During my morning walks I come along a construction site. Over the last months, I observed how two old houses were demolished, then the foundation pit excavated, walls coming up. First, I just observed; later, I started pondering on what was happening.

Many people are cooperating, material is arranged in a certain way. Slowly a house takes form. Or is part of it a garage? Why are things done in this way? I did not know. But it was obvious that all this was done with a purpose – there was a plan behind.

Later, a picture was hung up on the fence of how the house should look like, with information about the enterprises involved. And still later, there were panels with information about sale contacts. I didn’t want to buy an apartment, I just was an uninvolved observer – or was I not? Observing the whole process gave rise to thoughts about what observing this process did with me.

I started pondering again on what is the plan, the plan of my life, the bigger plan. What is the purpose? Or is there no purpose? Obviously, there is. But then what do I recognise and how do the details of my life, of the bigger life, fit into the purpose? Are the activities in tune with the plan? How am I planning and how am I supervising the progress of construction, in my life, in the activities involved? Where am I craftsman, collaborator? Where am I architect? Am I an executor and what is the direction of executing, what I am doing? What do I perceive of a bigger plan and how do my elaborations fit into it? Personality plans, plans without personal perspective, or with a bigger or lesser…

Like with the house construction I am observing things develop without my knowing the bigger purpose, but certain patterns give hints to understand the bigger plan. I remarked how I have been doing plans which ended up in “ruins of goodwill”. Or were they not ruins but stepping-stones for further working out? There is a masonic story that all bricks are needed for the construction of the temple…

I pondered on how I do my plan of the year – by noting everything in a calendar with ephemerides (positions of planets) at the beginning of a year, to mark things which need attention, and things which rhythmically repeat, like solstice and equinox meetings, journeys intended, ongoing meetings, important constellations. And then, in the course of the year, it is worked out.

It takes time to prepare the year but this helps to be in tune with many details, to notice them in advance. There is communication planning, keeping contact with people by contacting them at their birthdays, a part of networking activities. I noticed that many details get elaborated when you repeat and revise. And this way, subtle aspects of the plan reveal which were unknown or unnoticed before. And especially the monitoring and developing of relationships, team building, transforming conflicts into steps of learning.

There is a planning of the day, with what are the tiny activities which first one might not realise as important but which turn out to be so. The cornerstones of the day, like the cornerstones of the building. And thus, the construction of the days, the weeks, the months, the years slowly take shape, a shape which might be useful for the bigger plan, into which my activities might increasingly fit.

Such planning helps to be in tune with what I perceive as the purpose of my life, of life.

In Spiritual Astrology, the solar year is called the Day of the Gods. In Aries, we have noon and in Libra midnight; in Capricorn there is dawn and in Cancer dusk. When the spiritualist has completed his journey of tracing the path from Libra to Aries, the lower pole is absorbed into the higher pole. Man is reunited with his higher pole, the God centre. He later enters into the soul of the Sun and finally attains the centre of the spiritual Sun. He then sits in the lotus above the head centre, the jewel of the seventh lotus.

In the upper part of the picture you see the cross of the year with the vertical line of Aries and Libra and the horizontal line of Capricorn and Cancer, designed with the help of an old astronomical illustration of the movement of the Sun around the Earth. It is dovetailed into the arch of a colonnade symbolizing the stages of unfolding consciousness.

The figure of the meditator was formed by the fusion of two Buddha statues. Above his head is depicted the jewel in the lotus which creates the pathway to the zodiacal wheel and to the Sun. In the upper right corner, you can see the constellation Libra.

See more pictures on the site with my paintings. If you want to print the image, you can download the file in medium and high resolution format.
The different zodiacal signs are clustered in groups – you can see here all my Libra paintings.

A friend sent me the link to a new video of Cristóbal Vila: Infinite Patterns (here on YouTube). Cristobal is a graphic designer, illustrator and art director in Zaragoza, Spain. His website Etereaestudios consists mainly of a gallery showing the outstanding work done by Cristóbal Vila within the field of 3D and digital imaging. I already had done a blogpost about some of his video works in February 2011. See here links to his work.

