Thursday morning I got up again very early, around 3.15, to have some time in the bathroom before the others. Some e-mails and a blog-post, then the bus brought us to the Guru Pooja. Anna told me the evening before that Sri Kumar asked me and 3 others to speak at the section on Fusion of East and West. Fine, I thought, but what to speak about? In the bus some thoughts flew in – and then after morning prayer – followed by lecture, breakfast and the thrilling water ritual – the ideas took a more concrete shape. Finally it was different from what I planned. But before there were the rhythmic intonations of Siva Sankar, the brother of Sri Kumar, during the water ritual vibrating through the air and stirring the souls.

The end of the water ritual – Sri Kumar garlanding the lingam, symbol of the divine Will,

At the end of the water ritual, in front of the huge picture of Lord Krishna

We 4 members of the Western brotherhood asked to come to the stage received a bouquet and then Sri Kumar started speaking about the history of the Guru Poojas. He presented each one of us, starting with me. I don’t repeat it here, but it gave me a profound joy to hear how he took up topics from the letter I had given to him using them as a message. He showed some of the 12 paintings (12 copies each) I had brought to the assembly for distribution, and also mentioned the Early Paintings. He went on to speak about the others, the new publications of WTT Spain and Germany, the good-will work done by them. Then it was my turn to speak. Words flew in, it was a touching experience, not to be reproduced here.

Günter, sitting next to him, spoke about the impact the work of Sri Kumar has in the west. Günter had been in the States in September and he presented to Sri Kumar an “Oscar” statue from Hollywood for being “the best teacher” 🙂 Also the other 2 members, from Spain and Argentina spoke in a very authentic way.

Speaking to the translators, without whom we wouldn’t be able to follow the talks.

The afternoon I spent again in the beautiful palm forest – talking with friends.
In the evening after the prayer Sri Kumar continued the talk about the Labours of Hercules, but before he published a book about Agastya (see a picture here) and a calendar with pictures of Agastya. Below is an extract from his talk, and in the next blog-post more about Agastya).

After the lecture again dinner and then back to Visakhapatnam for a short night – all were very tired.

“The ashram of Agastya is in the Katraram(?) mountains, there is a Vishnu temple, and when Agastya went into the temple he wasn’t admitted to the temple, only Vaishnavas (followers of Vishnu) are accepted. He went away and took to the form of a Vaishnava. He went into the temple and worshipped the form of the Lord and transformed into a Shiva lingam. He said, please see, I’m a Vaishnava but there is a Shiva lingam inside. They were surprised, and he said, just go inside and see yourself. This way it happened in the past.” (Another story will follow…)

At the first day of the Guru Pooja a strange maya produced and led me into an early morning experience of a special kind:

10th January I received a comment on the blog-post Early Morning Life, mentioning an encounter with Sri Kumar in 1982/83 – and I answered. It made me think of the early years of WTT and the sad schism that had happened in these years with the family of Master EK. On my second visit to Visakhapatnam in 2002 I had a long talk with Sri Kumar about how he lived through these difficult times, how he didn’t want to take over the presidency of WTT because he didn’t want to interfere with the claims of the family, though Master EK had installed him in this role. He fell very sick for a longer time and only recovered when he had realised that he had to take over this task designed for him. He said, “As a souvenir of this refusal of mine to comply with the will of the Plan I carry with me my diabetes, so that I can’t eat sweets anymore the way I did before. This keeps reminding me of not to refuse the Will.” He tried a lot to integrate the sons of Master EK in the WTT but without success…..

11th January early in the morning I spent some time trying to get a blogpost ready, It took some time and I was getting late. I rushed down just in time the bus was supposed to arrive, When arriving at the Guru Pooja compound and getting out of the bus I saw the first site which wasn’t available for WTT last year due to another activity going on there. Now I saw something written there in Telugu with 51 on it, but no sign of WTT. The quick thought came, this is not WTT here, but some other organisation.

I proceeded to the Guru Pooja hall and sat down for morning prayer. Thoughts presented themselves: I knew from their website that the movement of the family of Master EK runs Guru Poojas at the same dates than WTT, though at another place. It must be them now daring to celebrate their Guru Poojas here,- parallel guru poojas, in the same way I saw a few years ago that they were doing May Call celebrations in Switzerland at another place, a real shadow of the WTT ceremonies.

