Tuesday afternoon we set out for a 5 hs ride to Rajahmundry at the banks of the Godavari River. At a pause I noticed the little talisman at the radiator grill of our bus (I had seen such decorations before) and I asked one of our Indian companions. He explained the symbolism of each of these elements and said that it helps clearing the energy on the road so that no negative energy comes in the way. When some diabolics look at the face of the black mask the energy of their looks get diverted and is thus neutralised… I thought, a practical cleaner – and we had a save journey 🙂

Wednesday early morning we had a morning meditation with our Indian friends. Here is a small Krishna statue on the podium with their altar, surrounded by holy tulsi plants.

On the top of their building there is a little shrine with a statue of Master CVV, which was to be decorated with a flower garland

The 6th descending moon phase over the little shrine

Garlanding the statue of Master CVV

In the meanwhile the rose colour of the early morning sun started piercing through the mist over the Godavari River with its magic light.

We went down to the river to have a bath, greeting the morning sun-rays chanting the Gayatri mantra.

A fantastic golden light painted the scenery with a soft glow.

After breakfast we set out for a 1 h bus ride. We took a smaller bus for the roads were too small for the bigger one. Soon after Rajahmundry we crossed a big dam constructed by the British over 100 years ago for regulation of the river and for irrigating the countryside. There is a very fertile area with many rice fields, banana and coconut plantatations and tree and flower nurseries. First we went to see an old temple of Jagan Mohini in Ryali. In the centre of the temple there was a statue of Lord Vishnu with Mohini, an aspect of the divine Mother, on his back.

A sculpture of Lord Narayana over the entrance

Then we made a short stop at a biological farm for a coconut drink. Afterwards we visited a huge tree and flower nursery of a group member of WTT Rajahmundry. They are exporting flowers all over India and abroad. It was very impressive to see all the many flowers. There were some lotus ponds. When I wanted to take a photo of some lotus flowers and approached one of the ponds, I stepped on a wet slippery ground and fell longside into the mud of the lotus pond. Luckily there was a water pump next to the pond and I could wash of the mud from my clothes, arms, legs and shoes. A soft lotus pond blessing….

Lotus love:

After lunch we went to the Godavari river for a beautiful boat ride

Our boat is approaching

The youngest of the group members stepping into the future

The WTT Centre of Rajahmundry where we spent the night

Around 5 pm our bus started for the night ride back to Visakhapatnam. A short night followed by an early morning fire ritual in the garden of Sri Kumar, again a magic ambiance.

Saturday evening we went to see the oldest homoeo dispensary of the WTT, which in the course of the last 30 years has developed to a multi-service centre organising homoeopathic help and training for thousands of people, not only in the city of Visakhapatnam but also at various rural areas. Besides homoeo-help they are organising feeding and distribution of clothes to the poor and meditation and ritualistic work in the upper floors of the centre. A number of doctors and certified homoeopaths takes care of running this substantial volunteer service activity.

Records of all the cases are kept in books in the centre

Sri Kumar explains the activities of the centre and presents to us the persons in charge.

Sunday morning we had another fire ritual in the garden of his house and later we went to the Planetary Healing Centre Harmony at the coast road north of Visakhapatnam. It has been constructed 18 years ago with the inspiration of Sri Kumar – and it is my favourite place here, a little green spiritual paradise in a beautiful surrounding. We sat around an old statue of Lord Maitreya under the Cashew trees and listened to the lecture of Sri Kumar

Kumari Garu

After the lecture we assembled inside the healing centre for a silent meditation while the sound of OM, which is continually played in the centre vibrated in the air.

The agate stone in the centre

After lunch we went to the beach – a fantastic long sandy beach without any other persons – and had a swim in the waves.

The Planetary Healing Centre

Afterwards we continued to Ramadri, a site where the WTT has developed an area with a free school for poor children of the surroundings, a number of small temples and a cow service station. The milk is distributed to the children and to poor people

The book of the cow service centre

The cows and view of the ocean

We enjoyed for a while the beautiful site overlooking the Bay of Bengal and then joined for an evening meditation, while the stars were coming out and the day changed for the night.

Before evening meditation in the little amphitheatre with view over the ocean

The seminar started last Wednesday, and it was the eve of Capricorn full moon. We are a group of 33 persons from 5 countries of the west – one being a young child – from Argentina, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. On the 14th we had a welcome reception in the garden of Sri Kumar and Kumari Garu, with a ceremony for blessing the children. There is a profound story behind this ceremony conducted on the eve of the lunar winter solstice which is celebrated each year around 14th January, and Sri Kumar explained the symbolism of it – going back to the incarnation of the Divine in the form of the Avatara of Vamana.

