A friend sent me the link to a nice video of Sri Ganapathi Sachchidananda Swamiji feeding the birds of his birds’ park Shuka Vana in his ashram in Mysore. I had a short visit to his beautiful ashram last January.The music is from his creation “Birds’ Zodiac”, and is about the sign of Leo (Simha). Enjoy.

The last weeks had been full of inspiring activities, and I enjoyed my time of reorientation, being free from professional obligations. It was a time of high tide and I didn’t find time for blogging. Over three weekends I was at meetings with my spiritual teacher, Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar, at seminars in Sant Feliu, Spain, and in Bonn, and last Sunday at a meeting of the Swiss group members in Hergiswil at the home of a friend.

Taking pictures of the Mediterranean sea in Sant Feliu

Reflection of the group during the group photo at the seminar in Bonn

Chatting with the grand-children, Hergiswil

In Hergiswil  we had a morning question and answers session for 3 hours, and my fingers nearly got hot while typing fast my notes 🙂 I’d like to share with you some of the notes from the introduction of Sri Kumar on individual consciousness and group consciousness. Of course there might be mistakes from my part, and in spite of the translation pauses I couldn’t get all the sentences. I  shortened the text a bit and did minor editorial adaptations of the spoken words:

“This is a gathering to be together, we as individual consciousness to be as group consciousness, to commune with the mind. The mind is a facility to know; it also has a higher faculty, to synthesise, to commune, to experience expanded consciousness.

When we live our individual life, unconsciously we build around us and we are the centre of our activity. Each one as he or she lives it becomes an activity around him or her and he / she becomes the centre. When two persons live together they find a common centre between them. Only then it is possible for two persons to live together. We can’t live in our own centre and live together. That is how we find from the centre within ourselves to a common centre. When three meet we all try to meet in those areas where we agree and be common. When there is something in agreement and in common, communication can happen.
Communication is communication of light, because every communication is through thought, and thought is fire. So there would be an exchange of fire and a communion of fire. There would be an expansion of the field of activity when two persons meet, because each works for the other, and when there are more than two there is still further expansion of consciousness.

This Sunday is different for all of us. We have travelled from our house in the morning to be here. It is not a routine activity as we do on a Sunday morning. Why? When we think of meeting, each one of us offers some of his activity to be together with the others. What we normally do, from that we have conceded in favour to meet here, to meet the human consciousness. Instead of living for oneself it is living together in consciousness. All have come out of our routine self-centred activity. We have come out of it to be in an activity where the centre is not any-more within oneself; it is in all of us together. We create a centre between the 15 of us through a common activity for a while. When we do that there is a group centre that forms. From being self-centred to group-centred there is a release of energy; from that which is self-circumscribed to the unwinding to the centre, from the self-circumscription. This unwinding of consciousness is already a release.

For days we live within ourselves. To go in such a living where we live for others, this kind of living in a group once in a week or in a month causes a movement which is contrary to the movement we conduct during the week. A work that we do for ourselves is self-winding, self-centring. Once in a while we unwind this movement of consciousness. This contrary movement of consciousness enables us to unfold our consciousness.

A plant – when it gives birth to a flower it is a different activity for the plant. It grows and grows for itself, but suddenly, after a point, there it gives birth to the blossom of a flower. Such an unfoldment is a relation to the surrounding. The natural fragrance hidden in the plant is given out to the surrounding.

Meeting in groups enables individual consciousness to grow and unfold, and eventually through such an unfoldment it causes fragrance to the surroundings. The fragrance is through the acts of cooperation that we express in such a group activity.

Each one of us has cooperated to be like this before. Those who are at home here have prepared something and those who have come have prepared early to come here. In that process the centre is shifting from them to a common centre. There may be many social groups that may also do a common activity on Sunday – cultural, social, political groups or clubs. But the difference is, when we try to group for wisdom, to live in wisdom, it makes a total difference. For the social, cultural and political groups, the thought plane is mental and intellectual. In a group that deliberates upon wisdom it is not only mental and intellectual, but also buddhic, meaning supra-mental, where there is a possibility for communion in consciousness.

When there is such a communion in consciousness every person sees a different release from oneself. And that enables them to re-join again at another group activity. A group activity should necessarily be an effort to rise beyond mind into that plane where we can experience a little unknown, something which is unknown that far. From known to unknown. That unknown is unlimited. From the limited thought activity to something that is unlimited, the consciousness opens to different possibilities.