I felt an intese sadness about it and thought of the picture hanging in the Guru Pooja hall with a saying of Master EK: “Excluding others is religion and including others is spiritualism.” This strange mood kept beyond the morning prayer…

After breakfast with the Western group I then saw groups of the Indian brotherhood coming from that space which in my maya was the place of the parallel guru pooja – it now prooved to be the dining hall for the Indian brotherhood – they have spicier food than the one prepared for us from the West at the other place – and only then the spell of this vivid maya fell off. I wondered what had caused this strange spell. And I thought of the blog-comment of the previous day….

The 12th after lunch I went into the Indian “dining hall” again. An Indian came to me, and I asked him about his name. He told it to me and then said, “I live just 2.5 km from here. I am a purohit (priest) doing fire rituals and water rituals for people requesting it. I work together with the family of Master EK, Dr. Anantha and … (I don’t remember the names) doing service activities.”

I then thought, this must have been some odd messager for me…. I reflected a while about it, pondered on the implications, and then this blog-post came about.

The picture with the saying of Master EK in the hall

The fire ritual was so very thrilling, I loved to sit there and let myself being carried with the flames and the mantrams into the subtle spheres invoked. With all the pictures of the Great Ones their presence is much more easily to be absorbed.

After the fire ritual there was the presentation of a new publication, a book of Master EK: The World Teacher – Advent of Lord Krishna. It is the third book of a series of 7 books Master EK envisioned to write, but he died after having written this book in Telugu and having translated 13 of 31 chapters. Since it was in a very elaborate Telugu language it ahd not been translated before. Several times in previous years I had asked people of the Indian brotherhood why they don’t translate this book, I would love to read it, but they said, it is too difficult for them. Sri Kumar now had taken up this talk. He said that even for him it was very delicate and he often had to look up corresponding English words in Wikipedia. The books is about the preparation of the then-World Teacher, Parasara, together with a group of Masters, to prepare the incarnation of Sri Krishna. Mr. Joshi from Bangalore spoke a bit about the book, saying it was like a cinema film for him to go through the book, they were so much taken into the story like never before. I bought several books to take them with me and of course started reading it during a Telugu lecture…

The afternoon was filled with talks with friends and then again lecture, evening prayer, dinner and a late way back to the centre. Not much to blog about.

I wrote these lines during  Telugu lectures…. And the events of Thursday didn’t yet find a time window…

A picture of Rishi Agastya, who was present through Master CVV, and the picture of Saila Putri, the Daughter of the Mountain, the guiding light of Hierarchy (See the book “Man Sacrifice) – I’m very happy that I found these….

Continuing the blog-post from Jan. 10th.: When returning to the Guru Pooja compound from the afternoon-nap in the palm forest the dais with the altar was ready, the chairs were all standing in rows and the chasing LED-lights at the roofs gave the impression of hosts of devas rushing to finish teh preparations on the subtle planes. We also rushed to the front to put up the equipment for translations. (I had the laptop ready, but the voice of our Indian brother translating was so low that, though I was sitting directly in front of him, I couldn’t hear, just the voice of Dorle giving the German translation, but when trying to write, I was too far away to follow. So I only got a few notes…)

At 5 PM Sri Kumar and Kumari-Garu arrived in the back to conduct a little ritual of lighting the butterlamps at the Ganesha statue in the back of the hall – the elephant-headed God, my special friend, is always being worshipped first – to clear off all obstacles and allowing expansion of consciousness.

And when the hymns and the OMs of the evening prayer started, I thought, yes, there it is again, the typical marvellous Guru Pooja feeling, so uplifting and inspiring, which makes me come here all the way to be in this presence. Experiencing the energy of the Masters is something thrilling which words cannot convey.

In the evening a quick dinner, then back into the busses to go back to Visakh for a short night.

I din’t sleep well. Was it the Indian tea, was it the energy of the Guru Poojas? No matter, there will be plenty of time during the day to relax and bathe in the energies, I thought.

