Yesterday afternoon I accompanied my wife and some other ladies on a shopping tour in the centre of Visakhapatnam. They wanted to buy some punjabis – ladies’ dresses. We took two motor rickshaws and started with our adventure.

We started in the biggest shopping mall – and we were not the only persons there: many Indian ladies wanted to get a new dress for the coming Pongal (New Year) festivities. Tissues in bright colours all over, mostly decorated with exquisite floral motives. How poor are the motives you find in a normal Swiss shop…

The full shops – and children playing hide-and-seek in between the clothes racks.

However, the sizes of the average Indian ladies aren’t the same than of European ones’… And so in spite of a lot of trying on, the result in the first shop was meagre. One of our ladies therefore preferred to buy a tissue and get a tailor do the job.The others continued with me to the next store, and then another one and another… Finally we found some dresses for all. My head reeled, and when we returned for evening meditation, it took only a few minutes that I fell asleep.

Our arrival at the WTT retreat centre in Visakhapatnam, India, happened to be on the day of Capricorn new moon – or, as it is counted in India, Sagittarius new moon. We were invited to join a water ritual at the World Teacher Temple: In the course of the ceremony water was poured over some lingams -egg-shaped stones symbolising the manifestation of divine will out of the space waters or cosmic ether -accompanied by rhythmic singing of mantrams. Later the lingams were decorated with flowers and with some cream of chalk. It was a very elevating and soul-stirring ambiance to experience the vibrations of the ritual on the veranda under a tree top, the night sky above. Sometimes a few persons from the paediatric hospital next door looked through the windows – a peaceful and totally normal scene hard to imagine in a European setting.

Decorated lingam at the end of the water ritual

After the ceremony was over, some delicious rice was distributed as a “Prasad”. Then we left with some Indian friends to the compound of Mithila East, where we participated in a New Moon meditation. At Mithila East there is a free school of the WTT for fishermen’s children plus a free homoeopathic dispensary and a vocational training centre.

The brother of our spiritual teacher explained to us the meditation structure: Visualising Mount Kailash, the spiritual centre located in Tibet, which is said to be the dwelling of Lord Shiva, the embodiment of divine will, with Lake Manasasarovar in the back, representing the quiet mind, keeping on looking at Mount Kailash and receiving the energy of the assembled Great Ones and distributing it to the surrounding, especially to people in need. The profound silence of the meditation elevated all to the sublimes spheres of the no-moon time. After the meditation three beautiful panorama photo posters of Mount Kailash were given to group members, and I received one for our group.

Tired, but filled with serene peace we returned back to the centre.

View of Mount Kailash, photo of a friend, summer 2005

It seems that the announced blogging pause isn’t that long, since in the retreat centre of the WTT where we are staying for the next time there is now a wireless access.

Sunday morning our trip to India started with a train ride to Zurich airport, where at the terminal already the stewardesses of Emirates Airlines with their typical head-dresses gave us a little oriental taste, though most of them probably weren’t Arabs…

Much more Arab, however, was the ambiance at Dubai Airport, with all the artificial palm trees, decorations and the dresses of the passengers.

But it was just a short stopover to the next destinations, Chennai (and in between we enjoyed looking some of the many films in the plane, for which I normally don’t take time…).

At Chennai Airport things had changed a lot since I was there 2 years ago: the hall of the international terminal had been redone – all in shining marble and white. The transport chains for the luggage were also new – though it seemed that the construction wasn’t that perfect: Since the luggage came a bit to fast down a slide, a person was sitting there controlling that the suitcases go on in the right way – a new job created?

Very new were the planes of the new Kingfisher Airlines, with a top service, much better than what I was used to at the national airline, though a bit we missed the typical “Indian” charme: Western music came out of the loudspeakers and here the stewardesses were dressed exactly like their colleagues in Europe – though in a bit spicy red.

Again a 1.5 hours jump and finally we landed in Visakhapatnam.

Murthy, the good spirit of the retreat centre, was already waiting there to pick us up with a Toyota fourwheeler, and now we had really arrived in India, with a the smells, the traffic rush, the sounding of horns and the many colours engulfing us from all sides.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft will have his good-bye at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2008 in Las Vegas, where he will give the keynote speech on 6th of January 08. He is going to leave his leading role at Microsoft in the next months only to devote his time entirely to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. The foundation’s goal is to “ to help reduce inequities in the United States and around the world.” It is devoted to global development programs, especially health programs.

