A week of traveling and at the end a seminar of silence with my spiritual teacher K. P. Kumar at the Yoga Vidya centre in Bad Meinberg, Germany, kept me away from blogging. The seminar with about 130 participants over the last weekend was a short but intense experience of looking inside and getting into contact with more subtle planes of one’s self. Observing the rhythm of breath over a longer period of time helps you switching away from the continuous flow of impressions and thoughts and opens up doors to the inner worlds.

Yesterday early morning when I just stood up around 4.40 am, my youngest son (14) stood radiating in the hall and told me he had just finished programming the four language version of the website Paracelsus – Health and Healing. He had been working on it the last weeks, and since we are leaving today for some days holidays, he wanted to get it finished – and it was, after this night’s sprint. It was the first bigger project for my son, who had acquired quite a lot of web-skills over the last two years. Last night we did some final “polishing”, and now it is ready for launch. (You might read also the blogpost on Paracelsus’ Birthplace.)

It has been a long story getting the site ready, and several friends had helped with it. The Paracelsus magazine for which the site has been made gives interesting insights about new an old knowledge about medicine and healing art in the east and west. Look here if you like to see a sample issue of the magazine.

Every day, since millions of years, sun beams are falling on our earth and giving light and life to all beings here. What would happen if this energy fell down in a more concentrated form?

An ad-campaign of Solon, a Berlin-based enterprise dedicated to the development of photovoltaic technology for the use of solar power, shows in a spectacular blockbuster-like 2 min film what would happen if instead of sun-rays millions of batteries were falling on earth. Funny to see.�

We too are “solar energy cells” having fallen on earth. As souls we are rays from the one light – and by raising up again we overcome the hard “battery state” and re-become “lights of the One light”.� �

�

A friend sent me the link to the website of the Global Ethic Foundation, initiated some 16 years ago by Professor Hans Küng’s book “Global Responsibility” (1990), which was first published in English in 1991. “This book developed programmatically the idea that the religions of the world can make a contribution to the peace of humankind only if they reflect on those elements of an ethic which they already have in common: on a fundamental consensus on binding values, irrevocable standards and personal attitudes.”

The ideals sound well, as also do those of the Parliament of World’s Religions (see also Wikipedia): “Embracing Difference, Transforming the World”, or the World Religion Forum, which had met in Kazakhstan on Sept. 13th, 06. Hopefully these initiative contribute to overcome the fanatism all over the world in the name of God and religion.

After some months I yesterday looked again into the admin of the E-Card-system on the good-will website and found over 12000 mails sent over the last 3 months – mainly spam mails praising sex, drugs and replica watches. Dirty mails with dirtiest links. I quickly tried to block the system, for every day they were dispatching via my system their stinking messages, but this wasn’t enough. Since 4 years I hadn’t installed an update of the system, and this was urgent now.

Peter Sundstrom, the kind owner of Ginini technologies (Ginini is an aboriginal word meaning sleeping woman, the name of a mountain range “down under” in Australia) and programmer of Postcard Direct (a good multi-language e-card system, which I have installed) quickly gave me a reply what to do.

Nevertheless it took me some hours until everything was in the right forms again, for there had been several changes in the system. Now the e-cards are running again (and I have re-installed the dropdown with a music-selection) – and most important, a look into the logfiles on the server this morning showed that the dirty messages were no longer being sent from my server.

It reminds me of the wakefulness needed on the spiritual path. When you try to progress without having “fixed” your system of living and of motives, egoistic tendencies start flourishing in you and gushing their stinking waters into you and your surroundings.

Yesterday I installed the new Google Earth 4 Beta and was astonished about the accuracy of details one can see from the cosmos. You could even see the shadow of the small bushes in our little garden. Soon you even might even see the “Flowers on the Wayside” from space…

Luckily as far as missile targeting is concerned 😉 the name of our village, Muri, was about 1 kilometer in the wrong direction, but this is also already a great increase, since some times ago it was still about 5 kilometers in another direction, where a different village is located.

The Elon University, USA, together with Pew Internet have asked about 742 technology thinkers and analysts to give their opinions about the future of the internet in the year 2020. The site “Imagining the Internet – A History and Forecast” invites people to add their forecasts or to read others’ forecasts. The opinions of the specialists are to be found in a study, which shows the range of hopes and fears about control over technology and being controlled by manipulators, about addiction to virtual realities, where people might lose themselves or about world-wide access to information or about widening gaps and greater social fragmentation and cyber-violence.

There is a sentence in the study of the 20th century visionary and architect R. Buckminster Fuller saying that “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” And Alan Kay commented on this by adding: “The only way you can predict the future is to build it.”

This sentence is very true also from the spiritual standpoint. With every act we shape our destiny – as individuals as well as with society. And this holds true for the internet as well: We decide whether we use it for activities and purposes of good will, constructing better human relations, or by using the interconnection the web offers to expand egotism, despotism and misuse of money, sex and power.

Today I came across a spectacular photo on the ESA-website showing the transit of the International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle Atlantis in front of the Sun on 17 September 2006, taken by amateur photographer Thierry Legault. It is taken from Mamers, in Normandy (FR).

If you click on the picture on the ESA-Website, you can see a larger version of the image.

On 8th of September, professor Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of the blue, geen and white LED (Light emitting diode), got the Millenium Technology Prize 2006, the world’s largest prize for technical inventions (1 million Euros), which have a favourable impact on the quality of life and wellbeing.

Professor Nakamura has invented a new revolutionary light source, of which he says: “Using LEDs for lighting could halve the amount of electricity consumed for this purpose.” This is of particular interest for developing countries. The LEDs can also be used for water processing in the Third World or for purifying the air or proving the presence of biological weapons. White LEDs are also used for handy displays and blue, green and red LEDs in TV-liquid crystal screens. From next year on white LEDs will be used for car headlights and for the lighting of houses. And there are more applications on the way.
The Millenium Technology Prize is awarded every second year by a Finnish foundation for life improving innovations and as a support for humane technological development. The first prize was presented to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, in 2004.

Improving the quality of life through innovative technology is really an expression of good will, for the advancement of humanity.

Tuesday I had the visit of an assistant of the Institute of Religious Studies of the University of Berne, who is working on a handbook of religions and spiritual movements in the Canton Berne. His goal is to give a complete overview of the religious situation existing in the canton, describint the socio-graphic data and the main contents of the groups.

We had an interesting exchange, and he wrote an article about our Circle of Good Will, which he sent me for proof-reading. He said that he came into contact with aout 160 groups and movements. An interesting project showing the multitude of ways in search of the One.