I got up at three, took a shower and did my asanas – while the bathroom was busily used one after the other… My netbook was still sleepy when I tried to answer mails, format pictures and post an article for the blog… I finally arrived with the blogpost, some minutes before leaving. But when sitting in the bus I realised that the transformator still was in the room and that the netbook had been running on battery, which was down. OK, I thought, today I will have to use my “note-book” in the old-fashioned pencil-style. And type the notes later…

Meditation, lecture breakfast. And then there was the initiation of children into first writing and intonating the mantram OM Namah Sivaya, for a better control of the senses when regularly sung.

Afterwards the fire ritual started. I will continue with the post tomorrow… We are leaving soon fromt he retreat centre.

Returning very late from the Guru Pooja celebrations and getting up very early / departing to the Guru Poojas I cannot answer individual mails, having no internet access there – and my netbook was down today, I just made hand-notes, so there won’t be a posting about today’s happenings now.

Many requested about details, please see here.

I just saw the post of Srikanth on WTT Facebook, he wrote:

“For invitations and information relating to Master’s discourses (Live and recorded), please email wtt-live@masters-call.net or admin@masters-call.net respectively.”

I will try to answer again the mails in 3 days, in urgent cases before. Thank you for all the many feedbacks. I’m tired and need the short night…

Two old busses took all of the group and we drove along the beachside of Visakhapatnam before continuing via a new bypass around Visakh to Simhachalam. Then the busses climbed uphill to the temple compound lying in a little valley near the top. The went further up a stair to a place where we had to leave our shoes and bags – no cellphones and cameras allowed inside the temple – but I took my camera inside the pocket.

Leaving the busses

The stairway up

The outer premises of the templs

A calf before the entrance

There are three entrance lane, one for free, where normally are many people – the “slow way to heaven”, one for 20 rupees, which the group took – where you can go near the innermost of the temple, and one for 100 rupees where you can enter the innermost – the direct way to heaven, as I jokingly said.

You enter through a side-tower into the outer part of the temple, there is a little temple with pillars hold by lion and elephant figures. The central temple is at the site of a very old and sacred place, but seems to be not so very old. Inside taking photos is strictly forbidden and I knew from previous visits that they really don’t like and I didn’t like to be discovered taking a shot…

Raviskankar, an Indian member accompanying the group discussed with the guards and finally the whole group was allowed to enter the holiest of the holy of the temple.

The name Simha means lion, and the temple is dedicated to the avatara of God as the man-lion. I was asked by the group to explain the symbolism, the story expressing the opening of the heart centre by killing the “demon” who had taken over the rulership of the “earth”, or the human body – a story of the soul triumphing over the personality.

The Avatar Narasimha, the man-lion, opens the heart of the demon king Hiranyakashipu – our own heart

Afterwards part of the group took a bus back to the valley, while I joined the ones who descended via a long stairway of about 1000 steps. I love this way along little statues, symbols, holy trees and a small waterfall.

Descending via the beautiful stairway

My favorite Ganesha, overgrown by a tree

In the village at the bottom end of the stairway,on the site where the Guru Pooja celebrations are to begin tomorrow, the preparations were at full swing – incredible how they want to finish all the work till this evening. After having a delicious meal served by the Indian members to us, we went to a nearby lake with a little temple surrounded by lotus flowers. Then we continued to a palm grove where I write these lines.

The lake with the lotus flowers

Under the palms

I’m posting this some minutes before leaving early morning to Simhachalams

In the retreat centre the morning starts early. Trying to get in time a place under the shower, quickly doing some asanas so that the body doesn’t start to rust, then after a sip of tea down into the seminar hall, which by now is cramped with chairs. The about 115 group members from the West (about 85 of them Spanish speaking and a bit of Southern vitality 🙂 )are quite disciplined, but besides the chit-chat there is the “waterfall music” of the ventilators and the dogs and birds from the outside, not to forget the horn and other noises of the cars.

An early morning musician

The altar in the lecture hall with the pictures of the great masters

Lakshmi, the goddess of fullness, giving us her blessings

At the backside of the lecture hall there is a huge new poster of a fire ritual

Sri Kumar welcoming the groups yesterday afternoon

I try to use my imagination visualising that we are not in a mega-city – though not in the centre – but in some forest ashram at the times of the old rishis 🙂 This visualisation strongly gets vivified when at 6am the sound of all the voices unite for intoning the OM 7  times and then the invocation of the Masters. It is lifting up, high above the lower spheres, reminding me of the description of Master DK in Occult meditations that through intonating the OM a cone is formed in the ethers opening up to above and that through this funnel energy can pour in – and this in a concentrated group meditation here is very inspiring.