Therefore there is a prayer or a meditation and also a talk and dialogue, not only a monologue by which we try to know something relating to us as humans. To know that part of us which is not yet totally know. It is not to dwell in the known part. To dwell in the known part is to dwell in one’s own. We try to live in the unknown, so that the unknown opens the known consciousness into the unknown. This effort is important. What we know is one thing; the very effort to open to the unknown helps us to help to know something more about us than what we know already…

In the world there are so many unknown things. There are so many unknown things in one’s own being. Be inquisitive to know. We know many things about ourselves. I only mentioned three, there are so many others. There are 7 planetary principles, and the 12 solar qualities in us, the 5 elements in us, there are cosmic intelligences in us, like cosmic fire, cosmic air, everything that is in the cosmos is in man. That is why it is said that man is a micro-unit. Each one of us can find this within oneself and concurrently within others.

Those who have known themselves gave certain guidelines. It is them whom we call the Masters of Wisdom or the Teachers of Wisdom. They experimented within themselves and found most of the things in common. What one found the others confirmed it. After thousands of experiments with themselves and having collaborated with their findings they gave out what it is in man, what is man constituted of. They found guidelines to know the inside story related to us. Engaging in such a field of unknown knowledge relating to man, our awareness, our consciousness is exposed to some new dimensions of wisdom.

That enables, and it relates to each one of us without exception. The agenda is common to all. Therefore there would be a communion of consciousness to know together. To know together is an age-old concept. It is a most ancient concept to know together. Because in every adventure togetherness is essential. An adventure by a team is helpful; every member is helpful for each other. Knowing oneself is the biggest of the adventures. To be together, to do it is given as a central agreement. In that context group formation and group study and group meditation has come to be. Group-sharing, sharing of food also forms part of the activity. That is what is contemplated even today in this group life. It so happened that I am here and I thought that we meet and relate and try to know. That is why we are here. So we now have some good dialogue…”

Sri Kumar at the group meeting

Today a Canadian friend sent me the link to a very impressive NASA-video / Goddard Space Flight Center, of the Astronomy Pictures of the Day. It is about a coronal hot plasma rain on the sun. The description says:

“Does it rain on the Sun? Yes, although what falls is not water but extremely hot plasma. An example occurred in mid-July 2012 after an eruption on the Sun that produced both a Coronal Mass Ejection and a moderate solar flare. What was more unusual, however, was what happened next. Plasma in the nearby solar corona was imaged cooling and falling back, a phenomenon known as coronal rain. Because they are electrically charged, electrons, protons, and ions in the rain were gracefully channelled along existing magnetic loops near the Sun’s surface, making the scene appear as a surreal three-dimensional sourceless waterfall. The resulting surprisingly-serene spectacle is shown in ultraviolet light and highlights matter glowing at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. Each second in the above time lapse video takes about 6 minutes in real time, so that the entire coronal rain sequence lasted about 10 hours.”

Update, 2 July 2013: Besides beautiful images from the cosmos, there seem to be major energy shifts on many of the planets of our solar system, not only on earth. But on earth there are as well a number of recent changes. Have a look at this interesting video by “SuspiciousObserver”, thanks to my Canadian friend.

A screen-print from the video

At summer solstice time the new website for my paintings goes online. It contains all the images and, in German, the poems I have published so far. It is a great moment and a threshold for me for which I have been waiting for a long time. The realisation of the site is a gift of my friend Murat Cevik, for which I’m very grateful. May the impulse it carries bring inspiration to the visitors.

Cancer is the sign of the return of the soul into a physical body and thus it is related to the process of reincarnation. The Moon is also the symbol of the generative life which gives birth to forms. I tried to give expression to this idea.

In the upper part of the image you see the Moon and behind it the glow of the Sun. Two angelic figures, solar angels, observe the descent of a soul into the embryo in the womb of the mother. You see the embryo head downwards behind the descending soul. Another name for the soul, the I AM, is the Solar Angel. It is the eternal part in man which in the cycle of evolution goes through series of incarnations. The body is also called the Lunar Angel; it serves as a vehicle for the incarnation of the Solar Angel. For the left angel I chose an extract from a painting of Franz Dvorak, and for the one on the right side an extract from a painting of Edward Robert Hughes; a drawing of William Hunter for the embryo in the uterus. For the illustration of the descending solar angel, I took an image of Ilmatar, the virgin spirit of the air, by Robert Wilhelm Ekman.

