I just got an invitation for an internal discussion group of the New-Jersey based Aquarian Age Community. It is a group working working on the base of the Ageless Wisdom Teachings and especially dedicated to support the work of the United Nations from a spiritual side. They conduct meditations in support of the United Nations and organise conferences on like topics.
In the New YorK building of the UN, there is a Room of Quiet, “devoted to peace and those who are giving their lives for peace”. In the middle of the room there is “a symbol of how, daily, the light of the skies gives life to the earth on which we stand, a symbol to many of us of how the light of the spirit gives life to matter.”
Inspired by this Room of Quiet, there is a Room of Silence (Raum der Stille”) in the Brandenburger Tor in the middle of Berlin, next to the Reichstag of the German Government, which we had visited some weeks ago. Silence in the core of all our activity, and it is good that people are reminded of this also at places were global politics are made.

My wife and I are doing regularly yoga asanas – me in the morning (now before blogging ;- )) and she in the evening. I like them very much, they soften the body in a smooth way. I’m just doing a short series, but feel the effect strongly. Professionnally and in the free time I am sitting a lot in front of the computer and so there is not much movement. For my wife they have also helped with several health problems.
Asanas are not sport, but an age-old subtle technique to make the body soft and to increase the energy flow, thus being an important prerequisite on the spiritual path. There are lots of methods, and many use them as a means by itself. We use them as a good preparation. Sport is often oriented to performance, achievement and competition. Yoga asanas however are for developing the body as a vehicle of the soul.
My wife is also giving yoga courses in a near-by church community chentre, one for women and a mixt group of youngsters and adults. She is doing it on a voluntary basis, for the joy of doing it and to to help the people.
Yesterday a member of the women’s group came to the other group with her 4 year old boy. He was bent on seeing what his mom was doing with yoga. Even at home he showed a great interest in these exercises. My wife told me that it was great to see how this little man very naturally participated with full attention in what the group was doing, practicing all the exercises with an astonishing flexibility of the body. The youngsters were much more stiff.
He was the group’s darling. What could be the result for healthy bodies, if here children were to learn the yoga asanas already from an early age!

Yesterday morning we had our little monthly English study circle after morning meditation. We are reading a booklet by Dr. Krishnamacharya and speak about it in English. It is an interesting text and the group members thus gain a better understanding of the language.
Later I had a correspondence with the Russian translator of books of the same author, and the correspondence again was of course English. The author’s mother tongue is Telugu, but he decided to write his works in English. Likewise I decided to do this weblog in English, though it is not my mother tongue. I often have correspondence with people of the Spanish speaking world, and since I don’t speak Spanish, we do it often in English. Here in Switzerland there are intense discussions going on about an earlier introduction of English into the school system, besides the other main national language, French or German. The last hundred years English has become the language of communication between many people in the world.
Dr. Krishnamacharya said that English was chosen by Spiritual Hierarchy as the language of the wisdom teachings, and no longer Sanskrit, to give access to the people. There was a deep inner meaning behind the outwardly aggressive colonialisation policy of the British Empire, laying the ground for this evolution. I don’t see it as a cultural colonisalisation through one language, but as a quality of time by which mankind is getting into a closer relation with each other. There are endeavours to create special top level domain language encodings on the web for non-Latin signs, like Arab, Japanese or Chinese. National languages, dialects and encodings will remain, but the need for a common means of communication is getting more and more a necessity of an interchanging world. In the subtle planes, before a word expresses in language, there is the first impulse sprouting forth, concretising as an idea and then clothing into a thought. In these three stages language as we know in the expressed form does not exist, though differenciation slowly comes in. It is only with the outer manifestation of the spoken word that there is this incredible “Babylon” of languages and cultural encodings gets predominent. Having a means of maintaining a unity of a language within this world of multifold differenciation is an invaluable means for the growing inter-connectedness of our world, until man again ascends to a non-verbal communication on the subtler planes of silence.

A friend from California sent me a link to the website about Akiane, a 12 year old child prodigy from Idaho, USA. She is a painter and a poet, having started at the age of 4 and having reached by now an astonishing quality of ripeness. The mass media have discovered her and even a book about her has been published.

What seems to me to be even more interesting is the deep spirituality expressing through her. Having been born by an atheist mother and a “worldly-minded” father, she had at 4, a life-changing spiritual transformation, converting the whole family to Christianity. She has been teaching herself drawing and painting and is learning mostly from her own keen observation and study. The inspiration for her art and literature comes from her visions, dreams, observations of people, nature and God. Her favorite topics are people and spiritual subjects. The quotes from her given on the website are very interesting and are an expression of eternal wisdom:
“I teach and they run away. I listen and they come. My strength is my silence.”
“I have been blessed by God. And if I’m blessed, there is one reason and one reason only, and that is to help others.”
“The meaning of the shared-self is the meaning of wisdom and love.”

Though on the site they speak of “a Christian artist”, the creative expression of the soul is something universal and not limited to one or any religion. The expressions of eternal wisdom come from the undercurrent of existence, expressing through different forms and at different times. A soul like that of Akiane is not just “dropping from heaven”, but has a long story of experiences, on which she is – unconsciously – tapping. What seems to us like an early blooming flower is an expression of a long time of work and ripening over a series of lives. It is like the electricity, which is not mysteriously being created at the wall outlet, but there is a long generation process behind.