Afterwards quickly washing some laundry in the bucket and putting it on the strings on the balcony. Mine is filled with some garbage of the retreat centre which obviously didn’t find any other place. But there remains a little space for the clothes.

Morning laundry sunrise over the neighbour balcony

And then coming into the dining hall, it is difficult to get a place at a table, but I succeeded – sitting among a group of Argentineans. Soon the plate is filled with idlis, sambar and toast. And since there was no milk, I improvised my “survival muesli” with chai – inter-cultural fusion of east and west.

Another “survival item” for my Indian tours is a vegetable paste from Switzerland, Tartex, which was tasted by the neighbouring Argentineans with keen interest.

You never see an Argentinean without the obligatory cup of Mate, which is being refilled with water and passed around.

The Indian cook in action – preparing idlis in a little stove and cooking with gas fire sometimes flaming up.

View of the kitchen- here the food for all of us is being prepared – with very simple means and ways of cooking…

Murthi, the good spirit and caretaker of the house – meditating in action? 🙂

In an hour we will start for Simhachalam, where the Guru Pooja will begin this evening. Today at noon we will visit the old temple at Simhachalam uphill – something for the next blog-post.

This afternoon Sri Kumar wanted to see the groups from the different countries, especially to give a welcome to those who came here for the first time. Having two passports 🙂 , I joined the German group (the Swiss is virtually too small to really be a “group” here…

Four members of the German group had just come from a visit to Benares / Varanasi and told about their experiences. As Sri Kumar had suggested them, they had been at the place where Trailinga Swami lived. He mentioned that the Swami was a master of the Ashram of Agastya, in the Nilagiris – and I remembered having a picture of him, in a collection of the pictures of the Guru Pooja altar. I showed Sri Kumar the photo of this extraordinary yogi and he confirmed that it is he whom he was talking about.

Trailinga Swami was known all over India for his extraordinary yogic powers. He had brought a huge lingam out of the waters of Ganges, which the four members had seen in Benares. At other occasions Sri Kumar had told the sotry of how the swami had been locked in prison because of running around nude – only for the prison personnel to seem him a short while later sitting on the top of the prison – naked. Again into prison, and again he was sitting there on the top as natural as nature made him. He was a very voluminous person who reportedly lived several hundred years, and he left his body in 1887. You can read in Wikipedia other extraordinary things about this Swami about whom well-known persons like Ramakrishna, Lahiri Mahasaya / Yogananda wrote; here is an extract:

“On many occasions, he was seen to drink deadly poisons with no ill effect. In one instance, a skeptic wanted to expose him as a fraud. The monk was accustomed to breaking his long fasts with buckets of clabbered milk, so the skeptic brought him a bucket of calcium-lime mixture used for whitewashing walls instead. The monk drank the entire bucket with no ill effect—instead, the skeptic fell to the ground writhing. The monk broke his usual silence to explain the law of karma, or cause and effect.

According to another story, he often walked around without any clothes, much like the naga (or “sky-clad”) sadhus. The Varanasi police were scandalized by his behaviour, and had him locked in a jail cell. He was soon seen on the prison roof, in all his ‘sky-clad’ glory. The police put him back into his locked cell, only to see him appear again on the jail roof. They soon gave up, and let him again walk the streets of Varanasi.

Thousands of people reportedly saw him levitating in a sitting position on the surface of the river Ganges for days at a time. He would also apparently disappear under the waves for long periods, and reappear unharmed. Swami Sivananda attributed some of his miracles to the siddhi or yogic power Bhutajaya— or conquest over the five elements, “Fire will not burn such a Yogi. Water will not drown him.^“

The fourth floor of the retreat centre, where I’m living at the moment has been transformed into a huge library: A number of huge book shelves containing all the books of Master EK have been shifted here – and in the first floor there is now also the office of Kulapati Editions – the other place has been closed.