On his website, he writes about Infinite Patterns – Connecting geometry, nature and architecture:

“This is a new personal project that seeks to establish connections between various fields that interest me deeply: geometry, and how it appears linked to nature, on the one hand, and to art and architecture, on the other; raising relations between all of them. Somehow it would mean the fusion of the interests of two of my previous works: Nature by Numbers and Ars Qubica.”

Have also a look at another of his works, “Lux Aeterna” (Eternal Light) – a journey of light, from distant galaxies to small drops of water. Fascinating!

The video Infinite Patterns cannot be seen on other websites, please click on this link to see it on YouTube.

A friend sent me this well-done and urgent video of children from around the world addressing the adults about their destroying the planet through greed and a call for the Global Climate Strike 20 – 27 September.
(I could not find out from where it comes, I didn’t find it on YouTube or elsewhere, so I upload it here without giving due credits.)

The divine essence is described as being veiled by many envelopes. So it is not so easy for us to perceive it or even realize it. Furthermore, our personal / social / cultural conveniences influence and colour our attitudes, likings and dislikings. And the way how people express their relation to the divine is most varied.

I had to think about my own “coloured glasses” when a few days ago I saw pictures and a video from a ceremony in Pithapuram, India, probably of the celebration for the 700th anniversary of Sripada Srivallabha (see the text at the end of this blogpost, from my communication of the event). I noticed that I have to be careful to see the essence behind the outer pomp.

The words Sri Kumar had spoken after our first visit to Pithapuram in Jaunary 2015 came to my mind: “I hope you have enjoyed the visit to Peetha Puram called Pithapuram. It is a typical center where the light is hidden. As we say, the key note of India is ‘I hide the light’. Pithapuram is one of the most important spiritual centers that we have in India, but it continues to hide the light. It is so humble that unless you get insight, you don’t get the profundity of light. But in due course it unfolds from within. “

My contact with Sripada was in October 2014, through his biography. It was an intense inner experience followed by a long and profound work with the book in silence – translation and editing. It had a deep transforming impact and it is an ongoing experience. I found a similar impact of highest light at certain places where the veil seems to be thinner than elsewhere. You might call it spiritually vibrant places. It is very similar with certain books that also have a strong unveiling impact.

The communication: 2 September 2019: Ganesh Chaturdhi, 700th anniversary of Sripada Srivallabha

From time to time, Lord Dattatreya, the Cosmic Principle of the Teacher, incarnates in a human body to enable the humans to relate to him and get uplifted.

700 years ago, Lord Dattatreya took birth as Sripada Srivallabha. Sripada was born at sunrise on a day of Ganesh Chaturdhi in the year 1320 AD. Ganesh Chaturdhi is a festival in honour of Lord Ganesha celebrated on fourth ascending moon phase in Virgo.
Next Monday, 2 September, is Ganesh Chaturdhi, and thus, according to Indian counting, it is the 700th anniversary of this first incarnation of Dattatreya in the present dark age.

You find here a brief outline of the birth of Sripada (PDF). The text is taken from the WTT website about Lord Dattatreya and his incarnations:
based on the the biography “Sripada Srivallabha Charitamrutam” and on a transcription of the 2016 seminar of Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar on Lord Dattatreya / Sripada. The biography was recently published in English by Kulapati.de, see here how to order / download the book.

In the Eastern tradition, Krishna’s birthday is celebrated during the 8th descending moon phase of Leo, this being today.

I have written a number of blogposts and done various paintings about Krishna. Here is the story of a picture called “The Magic Flute of Krishna” realised seven years ago.

I used a picture of a Krishna statue in my room and did some transformations.

For the background I used a painting of Karl Friedrich Schinkel done for a stage design for Mozart’s opera Magic Flute (1815).

I fused it with a picture I had taken from a magazine 45 years ago – an extract of the Isenheim Altarpiece (1515), Colmar, by the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald showing the emanation of angels from God.

Then I integrated the image of a peacock (bottom left), Krishna’s bird. I put the statue to dark blue; so the image emerged in violet – the right magical colour for Krishna with a “magic flute”.

