Yesterday at my office I was at a presentation of impressions from a journey to the north of Mali a colleague and a photographer had made last week. They had been accompanying a health care team of the Mali Red Cross – distributing mosquito nets to pregnant women – to shoot photos for a donation campaign. The journey – via Timbuktu and Goundam to small villages over bumpy roads – through the desert had been quite an adventure for the Europeans, and the report of my colleague gave a lively, colourful impression.

It was very impressive to see how the people there live in great poverty in a desert-like area, which had been full of lakes until beginning of the 70ies of last century. The Niger River dry, 40 degrees centigrade, burning sun, a sandstorm, nothing of the infrastructures which are so normal to us here, like electricity, water, telecommunication… not even vegetables, and for food just a bit of rice and millet. And the wells are running more and more dry.

In the group of listeners the head of a PR-agency who has designed the donation campaign asked: Why do you support people in an area where there is no future for them? Why not evacuate them to other areas? – The photographer explained that he also had reflected on it during the journey, but that you cannot give just simple answers. The people have arranged their lives in a way to cope the extreme difficulties, though many children die and the health of the adults is also often poor.

I was deeply moved by the impressions of the journey. Looking out of the window, it was raining, and it continued to do so the whole day and night and also today. The rivers in Switzerland are overflowing their banks, there are help appeals in the media, and this morning I shot some pictures of the flood water in the old town of Berne for a news article on relief efforts. It was cold, the sky heavily covered with grey clouds.

A friend from Minnesota wrote today that the farmers over there are praying for rain, and this for the third year. The climate is getting warmer, but the people don’t believe in global warming.

It’s such a range of simultaneous extremes.

The old town of Berne with high water of the river Aare

Some days ago I read in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about new directives the Chinese government just has released to “administer the reincarnations of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism”: The Buddhist monks have no longer the right to search for reincarnations by themselves. The Party decides who is a living Buddha. Ignoring the rules leads to punishments, and the reincarnation is illegal. So after their birth control politics the communist� rulers also have rebirth control mechanisms in their empire.

It’s such a silly thing, and wouldn’t it be another political power play to subordinate people and infringe free will, I would have laughed. The decision is a means to break the age-old reincarnation lines of insubordinate monasteries. Now 4 authorities have to agree, if a Buddha is a genuine incarnation, the monastery, the local government, the administration for religious affairs and the Chinese State Council. It is unclear if living Buddhas also have to register retrospectively. However, the newspaper reported, that not all living Buddhas are devout people. So-called reincarnations are working as businessmen and executive consultants in Chinese cities…

Maybe the whole rebirth control politics serves a good purpose in the end: The purely materialistic government might control social and religious structures, but not the reincarnation process of souls. Spirit will turn out to be stronger in the long run, even in our dark age, and the real reincarnations of highly-developed souls will find their ways to fulfil their purpose.

Our spiritual teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, once remarked, that in the Americas many native Americans who had been killed by the European colonists have come back in the bodies of white Americans and are now much involved in activities furthering a respect of nature and environment. Maybe a similar destiny happens to the souls of the suppressed Tibetan Buddhist exponents. Though old traditional forms will necessarily break this way, the essence will keep on living and enlivening the search of man along the eternal path.

Buddha-statue in Lhasa, photo of a friend

It’s now three weeks ago that my father passed. Everyday life has taken over again. There had been quite some talks with family and friends around the passing, and it had opened doors to some profound conversations. Even at my office a woman, with whom up to now I never had exchanged about anything private, spoke to me about the situation with her mother, who just had to go into an old people’s home and where she had to dissolve the house. Others spoke about their encounter with the death of loved ones and how it had affected their lives. Again others shared reflections about experiences of pain, of transformation of relations, of farewell situations.

It was not just a casual expression of sympathy, but the passing of my father stirred in them – and also in me – thoughts touching regions about which you normally don’t speak. It was like an opening of souls, and expression of a bond of a subtle connectedness. New qualities of relation were forming.

Complexity of relation – picture sent by a friend

Some days ago a person from another part of the world wrote to me and asked for a very effective mantram. It should help him to make his mind open, so that he can become more intelligent, get a better memory and can more quickly reflect and reason, since he is feeling a bit tired in his studies.