Wednesday evening we assembled again in the garden for full moon meditation and once more on Thursday morning for a beautiful fire ritual. These were days of very sublime energies. Enjoy the pictures of the meetings.

The children on a sofa in the garden. Flowers, chick-pea seeds and fruits of the season are being poured over their heads – blessings for a flowering life.

Kumari Garu welcoming the young visitor from Argentina

Young Manognya likes pouring flowers again and again over her head

The Krishna statue in the garden, with picture of the great Masters

Sri Kumar talking to some group members

Next evening, preparing for the evening meditation

A mystic ambiance

Early next morning during morning meditation

Ritual of decorating the statue of Lord Dattatreya

The fire ritual

An observer from the bird kingdom overlooking the scene

For the last  27 years, there had been a seminar in India for the Western members of the World Teacher Trust in the month of Capricorn. It is the month where the sun starts its northern coursing and it is a good time for re-directing the inner attention to the upward path. For me it’s now the 14th trip to participate in this intense time of diving deep into wisdom concepts and experiencing the group living. The meetings start with participating in a 3 day celebration, the Guru Pujas, in honour of the great Masters of eternal wisdom. This year I only arrived while the celebration had already started, one week ago.
Like in the last years, I would like to share with you some impressions from the tour. Here is the first part, about the Guru Pujas.

When riding through the tunnel at Zurich Airport to the departure dock it’s preparing for a jump into another world.

I “hopped” to India via Dubai and Hyderabad. At the arrival at Visakhapatnam airport I took a taxi to Simhachalam. The driver asked me.”You go to the Guru Pujas?” and I replied, yes. Then he told me that he is living in this little village, and he even knew the place of the new location – it changed this year because more space was needed to accomodate all the 3.500-4.000 participants.

On my arrival the fire ritual of the first day was already approaching the end. Friends had reserved me a seat at the table of the technic support where I could plug-in my laptop and even later got a stick for mobile internet connection.

Sri Kumar and Kumari-Garu conduction the fire ritual, spreading beautiful elevating vibrations throughout the surroundings.

The huge tent-hall was very nicely decorated, and I enjoyed the colourful sarees of the ladies and the white dress of the men – such a contrast to the black and grey of the coolness in Switzerland.

However, I was quite tired from the journey – though it went quite fast, except a 2.5 hs delay due to fog in Vizag – and spent the first and also part of the second day between sleep and phases of wakefulness, somehow feeling like in a soft dream.

In the evening: Lighting of butter-lamps in front of the podium

A beautiful light decoration along the street to the assembly hall

Sunday morning the western group members were meditating with Sri Kumar on the podium

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Preparing lunch – many such pots were filled with vegetables

The women arranged in long rows for celebrating the Lalitha Puja in honour of the Divine Mother

Jayadev translating from Telugu to English for the online transmission of the Guru Puja

Ravi Shankar conducting the Water RItual in honour of the Cosmic 1st Logos

A butter lamp on the podium

The book stand

Fusion of East and West – an Indian and a German violonist playing in the nearby palm forest, while a farmer is listening

On the backside of the hall a Ganesha statue

Everything once created gets old with the time and needs to be readjusted to new requirements… Within 3 years after the launch of the website www.worldteachertrust.org in 2005, the first thoughts came to redo the site but there was neither time nor capacity. In 2010 I tried to set up a team to work on a relaunch but it didn’t start to move.

In late summer 2012, I asked a friend from Munich, a software consultant and a spiritual astrologer, if he would like to help redoing the WTT website. He answered, “I must think it over.” A few days later he said, “Yes, I will.” So the technical head for the project was found.

We started planning and discussing. Very quickly he set up a first mockup. And over the next months, he devoted much time to program and migrate the content. Slowly, the site structure and the English content grew. In June 2013 I could present the “work in progress” to the WTT Board of Advisors and to Sri Kumar during a seminar in Spain. It was warmly welcomed.

Around that time, an Indian friend, an engineer living in the States, asked me if I knew something where he could be of help. I answered, “Yes, I know.” So he became the central project assistant.

We now had to set up a team of content managers for the different languages and to further develop the site. Group members from different parts of the world volunteered. We developed a training structure and did lot of online training and team coaching. After two months we realised that the team was too small and we needed more instruments for quality control. So the team was more than doubled. Again training sessions and coaching. We finally were a 15 person team. Luckily, I had lost my job at the beginning of last year, for the amount of work and steering activities grew significantly. It was a great joy. We all felt the spiritual impetus behind.

We did two consultations to key persons of the WTT to include their feedbacks. Mid-December Sri Kumar gave his ok to launch the site. But when we considered the site to be ready, some more feedback and requests for additions came. It was good we had some time for the final “polishing”. It is now going live on January 12, at the Guru Puja celebration in India.