In “Music of the Soul” and “Man Sacrifice“, Master EK gives the following birth dates according to Eastern Scriptures:
1. Lord Krishna was born in the month of July, 3228 B. C. midnight at Zero hours between the nineteenth and the twentieth.
2. He dropped His physical body on the eighteenth of February, 3102 B.C.
Thus, his birth chart looks like this:

Happy Krishna’s Birthday!

An Indian friend sent me a touching WhatsApp video which I also found on YouTube. The speaker, Radhanath Swami, is an American ex-hippie, a monk of the “International Society for Krishna Consciousness” (Hare Krishna movement) and today a spiritual leader who has done a lot of work in India for the very poor (read the interesting bio-details on Wikipedia).

It is an inspiring talk about Sindhutai Sakpal, an Indian social worker and social activist who has devoted her entire life to orphans. Both, Radhanath and Sinduthai, have made their way out of “nothing” to become great servers.

The video is an extract of a longer lecture at Cambridge University about “Influence without Affluence“.

From the background of space, there are periodic emanations of creation. They are seen as the radiations of the World Mother coming down through seven planes and in seven colours. Therefore, the Mother is symbolically depicted with a rainbow around her head. The Secret Doctrine speaks of sequences of time periods with a periodicity of seven like the biblical seven days of creation. There are units of seven planetary incarnations called a planetary chain and seven great cycles of humanity called the root races.

To illustrate the World Mother, I transformed a picture of Mary into the blue colour of the background. She is surrounded by a rainbow and seven globes of the planetary chain of our Earth. The globe at the bottom symbolises the physical manifestation of the fourth globe.

Radiant orbs around the Earth indicate the different stages of matter. The chain of seven smaller orbs above the Earth stands for the descent and ascent through the seven root races; the chain carries the glyph of Virgo. At the upper right corner, you can see the outline of the constellation.

See more pictures on the site with my paintings. If you want to print the image, you can download the file in medium and high resolution format.
The different zodiacal signs are clustered in groups – you can see here all my Virgo paintings.

Yesterday, a friend from Germany rang me up and enthusiastically told me about Ecosia, a free search engine that uses its profits to plant trees. Their business model: “You search the web with Ecosia. Search ads generate income for Ecosia. Ecosia uses this income to plant trees.”

I first was a bit sceptical – it sounded interesting but what is behind and how does it perform?

I looked up in Wikipedia: “Ecosia is an Internet search engine based in Berlin, Germany, that plants trees by donating 80% or more of its surplus income to non-profit organizations that focus on reforestation and conservationism. Ecosia considers itself a social business, is CO₂-negative, claims to support full financial transparency, protects the privacy of its users, and is certified by B-Lab as a benefit corporation. The website maintains a running total of the number of trees planted. According to their website, as of 14 August 2019, the search engine had been responsible for the planting of more than 64 million trees.”

I wondered how they can manage to present a search engine powerful enough in the competition with the big data octopus Google, which has gone far away from their earlier motto “do no harm”. But they have a strong partner- the search results for Ecosia are provided by Microsoft Bing, the second largest search engine in the US, after Google, enhanced by the company’s own algorithms. By the way, when you search on Ecosia “xxx #w”, it directly gives you the related Wikipedia article.

Other questions of mine were answered in their FAQ section: Ecosia’s servers run on 100% renewable energy, and every search request removes 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere (also Bing is carbon neutral). They don’t sell the user data to advertisers, have no third party trackers and anonymize all searches within one week. They even publish their monthly financial reports, so you see exactly where the income from your searches goes.

So, I have now changed to Ecosia in my browers and bookmarked it. If you are using Android devices, you might have difficulties of setting Ecosia from 2020 on, as Wikipedia informs:

“As of 21 August 2019, Search Engine Land reported that Ecosia will not participate in the “search-choice” auction to appear on Android devices led by Google. This means that in 2020 European Android phone users will not have the option to set Ecosia as a default search engine. Christian Kroll explained the boycott decision saying: “We’re deeply disappointed that Google has decided to exploit its dominant market position in this way. Instead of giving wide and fair access, Google have chosen to give discrimination a different form and make everyone else but themselves pay, which isn’t something we can accept.” Applications to participate in the “search-choice” auction are due in mind-September.” (2019)

About hornets, spammers and subtle attacks…

When the summer was rising I noticed an increased activity of “flight operations” in front of my balcony windows: Big insects arrived with some speed, landed on the roller shutter and seemed to do an inspection there.