I explained him a bit about working with sound and the significance of mantrams, so that he might find a way. Many people think they can use mantrams to develop special skills or even powers. It is quite a delusion, leading you onto a deceptive path towards disappointment. Master EK gave a good explanation in one of his lectures, explaining the purpose of yoga (: spiritual practices):

“Don’t deceive yourself by believing that by practising yoga or spiritualism, you will get some benefits. The very benefit is the ease and happiness you experience. And the path itself is the goal. And if you believe that there is something beneficial out of it, better stop it, because you will be utterly disappointed after sometime. For example, some people begin to practise yoga for what they call ‘powers’. They are deceiving themselves, because God is not a fool to confer powers for certain practices… If people believe that their luck will increase with the practice of yoga, it is false, because the very idea of luck is foolish and everything depends upon how we do things and how we think and our motives in doing.”

Not a bridge to walk – picture of a Swedish friend

Friends of mine from Spain had been in Mongolia, for the second time, in search of places of power. Some days ago they sent me a powerpoint-presentation with pictures showing scenes with motives of the paintings of the famous Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), whom I admire since long. He had been on an expedition to the Himalayas, Tibet and Mongolia in the 20ies of last century and brought back a rich treasure of most beautiful paintings. They can be found in several famous museums, such as the Roerich Museum in New York.

Here are some of the photos of my friends (thank you, Rosa and Miquel!) alternating with pictures from Nicholas Roerich (Courtesy Roerich Museum), showing similar motives.

Arriving at Eeijkairkhan (the Goddess Mother), silhouette of the Sacred Mountain

The Song of Shambhala

Eeijkairkhan (the Goddess Mother), silhouette of the Sacred Mountain

Star of the Hero, Cave-Temple

Cave-temple

Ascension to the rainbow

Inside the Roerich-Museum, New York, April 2000

The “Song of Shambhala” at home in the bookshelf

Shambhala, the mystic place now on the etheric planes, is also called the “White Island”. You can read more about it in the extract of book presentation of “Wisdom Buds” by K. Parvathi Kumar. And you find some of Roerich’s photos as e-cards on the Good-Will website.

I just read an interview with Bruno S. Frey, a Swiss professor of economy and happiness researcher in the Migros consumer magazine. The essence: Important factors for happiness are the relations with family and friends, but also a job giving enough autonomy and recognition of one’s work by the superiors. To be happy is the result of a good life. And a good life consists in doing what seems to be meaningful for oneself.

Research has shown that this is the case when people do voluntary work and give money for good causes. However, running after happiness is of no use. If you try to do it, it slips away. A materialistic attitude makes you unhappy, idealists and optimists are generally happier people.

These findings are very much in tune with the wisdom teachings, saying that good living is a result of acts of good will. They give you satisfaction and at the same time you learn to become less selfish. You might like to read the Good Will in Action on the Value of Service (PDF) or the post on The Future of Volunteer Work.

Children in India

When looking back to the experiences of the last weeks, with the passing of my father and the changes going on in my family of origin, my wife and I were reflecting on what keeps people together and what makes them separate.

It seems that there is always a “third thing” or a “third force” holding together: At work, you collaborate with people to accomplish some job, or with clients, patients etc., who contact you because of some service. In a family you are together because of the relations in the family structure, and if the relation structure changes and there is no more common ground, the family falls apart. If there isn’t a third force, but only an emotional congruence, the relation won’t last. This might be the reason why many marriages fail.

“Birds of the same feather flock together” goes the saying, and this is true for religious people, bankers, disco-goers. People come to the yoga class of my wife not just because of her, but because of the yoga exercises. In our spiritual group people are attracted by the teachings and by the magnetism of the teacher. In my life, I have several times changed the the movement and teachings, and with it there has always been a change of the whole circle of acquaintances. So the relations weren’t on a person-to-person basis, as I had felt, but to a “third thing”, a common interest.

