In the Aquarian Age everything is becoming lighter in weight – the material of houses, the fabrics of clothes, the bodies of people. The keynote of electronics is miniaturing things and getting them lighter. Here a news in this trend:
OmniVision has just launched the smallest camera of the world, just 2,1×2,3 mm thin. It is a camera sensor which a patient can swallow as part of a pill and which then allows doctors/surgeons to navigate to the desired location for a better diagnosis. Science fiction is becoming a reality.

Yesterday I was at a staff forum of my office (I’m working here and I like it). There were several presentations called “market places”, and I was among others at a presentation of two doctors of chiropractic, who spoke about the effects of workplace effects on your body and the importance of micropauses (this is not just what they distributed and showed, but gives you an idea).
I found it an important topic for me – at my office I’m working for hours at the desktop, and in my freetime as well… The idea of interrupting the work from time to time for a micropause, to do some special movements to relax the body and counteract tensions convinced me. This was not new for me, but in practice I’m doing very little pauses. Now I fixed the paper at my workplace at the wall just in front of my eyes – and will do it at home as well – hoping that this will help me to interrupt the work for a micropause here and then.

If you like to see humorous cartoons, have a look at Randy Glasbergens website. The cartoon from monday this week reflects well the “problem” of good-will activity, (see: cartoons from the past seven days) even though it plays in heaven…

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a person to whom I had send the book Spiritual Psychology. He wrote: “May I T U for the last book Sp.Psy …” I first was irritated: ITU? Of course I understood, it was not the first time I got such an e-mail. I know of the no-time-generation using abbreviations as some kind of a shorthand. Ad-language does: “4U”, “B2B”, … Washing away syllables in pronouciation goes into the same direction.
Of course I use in certain contextes abbrevisions, too. However, reducing basic elements of language to cryptic syllables and unclear sounds gives me the impression of a further deterioration of language. My spiritual teacher Dr. Kumar writes in “Mantrams. Their significance and practice“, “Language degenerates as man degenerates.” The degeneration of language is an expression of man loosing himself in the material, and when he re-ascends to spirit, he also develops a sensitive way of dealing with language.

Want to have a look into the cosmos? The NASA-site “Astronomy Picture of the Day” just shows today the moving moons of Saturn, a time-lapse movie created by the� Saturn-orbiting robotic Cassini spacecraft over a period of about 40 minutes.
More about the spiritual side of Saturn you find in the book “Saturn – The Path to Systematized Growth” by Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar.

Warren Buffett, US-American investor and the world’s second richest man who’s now worth $44 billion just announced in Fortune and on his website that he wants to give away 85% of his money to five foundations. The stocks of his Berkshire Hathaway fortune are worth over $40 billion. Most of it will go to the world’s largest philanthropic organisation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates and Buffet are close friends, and Bill, the richest man of the world, is also planning to give away 90 – 95 % of his wealth to the foundation (see our blog-entry). Gates is fascinated by the proposal of his friend and will make him the third trustee of the foundation.
Buffed, 75, said, he and his wife (who died in 2004) “agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society.” And: “Neither Susie – his wife – nor I ever thought we should pass huge amounts of money along to our children… I would argue that when your kids have all the advantages anyway, in terms of how they grow up and the opportunities they have for education, including what they learn at home – I would say it’s neither right nor rational to be flooding them with money.”
And about Bill and Melinda: “I’ve seen them give presentations about its programs, and I’m always amazed at the enthusiasm and passion and energy they’re pouring into their work. They’ve gone at it, you might say, with both head and heart. Bill reads many thousands of pages annually keeping up with medical advances and means of delivering help. Melinda, often with Bill along, travels the world looking at how well good intentions are being converted into good results. Life has dealt a terrible hand to literally billions of people around the world, and Bill and Melinda are bent on reducing that inequity to the extent they possibly can.”
These extraordinary examples show how persons with financial resources can use their money to initiate acts of good will, for the well-being of many. And even if our resources are small, we can use our influence to create changes for good.