Gates said that his keynote at the CES will be his last one: “They can invite me in the future, but I’m not sure if they really want it, for I would talk about contagious diseases and not more about excellent software.” (translated from a German quote in the Heise-Newsticker) – a really great change towards good will work.

Computers are a very good tool for goodwill work.

Yesterday an express parcel arrived from Venezuela. I was surprised, but then remembered: Friends of mine, a couple from Caracas had announced a week ago they would like to send me something. I had met them 2.5 years ago at the marriage of the son of our spiritual teacher in India, and it was a hearty meeting. Though they don’t speak English and I no Spanish, we had some contact from time to time and they like reading our monthly newsletter, El Mensajero Lunar.

The content of the parcel was a beautiful little work of ceramic art inspired by Latin-Indian tradition: A serpent-bird, made out of an involving and evolving line. I was deeply touched by this gift, for it is a profound occult symbolism for the descent of spirit into matter and of the ascent back to the spirit. The Indian symbol of the Feathered Serpent is depicting the same truth and is regarded as a symbol of an initiate. You might like to read here more about the “Mystery of the Serpent” from our Lunar Messengers. The serpent descending the tree in paradise and tempting man with the sensual experience (apple) is half part of the story. As long as we live in matter, we are regarded as creeping snakes. But when we start upon the path of return, we move up again and the serpent becomes a winged serpent, just as you see in the symbol of the Caduceus, the rod of Asclepius which is still used by our modern doctors as a symbol of healing (though the wings are unfortunately missing – a sign of the state of modern medical art?). “The tongues of the serpent become the wings of the eagle” it says in Spiritual Psychology meditations of Dr. E. Krishnamacharya, thus being the symbol of the unfolding Kundalini energy.

I put the picture of the serpent-bird on the wall at the entrance of our apartment, so that it might be a constant inspiration.

The serpent-bird of involving and evolving currents of energy

Asclepius, the great healer-initiate. Photo: Epidaurus, May 2005

A few days ago I got a Christmas-letter with an end-of-the-year review of an old class-mate. He has done an extraordinary career, being since some years the head of Munich airport (Germany’s best airport manager 2007). In our youth we had done some bicycle tours through Germany – to Frankfort, Hamburg and Munich – and in later years he had been in responsible positions at the respective airports. A strange preview of destiny. In spite of his management career he remained somehow very normal, authentic and humorous.

I haven’t seen him the last 11 years, I have rarely been at the annual class meetings, since youth I have felt strangely not at home in this world we had shared in your youth. While a number of my class-mates had done quite a professional career and are well established in different niches of mainstream society (doctors, university professors, lawyers, consultants…), my focus had always more been on exploring the inner realms – though not neglecting having a sound footing in a bread-giving profession which I like. I had felt somehow speechless in mainstream social contexts and their ways of associating – concerts, holiday tours, parties, arts, and the like.

Over the last years I increasingly broke the silence about the inner journey – which also reflected in outer journeys, like regular tours to India for seminars with my spiritual teacher. I noticed that by now an inner ground had grown on which I can express myself much more freely and explain about inner processes and give an understanding. To this had greatly contributed the work with the monthly newsletters about the wisdom teachings, which found an expression in the public talks on Meditation – Experiment and Experience given during the last months.

And so when I replied to the mail of my old friend, I wrote to him much more about what had been going on on my spiritual path than I would have done some years ago. In his letter he had mentioned a famous German sculptor, whom he had visited and who will make a sculpture for Munich airport. The sculptor told him about 2500 kinds of steel, having different qualities. I told my friend that very similarly you develop a sensorium for subtle dimensions, when you work with it over the years, a sensibility which is not possible to convey to someone else who hasn’t developed the related inner instruments.

It is fascinating to observe how these inner tools – called anahkaranas in the East – develop over the years. It is nothing spectacular, just a way of dealing in a clear way with situations, a deeper way of perceiving. It is just the same way a scientist or an artist develops his skills over the years – only that the field of investigation are the inner realms. For those who don’t know them, they remain an unknown continent.

Blue landscape with Bernese Alps. Some paths lead into far away worlds. It says that Eskimos have 20 different expressions for snow – a subtle differentiation coming from a more refined perception.