They were too big for wasps – hornets! They had invaded the roller shutter box and disappeared through some holes. I googled, found out that they were less aggressive than wasps – which had visited us on the other balcony in the past years – and that they were protected animals.

Fine, I thought – but each time I tried to air the room they managed to come inside and were vagabonding around. In the morning and evening I could easily guide them to the toilet by switching on the lamps there, opening the window and closing the door – gone. During the day it took more time to get them out again.

It was getting hot – something had to be done. One by one I stuffed the chinks along the roller shutter with plastic bags – they could get in through tiny holes. When they noticed my activities, they increased their efforts. They could not really remove the plastic though they tried to gnaw it away. However, they managed to dig a little hole into the wall.

A group of hornets stayed together in one corner while the others brought food – a bigger hornet – the queen was sitting in the centre. I didn’t dare to go too close with my camera.

I observed it for about two weeks and tried to deter them with clove oil – no effect. When some days it was raining, there seemed to be less hornets – and I found dead ones on the balcony. Then – three hornets, two, sometimes just one, the lonely queen. Sometimes I thought they were gone again but then several hornets flew an attack against the window, clashing against the glass. But window and door were closed.

Then about a week ago finally they had disappeared – though not totally. I sometimes still see them flying around but they must have found another save haven. I pondered on the meaning of this experience… They reminded me of my vagabonding thoughts in a turbulent meditation – how to keep the windows closed? Wakefulness, discrimination, “non-refoulement”…

Two weeks ago, there was another kind of attack:

My provider informed me that my “spam@” e-mail had been hacked; lots of e-mails had been sent from the account so that the provider had to shut it. At the same time I was flooded by return e-mails blocked by other providers. I quickly changed the password – my provider told me that after a few days the flood might go down again.

It did not but increased: The “spammer friends” used my e-mail address without sending from my account to distribute their e-mails where lonely ladies were longing for lusty lovers… Each day 1-2 thousand return mails from other providers – from east, west, north, south, in varous languages ….

My provider installed some filters on my server but it only had a small effect for two-three days, then again over thousand return mails popped in. My provider told me that the only thing I could do is to put filters in my webmail. And so I defined a number of filters deleting the return mails. I suppose that the mail flood abusing my e-mail address is still going high but there is again silence in the spam inbox.
And again, I pondered on the meaning of the experience – shut out any unwanted “over-activity” of outer impulses trying to drag us away from ourselves.

A third kind of experience:

A few days ago, the daughter of a friend skyped me and explained about some strange experiences in her neighbourhood – I don’t go into details but she described how she received subtle attacks draining her energy. I rate her as an alert and quite down-to-earth person not prone to fantasies. She knew already a number of things of how to protect herself from attacks but wanted to know more about it. (I had blogged already about protection from energy vampirism before, see also here.) We spoke about mantrams and exercises like the double pyramid to insulate oneself of destructive intrusions.

Like with the other attacks, of hornets or spam mails, you need to keep your protective shields strong and your thoughts pure. You find interesting hints in the books of Agni Yoga, esp. “Supermundane“:

“People protect themselves from poisonous gases by wearing gas masks. But they should provide themselves with one more mask — the protective mask of pure thought — for only thought can shield one from the poisonous breath. People should admit that there is such poison, and remember that thought has the power to resist the most harmful vibrations. ” (Supermundane 291)

“You may also ask how to counter unwelcome visitors — only through the valor of the spirit, not permitting them to contact your essence. Urusvati knows how these unwelcome guests have recoiled; it was not even necessary to drive them away, for they could not penetrate the protective net. Such natural protection is always the best, but for this, training of the spirit is required. Depression is the most gloomy magnet, and irritation also entices these ugly guests.” (Supermundane 430)

P.S.: A friend from Miami wrote me as a feedback about “Attack and Defence”:
“I also have been reflecting, sadly, because the opening of schools in Miami Dade has had the emphasis in surviving attacks. I understand that preparedness is important, but it is sad anyways.”
Indeed, a sad thing – training children in schools to survive shooting violence a horrible consequence of the craze for weapons…