At a seminar in January 2012 Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar spoke about the symbolism of the descent of the soul:
“The monad is the soli-lunar angel. There is the baby descending into the womb. The lunar angel develops all the aspects of the form and the solar angel descends. In solar there is lunar. Our sun is the lunar aspect of the cosmic sun, our sun is male-female. That is why it prepares the body in the womb for seven months. When it is preparing the body it prepares the form through the lunar aspect, and then the solar angel enters into the lunar aspect of the solar angel. It is by itself male-female. The cosmic sun even is male-female. That is how the work is. Preparation of the form and joining. We prepare the house and when it is ready we enter into the building.”

You can find this painting, also with a print version, on the Good-Will website. Or on the new website ludgerphilips.org.

28 February 2013, A 5, pencils, crayons and photo work

I just came across a site called GigaPan, with gigapixel photos, i.e. extremely large pictures. I found there this picture of the central part of our galaxy (take the full screen view). At first you just see this band of light, but when you zoom into the photo (it takes a moment for the image to re-load), you discover millions of stars – we are living in a totally crowded universe. Awe-inspiring. It made me think of the famous sentence by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1788): “Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” And if you imagine that the whole universe is also reflected within us, being made “in the image and likeness”… we can zoom into the subjective worlds and discover millions of vistas, where at first sight we don’t discover much.

Photo of the central part of our galaxy, by esoepod (c)

Last week I was in Baerenthal, the Vosges for the May Call Day celebration. Baerenthal (“bear valley”) is a little village in north-eastern France, situated in the natural park of the northern Vosges. And the May Call Day is a festival of group initiation started by Master CVV in 1910 and now celebrated in many parts of the world. It is for receiving and expressing the energies of synthesis.
The last 25 years the May Call Day had been celebrated in the West. This year Sri Kumar celebrated it in Bangalore, India, and many group members, who couldn’t join, came together for local or regional celebrations, or joined the online transmissions.

We met already on Sunday in the house of Martine for the final preparations. From Monday afternoon till Thursday there was the group living in the Youth Centre for French-German friendship. The weeks before, Doris, Günter, Martine and me had prepared the program and discussed the organisation. Now, 20-26 group members from France, Germany and Switzerland were coming for this seminar. After some rainy days, even the sun was coming out to give a warm welcome.

I was inspired for this pic of the violet rhododendron flower in front of the house of Martine by some lines Sri Kumar spoke about Master CVV at last year’s May Call celebration in Flüeli-Ranft, Switzerland:

“CVV stands for Cosmic Violet Vibration, it is the way of the cosmic system. The 7th ray on the planet is violet, represented by the most sublime and noblest Master, Master Count Saint Germain. From cosmic vibration of violet to planetary vibration of violet a channel has been established by the great initiate coming from Master Jupiter’s ashram. Master Jupiter is known in the oriental scriptures as the great sage Agastya. The advent of the cosmic violet vibration was as per the plan to lift up humanity. The lift up is something when humanity can experience within him and around him the beauty of the kingdom of God. From the Avatar of Synthesis who is around, may the energy pour down in all kingdoms of nature.”

The house in Baerenthal

Buddha meditating in front of the house

Writing e-mails at the breakfast table

Martine had organised the seminar in the Youth Centre for French-German friendship. It was founded in the 60s and is dedicated to the furtherance of mutual understanding. We shared the centre with 2 school classes and a group of future midwives – a good surrounding: the ones preparing the entrance of souls into the body, the others, growing up, and our group, for the growth of awareness. It was a very friendly get-together.

In the dining-hall of the centre

The group living started with a reception in the garden of Martine’s house. It already set the tone of the meeting: joyful sharing.

We returned to the centre for evening meditation. And a special surprise was waiting outside: Around sun-set time the children of one of the classes were playing outside with a huge parachute cloth a colourful team game. And they spontaneously invited some of our group members to join them, to lie under the parachute:

The Youth Centre, surrounded by forests

In the evening we gathered again in the hall for a water ritual conducted by Doris:

On Tuesday we had exchanges and group study. In the afternoon Thot, a French astrologer who had come from the Pyrenees, gave a very interesting explanation of the astrological charts of Europe and of France and the relation to Germany. He showed that though Europe is going through tense times, an upliftment is to be expected from the next year on, as evidenced by the progressive chart.

Thot and Martine

Explaining the chart of Europe

Wednesday morning we started the May Call Day celebration with a fire ritual. It had rained all night long, but stopped in the morning. However, it was quite fresh when we started around 6 o’clock.

After breakfast we met for the seminar, starting with a candle-light ceremony.

The candles in front of the hall, with the painting “Lifting up the Earth to the Kings of Beauty”.