I yesterday had the chance of seeing the draft of a website of another country’s group of the spiritual movement with which we are closely connected. It made me think of how different people express their spiritual stances. Whereas I feel more sober and, unlike in earlier years, prefer clear, unemotional and down-to-earth presentations, others have a more flowery or romantic attitude and also prefer for web-design a more baroque depiction (“web-baroque”). I remember times in my life where I myself was attracted to more devotional expressions, but these have faded away and given rise to what I experience as a stronger stringency or consistency.

One of the new year’s greetings I received yesterday was from India, showing 3 photos of white statues covered with flowers from a ritual. I try to keep the stance of an observer to what, in the critical part of my mind, goes into the category of kitsch or overladen imaginations. But I know that judging closes the doors of perception. I have participated in rituals which on the outside seemed to be thus pure devotional emotions, but where for the inner eye there was a strong spiritual energy present magnetizing the whole atmosphere.

How to give an expression to beauty? How to express most sublime energies? Much certainly depends on your own cultural background and / or your projections. If you see just the surface, you easily get lost in your own superficiality.

Angel silently meditating in a shop window

Yesterday brought a number of e-mails from all over the world – new year greetings in several languages, with lots of good wishes – may they come true… For me this turning from December 31st to January 1st is not much more than a step from one day to the other, marking a day fixed by social conventions of some part of the earth, accidentally located 10 days after winter solstice – a much more appropriate day for a start of a new cycle.

Next week we will be in India, and in about two weeks’ time there will be the Pongal celebration – the new year according to the local traditions between January 12 and 15, marking the beginning of Uttarayana, the sun‘s movement northward for a six-month period. For years I had been working with refugees, and I have several times celebrated the Tết festival, the Vietnamese new year according to the luni-solar calendar, in February. My Iranian colleague of that time used to celebrate with us the Nowruz festival, the traditional Iranian new year holiday celebrated in Iran and several countries of Central Asia coming for Zoroastrian times. It is celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox (start of spring in northern hemisphere), which usually occurs on the March 21st. Though it isn’t an Islamic festival, it has been adopted as such in a number of countries.

For me this is the most appropriate beginning of a new year, marking one prominent starting point of the annual zodiacal cycle, where the sun enters the sign of Aries. Its invigorating energies are most appropriate for launching a new year. Thus the 12 signs of the zodiac are also a more appropriate rhythm than counting the months as normally done. But maybe the double-headed Janus, who gave his name to our January, is quite typical for our times, showing not only two faces and being often irritated by the many perspectives.

Dawn of January 1st, 2008 – what do the augurs say for the coming times?

The last weeks my eldest son (17) has quite increased his online gaming activity – especially since he shifted to World of Warcraft. I had the feeling that he “closed up” to the outer and wondered where this might go. It reminded my of my “wild years” in the early 70ies (of course not in a digital world) and thought, “Is this a return of the times?”

After having met him twice around 3 o’clock a.m. when I woke up in-between (and he had started before 3 p.m., now during holidays), my wife and I discussed what to do. Is a gaming addiction getting hold of him? Is it a state of pupation during adolescence? Is anything else wrong with him?

Next day my wife had a talk with him where they explored the gaming situation. He was quite open to enter into the reflection. She showed him that about 50% of his energy potential is being invested in gaming, 5-10% in other hobbies and the remaining 40% in school and a little help at home (nearing the per mill region…). Luckily he has enough energy and intelligence to get along with the situation without being devoured …

He said that gaming fascinates him most and that other things are more boring to him. She showed him the Rider tarot card of the Ace of Cups and told him, it seems he only reacts on other things with pressure and doesn’t find anymore access to his inner source. So he isn’t getting into a flow with the energy from within. The flow isn’t a
He understood quite well and answered that normally he likes doing things with the hands, he likes even doing dish-washing or helping to hang-up the laundry or especially his work at the scouts. The thing with the dish-washing and the laundry was new to us – my wife always had the feeling that she has to break through a wall to get him do anything. Though the fascination of gaming continues to be strong, we felt a relief that one day or the other also this gaming craze might come to an end…

I just got the following story from a Canadian friend:

One evening, an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside all of us. One wolf is EVIL… It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is GOOD…it is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked the grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” and the old Cherokee answered: “The one you feed.”

Not just wolves: 2 painted dogs in front of a farmhouse