After a few hours at the computer – working for next month’s Lunar Messenger, on the Devas, the subtle intelligences, see the note about the booklet “Cooperation between the Human and Deva Kingdom” by. E. Krishnamacharya – we went for a short swim in a nearby river. The clouds were already dark, announcing an approaching thunderstorm, when my son and I jumped into the fast flowing waves – a wonderfull feeling. The air was full of leaves chased by the wind. Water is such a great purifyer, and swimming in fresh water gives you an increadibly feeling of energy.
When we came out, the first drops were already falling, and a few minutes later the full rain broke out. Many people took shelter at the buildings of the river bath. You virtually could feel the electricity of the subtle intelligences chasing in commotion through the sky. Lightnings flashing gave release to the tension, and the rain calmed it even more. An Australian neighbor invited us to bring us back home in his car. After a short sprint to the parking we were back into the dry.
Water, thunderstorm, freshness, energy, electricity in the air – we experience all these phenomena not as scientific processes, but as totalities of impressions. The totality hides the individual components, and hidden in the components described by science there are intelligences at work, which arrange the totalities of the different levels – thus you can experience the devas at work.

Football tickles national emotions, more than any other sport, sometimes even up to violence. The Red Cross however is known for the neutrality of their help. With a wink the German Red Cross made a poster for an ad-campaign on the occasion of the Football World Championship. It shows a sanitary man in the Dutch fan corner of a football stadium helping a Dutch fan, with the slogan “Für jeden im Einsatz” (Serving everybody).
The Dutch Red Cross retorted this campaign with a poster of their own, showing two sanitary men carrying a German football player from the field, with the slogan: “Het Rode Kruis helpt echt iedereen” (the Red Cross is helping really everybody)…
For the German Red Cross the Football World Championship is a great challenge, with hundreds of people in service. If you are interested in the spiritual value of service, you might read this.

Bill Gates, since 12 years the richest man of the world and co-founder of Microsoft, announced two days ago that from 2008 on he is planning to withdraw from day-to-tay business in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – an important step in his life.
Over years Bill Gates had a tough work schedule, as he recently described in an interview to Fortune.
Bill Gates is also the most generous philanthropist of the world, and his foundation has more than 29 billion dollars for their projects. He is also planning to give away 90 – 95 per cent of his total wealth to welfare projects before he dies.
This demonstrates that if we put money to a positive use, we can do much good and can also be active on a larger scale and on wider fields. Without the necessary means you cannot work in this measure.
Money needs to circulate. Like with breathing, you cannot just take in without giving out. If you use the money for good will, it is helping you to overcome egoistic tendencies and to step on on the path.

From time to time in my life I had come into contact with persons with psychic difficulties. For over 10 years I had been working with refugees and migrants, partly as head of a psycho-social counseling centre, where I saw the effects of flight, torture or disturbed social and family relations. Also on my spiritual path there had been encounters with persons whose inner balance was disturbed for a time, and over 20 years ago a friend of mine had committed suicide out of a state of confusion, mixed with spiritual concepts. And there was a recent encounter with someone who, through an imbalance in life was irritating a group. It is not easy handling such situations, where an entire system is touched, and the gradations from normalcy to borderline and medical situations are often not obvious.
Two weeks ago I had a talk about such problems with my spiritual teacher, Dr. Kumar, whom I had observed how he dealt with it in a very attentive way. He explained that often medical people also don’t know how to handle such cases, where often fear and irritation in a person is causing agitation, and where psycho-pharmaca seem to be the only way to “slow down”.
Furthering inner and outer silence for calming down the emotional waves is helpful, also homeopathy can be of use, however it has to be adapted to the individual situation. Especially the use of silver, related spiritually with the emotional world, can have a stabilising effect. Dr. Kumar also recommended dietary aspects such as using milk and yogurt, since milk, in an untreated form, has subtle smoothing effects not yet medically recognised. A rhythmical living as well as a loving, understanding attention from the people in the surrounding might be of help, stigmatising is not.