In last Fridays’s issue of the NZZ (New Zurich Newspaper) there was an article about the computer technology of the ancient Greeks. It was reporting about a mechanism found in 1901 by sponge divers near the Greek island of Antikythera, thus called the Antikythera mechanism. It has puzzled and intrigued historians of science and technology since its discovery. Already in the 50th of last century a scientist put up the theory that the Antikythera mechanism was a device for calculating the motions of stars and planets, which would make the device the first known analog computer. It dates from around the 1st century B.C. and is the most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient world. Nothing as complex is known for the next thousand years. It is even possible that the mechanism is based on heliocentric principles, rather than the then-dominant geocentric view espoused by Aristotle and others.
Recent X- and gamma ray researches showed an astonishing precision of the device and subtle inscriptions. Latest discoveries are reported on the website of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. In November 06 there will be a conference in Athens to present the results.
The wisdom teachings tell that for long times there has been a connection between Greece and the East, and there were people having an outstanding knowledge of numbers and cosmology (see the blog-entry about the wisdom of Pythagoras). We always think we are at the pinnacle of knowledge, but we have to bow down to the heights of the gigants of the past.

Last Friday I was at the Annual Assembly of the Swiss Red Cross (SRC), in commemoration of the 140th anniversary of the SRC, hold in the town hall of the city of Berne. The subject of the assembly was the role of volunteer work.
After a talk of the Swiss federal minister of finance, Hans-Rudolf Merz about the indispensability of volunteer work in today’s society, there was an interesting presentation of futurist Georges T. Roos of ROOS Office for Cultural Innovation, a private futures studies institute in Lucerne and member of the World Future Society. He spoke about “Does Volunteer Work have a Future? – What will move people tomorrow”. He sees individualisation as the central trend, that everyone is looking to his own “salvation”, and there is no more a higher sense generally obliging. Central values are, everything has to be easy and convenient, with mobility in all aspects of life. At the same time many people want to make a difference and stand up for bettering the world – they want to do good deeds, because it gives you fun and experiences and you meet people.
Subjectively people have much less time for volunteer work, there is a competition with sport, entertainment, friends and family. However, there are new kinds of recognition. Volunteer work gives you experiences you cannot buy with money and enables you to have a growth of self-awareness. You find the presentation (in German) on kultinno.ch.

On a genuine spiritual path volunteer work for the benefit of others is of great importance, together with meditation and study of spiritual texts. Without serving others or life in general, you cannot progress. (Have a look at Good Will in Action on The Value of Service.)
From a spiritual point of view a major future trend is the development of group consciousness through service. It helps overcoming the excessive individualism and integrates you into a greater whole. Working together as a group creates a flow of energy uplifting and inspiring all.

The sun is shining bright over the fields here, but in the atmosphere one can sense already that the annual solstice climax has passed by and the sun has started its southern journey again. Yesterday was St. John’s Day, the Christian substitution for the old solsticial celebrations of midsummer. However, there is a deep sense in having St. John’s day at this date of the days starting to decrease: On the opposite side, at winter solstice, the news birth of light, of the saviour is celebrated, and St. John is called his forerunner.
The time reminds me of the St. John’s celebrations in which I took part as a member of a Steiner school about twenty years ago. After a big fire we used to walk with the elder pupils through the night to a lake and have a swim there in the early morning hours. This time of energy change in nature is very special, called the time of the crab’s sidewise movement in spiritual astrology, where at the beginning of Cancer the daytime here in the northern hemisphere is at its hight. A good time to be attentive of what is subtly preparing for the nexts months.

Queen Rania of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an outstanding goodwill worker and a fighter for the rights of women and children. Her website presents her as a very modern and open queen. Under the navigation captions “Children talk, Youth matters, Women empower, Community connect” you see a number of her social activities. 10 days ago she opened the the Global Women’s Action Network for Children Conference in the old city of Petra near the Dead Sea. In the eyes of many muslims the courageous air of the Jordan queen is too radical. She is fighting against child abuse and so-called murders of honour, where women who don’t correspond to the value ideas of their families are killed by a family member, and these are not punished by the courts.
At every possible occasion Queen Rania is helping children and women. She brought several teenagers to the conference to speak about their problems. She ended her talk at the conference quoting the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
You might like to read the article on Woman and Man. of the Lunar Messenger showing from a spiritual perspective the importance of women’s movements and the dangers of a neglect or oppression of woman leading to a terrible imbalance in society.