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

Here are two nice short videos – one about an encounter with Dr. Masaru Emoto’s water molecule experiments (the power of positive thinking) on a subway station, the other a commercial from BBC One about “What a Wonderful World” – impressive pics of the beauty of nature. Enjoy.

Pic from the video about Masaru Emoto’s water molecule experiments (c)

Pic from the BBC One What a Wonderful World (c)

I tonight received the link to a most touching documentary, The Animal Communicator. It is about psychic animal communication and portrays the work of Anna Breytenbach, a South African-based professional animal communicator. She has dedicated her life to what she calls interspecies communication. “She sends detailed messages to animals through pictures and thoughts. She then receives messages of remarkable clarity back from the animals. Anna can feel the scars hidden under a monkeys fur, she can understand the detailed story that is causing a birds trauma, she transforms a deadly snarling leopard into a relaxed content cat – the whole animal kingdom comes alive in a way never seen before – wild birds land on her shoulders, fish gather around her when she swims, and wild unfamiliar baboons lie on her body as if she is one of their own” (from the presentation of the documantary on the site of the film festival Culture Unplugged, the video has been removed from there, it is now available on YouTube).

Tracing animals is a very ancient tradition used by indigenous people for hunting. The movie presents interview with animal tracers describing their work.

You can find more about Anna’s work on her website Animalspirit.org. There she also gives links to other The movie cannot be framed here in the blog, so just follow the link. The film (52 min) is very well done and changes the understanding not only of animals but of our relation to creation. See the film until the end – the last story with the black leopard is very impressive.

There is also a short YouTube presentation of Anna, see below. Or here.

Anna Breytenbach, the Animal Communicator, pic from the documentary (c)

A traumatised wild black leopard who totally changed his behaviour after communicating with Anna, pic from the documentary (c)

Anna Breytenbach introducing her work.

Whenever you have tried to silence your mind you will have realised that it keeps on moving. Only when you move on to the next higher plane of pure energy, the thoughts slowly vanish. The same, when you try to fight any disturbing outer influences such as noise you will notice that your fight is in vain – or better that the disturbance is inside and not coming from outside.

In his computer animated short “The Fly“, Hanjin Song, a graduate from a school of art and design in Florida gave an excellent illustration of this principle of meditation: A samurai is seeking inner peace by trying to rid himself of the distraction by a fly. However, he discovers that the flies multiply and seem to be coming at him harder and faster. Only when he starts accepting the disturbance ends and he really turns inward. Well done!

The fly on the cheek of the samurai – picture (c) from the short.