A friend from Geneva forwarded me this nice story of an unknown author about gratefulness.

A Full Glass of Milk

“One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay for his hungry stomach, decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. On the way through school, he found he had only one thin dime left and he was very hungry. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water. The woman thought he looked hungry, so brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, “How much do I owe you?” “You don’t owe me anything,” she replied. “Mother has taught us, never to accept pay for a kindness.” He said…”Then I thank you from my heart.”
Year’s later that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation.
When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room. Dressed in his doctor’s gown he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to the case.
After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. The woman feared opening it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words…”Paid in full with one glass of milk.” Signed, Dr. Howard Kelly.
Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed: Thank You, God, that Your love has spread abroad through human hearts and hands.”

A friend from Munich send me a link to an inspiring sildes-movie by Kate Nowak: “May you be blessed“, if you like to see it. See also the text of it.

Yesterday morning I had a conversation with the collegue from the marketing section with whom I share the room in my office. I explained to her how I was evaluating the different issues of corporate blogging for our humanitarian NGO by screening the web, talking to different persons in charge, clearing technical questions, pondering over relevances… Levelling the ground for introducing blogging into the organisation has a lot of different issues involved.
She asked me if I were not sometimes getting confused and lost in the many influences. When at home she is surfing a while along topics of traveling, she feels like getting out of herself. I told her that only by keeping the connection with the inner through the regular meditation I stay in contact with my Self and thus remain in balance. It is like doing a defragmentation on a harddisk and bringing the different bits and bytes back to order.
During each day there is such a great shifting between worlds. Yesterday I was quickly at an Indian grocer’s shop buying ingredients for my wife, thus suddenly entering into the Eastern world of smells and impressions – fish, calamari, crustaceans, pastries, spices, perfumes. At home from noon on – clearing educational questions about the balance between computer and school for the children with my wife, e-mailing, studying, group meeting for the full moon meditation. Maintaining the inner connection is absolutely essential to experience the underlying unity and not to fall apart into many different identifications with the outer.

Today we are entering the full moon phase of Taurus full moon. Since ancient times this day is celebrated in the East, and also today with many groups in the West, as Vaisakh (or Wesak) Full moon. On this full moon day about 2500 years ago Gautama, the Buddha, was born, and also on Vaisakh full moon he gained enlightenment.
However, it is not just since these times that the Vaisakh festival is celebrated. The name of the festival related to one of the 27 constellations of the Eastern lunar zodiac, the Visakha constellation in Scorpio. The moon is in this constellation around Taurus full moon, when the sun is in Taurus, thus giving the name for the festival.
Like many groups we will be celebrating this date tonight with a full moon meditation. The nodal points of the monthly lunar cycle are of great importance to be able to gain more easily access to subtle planes of consciousness, especially the full moon and the new moon, as explained in the lecture by Dr. Ekkirala Krishnamacharya. For this full moon I have chosen as a topic of the “Lunar Messenger” “The Buddhic Plane“, hinting at another deep relation with the full moon of Taurus and the name of the Buddha. Some months a go a friend had send me a beautiful picture of a Buddha statue in Bhutan, which I used as the Picture of the Month and add it to the monthly newsletter.
Since four years I am chosing each month a picture related to the qualities of the zodiacal sign of the month. For this month the commentary says: “Golden-yellow is the color of the Buddhic plane, the supra-mental, the light of wisdom. Buddha is seen as the embodiment of wisdom, and statues that depict him are often golden. Contemplation upon this helps the observer to move beyond the boundaries of the mental and to move into the higher light.”

I yesterday read an article in the Swiss Coop consumer-magazine about the film “Our Daily Bread” of the Austrian producer Nikolaus Geyrhalter (pdf). It is a shaking, award-winning documentary film, without voice-over commentries, about food production in Europe. You can see pictures or trailers from the website. It is a ilm about why the food today is so cheap, whil in other fields the prices are rising. He shows how plants and animals are instrumentalised and integrated into a production process in a totally dehumanized form. While the hygiene in the enterprises is high and the production processes are very efficient and standardized, they are entirely inhuman, just oriented towards keeping the costs low.
They have filmed in about 20 companies in many countries of Europe, but don’t mention the names, since the processes are similar; many companies had refused to cooperate, while others were proud to show how they work. The film is not judging, but just showing the actual work situation, providing enough space for reflection and sensibilising for where our food is coming from.
Some time ago I had published an issue of Good Will in Action about “Food and Drink” to show the importance of a right dealing with food on the spiritual path, hinting at the dimension of the food production. I think it is of utmost importance to be conscious of what we are doing and which are the consequences thereof. Through our individual decisions which food we buy and how we consume we can contribute a bit for a change.

Yesterday a friend from Canada wrote via e-mail: “I enjoyed reading your Weblog. It goes on and on. Very nice daily reflections. For how long are you planning to do that? quite a commitment.”
I answered: “I have no idea how it will evolve, the idea to do it came in a split-second on March 30th, and I started the next day with the weblog. I think it will go on as long as there is the impulse and the ideas. Up to now every early morning before meditation I write one thought, which is fit to be shared with a public. There are so many things which go on, but better are kept back. Fine, that you enjoy reading it. It is a great joy writing. I am astonished myself how many situations pop-up to be seen in the light of the wisdom teachings.”