A candle was lit at the candle in the centre and the light was shared with all. Then the candle were put on the table at the centre.

Afterwards Doris and Günter conducted a little cake-cutting ceremony. I was reminded of the words of Sri Kumar from last year, that cutting a cake is like the sacrifice of Purusha, the Cosmic Person, representing the Oneness, which is sacrificing itself to form creation.

Different gifts prepared by members were shared afterwards

In the afternoon there was the launch of my new book on “Paintings”. It was a great moment for me. I tried to share the process of inner image building with the group with a little experiment: I read some passages from “Spiritual Astrology” by Master EK, with music of Davide Swarup, which I always hear while painting. Then we spoke about the inner images arising through the text, and I explained with the help of some of my paintings how the creative process developed.

The new books at the altar

In the evening we had another talk by Thot on the energies of the May Call day, 29 May 13. The time flew by fast, and Thursday at noon, after meditations and further exchanges, it was time to return home, filled with the lightful, electric energies of this beautiful celebration.

A rainbow over the valley. On the left at the bottom, the assembly hall

In 1910 Master CVV received a tremendous cosmic energy called the Energy of Synthesis. He anchored it in the ethers of the planet and started distributing it on 29 May. Since then every 29 May is celebrated as the Master May Call Day. And since 1998 I have participated in these celebrations – mostly larger gatherings in the West with Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar. This year the big group meeting with him is in Bangalore. Together with some friends we organised a small meeting in the French Vosges, where I’m at the moment.

For me it is a special occasion, for there will be also the launch of my book “Paintings”. I realised it as a photo book (English an German version, hard-cover, 200 pages), which I can produce as print on demand, if people want to have it. But I also distribute it for free in PDF-version.
The book contains my “Early Paintings” (done in the 80s and nearly completely “dissolved” in 1997, now digitally restored from photos) and the “Images of Synthesis“, done since 2009, together 212 paintings. I added some biographical notes and background explanations.

The “Early Paintings” were the creative output of a tremendous fiery experience I had in 1981. Many of these paintings are related to this inner opening which lasted several days. For me, the paintings are an expression of the Energies of Synthesis, even those created before the time I consciously knew about the energies. You will understand when you see the pictures. The book is available for download in English and German, its content is part of a website to be released soon.

Today we are entering into Gemini, the agile mental sign of the airy triangle of the zodiac. It is related to pulsation, the fundamental principle in creation of expansion and contraction. When I was thinking of visualising the symbolism of Gemini, I saw a huge white swan with outspread wings before my mind’s eye. Hamsa is the Sanskrit word for swan, and it is the symbol of the centripetal and centrifugal movement of our respiration (see the Lunar Messenger on Pulsation). At the centre of its heart you see an open flower which is white inside, the pulsating centre. The ballerina sitting on the beach symbolises the moment of contraction, the one flying high symbolises the climax of expansion. I merged photos of several waves to visualise the pulsating movement of ebb and flow (behind the swan). I used very light colours at the border of reproducibility to give expression to the delicacy of pulsation.

I took the inspiration for this painting from a fascinating seminar of Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar held on Mount Rigi 14 years ago. It later appeared as a book: “Saraswathi – The Word“. It also gave me the inspiration for the Gemini painting I did last year:

“A swan moves in pure waters that are equal to the pure ether. Swan is Hamsa in Sanskrit. Hamsa is the centripetal and centrifugal functioning of pulsation, the double principle of pulsation. The door of pulsation is the heart. The Hamsas (Swans) are the movements in us as pulsation and also as thoughts. The Swans of pulsation have the characteristics of musical notes. They form the bases of musical singing by the beings. The music details into varieties of Ragas (compositions) as per the time of the day and the season. These Swans can muse the mind and the ego onto Pure Consciousness and Existence. This is ‘the path of music’ for the return of the beings to Samadhi. Such is the work of the Swans of pulsation.”

10 February 2013, A 5, pencils, crayons and photo work

An American friend sent me the link to the following viral video with the words:

“The Rijksmuseum in Holland had an idea: Let’s bring the art to the people and then, hopefully, they will come to see more – at the museum. They took one painting of Rembrandt from 1642, Guards of the Night and brought to life the characters in it, placed them in a busy mall and the rest you can see for yourself!”

A great flash mob marketing campaign by the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam – “Onze helden zijn terug!” (Our heros are back!) One of the comment says: Creativity is intelligence having fun.” ― Albert Einstein

Scene from the video (c)