The entire site has been realised by volunteer activities, and no money was spent. For members, the website contains an Intranet section with seminar transcripts, sound material and more. So have a look at the site, if you like.

A nice way of creating attention in the public are flashmob performances. I blogged about the Ode to Joy in Sabadell, Spain, and for the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Here is a “shopera” performance in a London grocery store, where one afternoon five secret opera singers disguised as casual shoppers and store staff presented the Italian classic Funiculì, Funiculà in the food aisles. Enjoy this mixture of culture and marketing.

Photo (c) from the video

Beginning of December, the windows of a fashion store on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse attracted the attention of the passers-by: Between the perfect display dummies, you could see figures with scoliosis or brittle bone disease modelling the latest fashions. One with shortened limbs; the other with a malformed spine.

The campaign has been devised for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities by Pro Infirmis, an organisation for the disabled. Entitled “Because who is perfect? Get closer.”, it war designed to provoke reflection on the acceptance of people with disabilities. Director Alain Gsponer has captured the campaign as a short film. An impressive sensitization for the inclusion of people with disabilities. And a great response – up to now the video generated over 9.3 million views.

Picture from the video (c) Pro Infirmis

A Canadian friend sent me the link to a touching video about “Touching Strangers“:

“Since 2007, photographer Richard Renaldi has worked on a series of photographs for which he asks complete strangers to physically interact while posing together for a portrait. Working on the street with a large format 8-by-10 view camera, Renaldi encounters his subjects in towns and cities all over the United States.

Renaldi’s objective was to introduce an unpredictable variable into a traditional photographic formula, and to create spontaneous and fleeting relationships between complete strangers. The portraits are extremely difficult to make, involving complex negotiations with the participants that push them past comfort levels, into a physical intimacy normally reserved for loved ones or friends. Touching Strangers creates intimate and ephemeral relationships that exist only for the moment of the photograph. The images are beautiful and strange, crossing out of the zones of safe physical intimacy with strangers and into deep emotional landscapes never photographed before.

In Spring 2014, Aperture Foundation will publish Touching Strangers as a photobook, including new photographs from Renaldi’s shoots this summer in Albuquerque, Chicago, New York City, and Southern California.” An interview with Richard Renaldi. Here is another video about his project. You find more about Renaldi’s work on his website or on his blog.

Pics from the video “Touching Strangers”, (c) Richard Renaldi

I came across a beautiful infographics by John Nelson about the annual pulse of vegetation and land ice – an impressive visualisation of the heartbeat of our Mother Earth. Click on this link and then on the picture to see the pulse of the earth moving (it might take a moment to load).

To create this pulsating image John took 12 NASA images showing Earth at each of the twelve months: “This animation shows an oddly mesmerizing dance of snow and life, from the vantage of the North Pole.”

There is also a version showing different parts of the globe in one image.

The “pulsating earth” reminded me of a beautiful Greenpeace-video about “Mother Earth – She’s alive…“.

Breathing Earth – polar view (c) John Nelson)

Breathing Earth – multiple views (c) John Nelson)

John has created a number of interesting infographics. A very impressive one is the graphics about “Earthquakes since 1898“: “With a heaping pile of data from NCEDC.org, every recorded earthquake with a magnitude of 4 or higher was spattered onto this map.” So you see the places where you stand a bigger chance that the ground under your feed is shaking…

“Earthquakes since 1898” (c) John Nelson)

With winter solstice, the esoteric Christmas festival, we just entered into the month of Capricorn, where the northern journey of the sun starts again.

For several weeks, I meditated on the symbolism of Capricorn but no complete picture came up. There was just an idea but I thought that the complex symbolism cannot be depicted in an appealing way. However, the impulse for the painting continued. And during the work on the picture it slowly manifested. Its symbolism is not easy to be understood by a Westerner. In short: The earth is lifted up from matter to spirit.

At the bottom you see the head of Varaha, the incarnation of Lord Vishnu as the White Boar. The Puranic lore describes how he lifts up the earth from out of the depth into manifestation, and from matter to spirit. Varaha is particularly worshipped in Capricorn.

This month is the dawn of the solar year and also the dawn of the great time cycle of our creation called a Manvantara. The earth is depicted as floating on the surface of the waters of space; it is supported by Varaha and surrounded by a huge etheric lotus flower, the symbol of unfoldment. Behind, there is a great sunrise, and from beyond the sun a dragon rising. On its back you see Varuna, depicted as a five years old boy with four arms. As they move through space the trident in Varunas hands, representing Neptune, is creating lines of force, which are the guiding lines for the Aquarian age. The white dragon, the vehicle of Varuna, is called Makara in the Vedic scriptures, meaning Capricorn.

4 September 2013, A 5, pencils and photo work