In yesterday’s issue of the Neue Züricher Zeitung (New Zurich Newspaper) there was an article about a management forum on “Leadership and Health”, which targeted at sensitising� executives to the consequences of the big social problem of work load and stress. The tenor was that it is not enough to do some jogging or relaxation exercises or to distribute fruits to the employees to promote health. This is just fighting the symptoms. A holistic approach includes developing an awareness of the unsatisfied needs of what is really good for the individual and the social system.
Many are suffering from not having a right to say, of missing possibilities of development and of fear of losing one’s job – much more than of the work load. Creating an awareness in the management is seen as a first step for health prevention. The 13th century theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas already said: “Health is less a state than an attitude and thrives with the zest for life.” You might also see in this context the booklet of Dr. Kumar on “Spirituality in Business and Management“.
For furthering the joie de vivre, the vitality, and at the same time staying balanced you have to be connected with the source of life force. Therefore a holistic approach to solving these problems of work life and helve absolutely needs to include the spiritual dimension.

Over the weekend we had participated in a seminar of our spiritual teacher Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar in Amettla, some 60 km south of Tarragona. He deepened several topics about the spiritual significance of numbers into which he had delved during the seminar in Samos about the wisdom teachings of Pythagoras 2 weeks ago. It was again fascinating to see the relations between numbers, rhythms and time cycles. The numbers 1 – 9 are not just a linear numerical sequence, but contain the seeds of the structures of the subjective and objective creation – seeds of wisdom to ponder upon.
About 200 group members mainly from Spain had gathered for the seminar. The sunday morning fire ritual on the beach was a special highlight. Before the start a fiery object (it probably wasn’t a meteorit because of the kind of direction) flew for some seconds silently and in high speed in a horizontal line over the ocean before disappearing again. The sun coming slowly up over the horizon, the waves’ rhythmic movement and the flames of the fire, together with the mantric songs, created an unforgettable ambience, which uplifted all those witnessing it with an open heart and mind.

Yesterday we went from Switzerland to Girona, Spain with two friends from Germany, transporting some packets of new publications of the World Teacher Trust to a seminar of our spiritual teacher in Spain near Taragona.
When crossing the borders between Switzerland and France, and then again between France and Spain, it was fascinating to experience the significant change of atmosphereal qualities.
Here in Girona we are staying overnight in the house of spiritual friends, a doctor and a family therapist, with whom we will go today to the seminar. It was a very warm welcome, and we had an inspiring exchange and meditations together. It was like coming to close family members. It is fascinating to see how the inner work is finding expression in different countries through different forms of good will work, carried through by the impulse of spirituality.

I just came across an article in The Cancer Blog of Chemotherapy.com about “Ancient art of yoga has true healing power”. It says that results from a pilot study show that women going through treatment for breast cancer feel better, sleep better, and have less fatigue when they practice yoga. A very interesting finding.

In today’s issue of the Swiss newspaper “Der Bund” there is an article on punishment as a win-win situation. In the canton Berne more and more criminal offenders are doing work serving the public good instead of being sentenced to prison. This helps the society to save a lot of money and has a motivating effect for the offenders.
There is a number of social institutions to which offenders can be sent, according to the need of the institutions. The offenders are doing unpaid work, which otherwise could not be done. If there are problems with the delinquents, they are sent to another place or to prison.
Some time ago I read that in California they are spending much more money for prisons than for education and that the prisons are overcrowded.
Here in Berne there have been in general very positive results with this initiative of putting criminals to welfare work, helping to save millions of Swiss francs and also helping the delinquents – a real future-oriented solution.

Last week a friend from Germany sent us a folder with two fairy tailes of the Brothers Grimm and thoughts from her and from a group work. It is fascinating to see how the genuine folk tales contain in a symbolic form teachings of eternal wisdom stirring the souls of the readers or listeners. Many modern scientists think the tales, often full of seemingly cruel adventures, are expressions of existential fear and need to be “purged” before reading them to children. But when you read them with a spiritual understanding, you see that they are telling about the path of the soul. The soul,� encaged in matter, through a long journey (of many lives) finds back to a union with its origin.
One of the tales I got was about a girl whose hands were cut off to avenge a curse of the devil on her father, who later got silver hands, then, because of her pure life, new hands and finally found union with her husband, the king. The hands represent our attachment to material life (the grip) and silver or moonlight the denser worlds of matter. The girl are we as a soul, who finally finds back to an eternal life with the spirit-king.
This tale deeply touched me, because it expresses the inner urge towards light which is a thread through my life.