I met people complaining that others didn’t take real interest in them – was it because they didn’t take a real interest in the “third thing”? Some “third things” are of a fleeting character – you have an encounter just for a short time, maybe just once. Others are deep and long lasting. What “third thing” interests are there, going to the deepest core? Where you are meeting the inner centre, in yourself and in the others.

Watching a dawn together at Gemini Full Moon, Mount Rigi, Switzerland, May 99

For the funeral of my father about 150 people gathered in the church, where nearly 2 years ago the funeral ceremony for my mother had taken place. It was somehow familiar and at the same time strange to be among friends and relatives of the family which partly I hadn’t seen for many years and probably won’t see again. I felt outgrown of this world, a heavy feeling of past times, but nevertheless still related with me.

At the beginning of the mass, after an address of the priest, I made a short speech about the life and the guiding ideals of my father, focusing on the transformations which had taken place in his life. The words were meant to invoke the presence of the energies of light to pierce through the dense, heavy atmosphere prevailing at the funeral, and it was for me a very special experience.

The entire setting of the mass and the funeral was very traditional. After the coffin was lowered into the ground of the cemetery, many people came putting some earth and flowers on it and expressing their condolences to my sisters, brother and me. For many it seemed that my father was in the grave, though it was only the corpse. The ideas expressed about the “thereafter” by the clergyman or the people in their letters of condolence were so nebulous and vague as I had known from previous situations in the past. When will they come to realise that there is more to know and to experience about the immortality of the soul?

Later, when reflecting the day, it was like a tidal wave settling down, an energy field taking to another shape. Both parents having gone, the relations will change, giving rise to new constellations. What these new forms will be is still a seed sprouting in the future.

Reflections in a globe at the little pond in the family garden

It was only after the death of my father that I dared selling my coin collection which had been in my father’s safe for over 30 years. Selling it would have been a sacrilege to my father, and I only had sold three valuable coins about 12 years ago to help a friend, and my father hadn’t noticed it.

Though I knew that most of the coins were of not much value for collectors, though there were some old ones in the collection, I thought that a number of them – special editions of 5 and 10 Deutsche Mark – would be interesting to sell. We went to a coin dealer in the city of Münster. They told us that years ago it would have been worth selling them, but now they had no more value except the nominal DM-value which we could change at the Bundesbank to Euros. For the big folder with all the other coins they gave me 30 Euros, and at the building of the Bundesbank, in a high-level security room, the DM-coins melted to some Euro banknotes.

When we left, I felt happy and free: a tie that had bound me for a long time had fallen off, and the energy blocked in the coin collection had finally been released.
You might like to read the text on “Money and Good Will” from the Good Will in Action-series.

On driving through the City of Münster, Germany, we saw a red stop sign at a crossroad, and on the bottom of the road sign somebody had written in white letters: Voldemort – “Stop Voldemort”. We had to laugh: The world of Harry Potter was invading the outer Muggle world.

News about the publication in “Der Bund”.

The morning of the publication of the 7th and last volume “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, I had bought two copies, in order to avoid family conflicts. It was a great dive through the book, I was fascinated not only by the dense, brilliant story, but also by the deep occult knowledge interwoven and hidden: The voluntary “death” of Harry and the description of the out-of-body experiences, the offering of his life to save his friends and the community, his dealing with enemies and friends will impregnate the minds of the readers with deep spiritual truths of a preparation for the inward path. Whether the author, Joanne K. Rowling, did it consciously or whether the series of 7 volumes was received by unconscious impression permeating her imaginative creativity doesn’t matter in this. There is a huge impact on the minds world-wide.

In his “Book of Rituals” – written 1967, published 1990 – Master EK (E. Krishnamacharya) wrote: “For this purpose (: a slow and proper understanding of the nature of the mysteries by greater masses of people) some novels will be written by certain induced minds of a Master or a disciple himself directly. Readers of the most materialistic levels will be allured and attracted by the sense of mystery and wonder that surround such plots. They read these books only as imaginary stories, positively disbelieving the truth of the existence of such a line. The impressions that are made upon their mind will work through their subconscious nature and bring the recollection of the past associations of these souls (many of them are necessarily Atlanteans) and prepare the path either in this life or the next. Thus there is a conscious well planned scheme on the line of literature and fine arts.”