itself with the following words:

“Christvertising is a network of communication specialists and advertsing professionals which help you navigate through the maze that is the world of competitive brands. If you like your product, so do we, but more importantly, so does God. We believe that nothing is possible without the Lord’s blessing and consent. Your product is no exception. May God bless your Brand.”

And: “Christvertising manages a network of creative, innovative, and pro-active believers, who will help you, through intensive prayer, improve your brand in the eyes of the Lord. If God loves your brand, it will become stronger and more successful. Cristvertising helps you access the power of brand-targeted prayer (BTP™) using our unique, isosceles approach to marketing: Reach – Connect – Pray.” …. “Ask yourself this simple question: Is your brand in God’s good books?”

Prayers are very helpful on the spiritual path, they can orient us to the Divine – not from the intellect, but from the heart. However, using prayer to bribe God and exploit him for marketing purposes is one more expression of our excessively materialistic time.

Hands of a Buddha statue, photo of a friend

Today I got a link to the YouTube video series (10 videos) of “The 2012 Enigma” by David Wilcock with a talk from the 2008 Conscious Life Expo 2008, LA, February 8 – 11.

David Wilcock is described as “a professional lecturer, filmmaker and researcher of ancient civilizations, consciousness science, and new paradigms of matter and energy. David is also the subject and co-author of the bestseller, The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?, which explores the remarkable similarities between David and Edgar.” It is a fascinating talk with interesting slides, though some things sound a bit fantastic. Have a look at it.

A statue of a pine cone in the Vatican, symbol of the pineal gland, found in many ancient cultures, from the video of David Wilcock (c)

An acquaintance and esotericist from another country contacts me from time to time asking my opinion concerning one subject or the other. At the moment he is following a project to set up a curriculum for a study of esotericism encompassing a course of 12 years.

He just sent me the scheme of his future manual. I had a quick glance through it: Though it contains a great number of esoteric disciplines – including very exotic ones -, I saw at the first sight that the most important was missing – maybe because it is too “esoteric” for most esotericists: It is “service“, one corner of the triangle of all spiritual work: Meditation – Study – Service. As long as any spiritual disciple isn’t firmly grounded in service and an attitude to help his fellow men, all the esoteric lore is of no value, yes even dangerous: It keeps him away from his real purpose: becoming a helper of mankind and, maybe finally, a co-worker of the Great Ones, which inspired him.

You can easily get lost on the way in the many subjects of esotericism, but missing the essence.

Last Friday I got the notice from the Swiss Federal Office of Migration that I was granted Swiss citizenship. I had applied for it last September, when I read that Germany now allows double citizenship with members from EU countries and Switzerland. Since my wife is Swiss, I didn’t have to go through all the paraphernalia of the normal process.

Somehow this system of national states and their identities impregnating the way of thinking and feeling always remains something mysterious for me, and it was so already when during my studies I was going through political philosophy.

On the rational side I understand these mechanism of creating and protecting a national individuality, with its multiple regulation systems of in- and exclusion.

On the side of feeling I find it strange how borders circumscribe parts and parcels of the earth, defining mine, thine, ours, yours, on the micro and macro level. And then all this game of natives and foreigners, friends and foes, influencing others territories by way of manipulation (via economical, religious or power pressure).

Of course when passing a border you often sense that there is another flavour, another tone or way of interchanging. And this gets even much more accentuated with another language, another writing system …

On the plane of the soul you get away from all these definitions and limitations, like “I am a Swiss / A German / a European / American”, or “I am a teacher / a student”, “I am a husband / wife”, even “I am a man / a woman”. The soul knows no such delimitations, it is “I am”, or even “THAT” – “That I am” – existence expressing itself as consciousness, with a mind, wrapping up into a body.

And so all this cascade of localizations and limitations goes on. Keeping the limitless background of existence in your awareness through a meditative re-connection helps staying aloof and not getting stuck in some ideological imprisonment.

You might like to read the Lunar Messenger on “Free Will and Freedom“.

A path to the blue yonder

Whereas nature is very beautiful in our surroundings and breathes a wide and uplifting air, it seems that man is doing his best to create for himself cages to imprison the soul. On a nearby meadow shoe box-like gray blocks have been set up and are still being constructed, devouring the green:

They are sold with the euphemistic slogan “Living in the Orchard”, but the ambiance they radiate is like living in the suffocating gray-in-gray of materialistic life:

It is a high-standard settlement in a rich municipality near Berne, and the blocks are filled with shops, a bank, a large underground supermarket, old people’s homes and offices. The whole is very symbolic of the mental attitude in sway: The objective life is developing, but the subjective life is starving. The intellectual mental concepts keep on repeating themselves everywhere along the same lines:

Planning is a mental process, ruled by rules and regulative restrictions, restricting the free flow of ideas, which is in tune with dynamic, ever new original life. A life spreading comfort and well-being, beauty and cordiality. Thus the outcome of mentally crystallised planning is but repeating the same square-head patterns, the cube being the symbol of matter ruling over spirit. Ironically the name of the building company is “All real” – but which reality? – the outermost, concrete-tized.

The rhythms and forces of nature seem to be kept outside, and they, too, seem to be helpless in trying to reach man:

Snow-White and some dwarfs in a nearby garden are losing their colours, and people look at these beings like past superstitions, having themselves lost the inner view of subtle realities:

But although a cold wind was blowing yesterday, bringing snow instead of gentle spring breezes, there are fresh colours on the way:

And although the birds still are suffering from ice and a backlash of winter

you find everywhere already the forces of spring at work:

And there is not only a sunrise in nature, but you find also new forms of human life seeking expression.

So spring is in the air, an Aquarian breeze at Easter, lifting the souls up from crystallised stagnation. Even in mainstream society.

Photos from yesterday and this morning in our village

As per living in cages you might like to read the “Good Will in Action” on “Body and House“.

I today had a phone call with a French speaking person who said that we mentioned something about the Avatar of Synthesis on our website (see here, here or here). He then pointed out that since some time he is in contact with the Avatar of Synthesis and a channel of him, and that through this work Jupiter is just being transformed into a sun. He asked, if I were interested to know more about it. I answered, not really – the best would be that he follows the unfoldment of his inspiration and I’ll follow mine.

It’s a funny game of spiritual boasting, which wasn’t the first encounter of that kind. From time to time I come across people who like delving into lofty spheres, claiming to have a special mission. It seems that special missions give you the feeling of being someone special, a spiritual VIP. To me however, this seems to be like junk food – looking nice but not really nourishing the soul. It isn’t authentic, just another kind of glamour.

A golden ball in a nearby garden, like an easter egg. Photo from this afternoon’s walk