Spiritual books from Master KE’s library and linen

The energy of Capricorn was very present during the evening prayer. Sri Kumar proposed that we go to the beach and enjoy there the presence of the full moon. Together with an Argentinean friend I joined a group of Spanish members who wanted to do a full moon meditation on the balcony of their apartment at the beach road. The magic spell of moon light enchanted the atmosphere – and the sounds of the night traffic along the sea seemed to fade away in the silent merging with the Capricornian ethers.

This morning we had a full moon fire ritual after the meditation. The room was crowded with the big group which had been still extended to a number of Indian brothers and sisters sitting close by close.

The ground for the fire ritual was well prepared with a mandala on white sand, and Kumari-Garu, the wife of Sri Kumar, added further decoration.

After the silence of meditation they started intonating singing Vedic hymns – Purusha Suktam, Sri Suktam and more, before the fire was lit.

While the air was filled with the mantric sounds, the flames rose higher and higher and cast beautiful devic forms into the ether:

This form reminds me of an eagle, the eagle of the spirit, ready to land on the fire place.

In the background you see the altar with the pictures of the great Masters beautifully decorated with fresh flowers.

Fascinated by the magic of he fire – the grand-daughter of Sir Kumar and Kumari with her mother

It was a very extensive ritual. Atfer about two hours the flames slowly died down and the air filled with beautiful smell when some hands of frankincense were thrown into the glowing ashes.

Kumari taking out some ashes for distribution

Afterwards some spicy rice was distributed to all as “prasad”, and people paid their homage to Sri Kumar. He smiled at me saying: “I have read all of your letter, very good.” At the arrival I had given to him a long letter with a number of observations. I felt a great relief.

Getting up this morning at about 4.30, taking a shower, doing asanas and then the morning prayer / meditation at 6 o’clock with Sri Kumar guiding – a soul-stirring morning – the noises from the outside and the cuckoo-clock violently ringing – nothing could disturb the soul-thrilling ambiance. Afterwards preparing breakfast. Many new-comers were standing around and didn’t know what to do and that it is a “self-service” – meaning you have to prepare everything yourself. So I started cleaning and then getting a translator to give instructions to the newbees – where to place the marmalades, how to install and operate the toasters, where to put the coffee etc. In the kitchen an group was busily preparing fruits, and Murthi with the cook doing idlis and sambar. The smell was spreading all over, and quickly the room filled with a sprightly morning chit-chat.

These days before Guru Pooja there isn’t yet any program, just “relaxing. Many wanted to do some shopping -not me. So after breakfast I was about to organise a taxi to go to the planetary healing centre, but I dropped into another deep conversation… I thought, oh, I won’t be time to go to the healing centre this morning. But when I came out of the room, a Spanish friend told me they would like to go shopping and then to the healing centre, if I would like to accompany them. I said, beautiful. And then other friends came and invited me to a direct ride to the centre, without shopping, and so we sat some minutes later and started on our little tour.

Visakhapatnam has incredibly grown the last years. I heard at noon that during the last 5 years they grew from 4 to 5 millions – al the main area. And you could see it on the way all along the coast – a big Novotel at the beach road, many more houses, all the palces where a few years ago there had just been bushes there were now apartments nearly till the place of the healing centres about 15 km away.

But the site of the centre is still so thrilling as it was, and even more, the place was very well kept this year, people were cleaning the ground, the centre building with the dome was freshly painted and even the place with the Maitreya statue was again under the shadows of a huge branch of a tree, where another tree had died 2 years ago. I gave a quick visit to Lord Maitreya and Lord Buddha, enjoying their presence.

Lord Maitreya blessing

Lord Buddha blessing

Then we sat in silence in Planetary Healing Centre, vibrating soul-stirring energy. After a while I started intonating 21 times OM, and the others fell in line – expansion, merging with the sound

In the silence afterward I suddenly started to hear a beautiful music coming from somewhere outside. We all sat there in this blessed ambiance.

The central pillar with the onyx globe from South America

Photographing the centre of the centre

Afterwards we went around the centre and to the littpe private ground where the owner and caretaker of this site is living in a beautiful roundhouse with some outer round houses.

A very organic architecture in this little paradise garden

The entire ground was very well kept, with beautiful flowers growing

Of course some photos of our little group had to be taken – and also of me…

Afterwards we sat for a while in front of the Maitreya statue and intonated the Maitreya song and the Narayana mantram, while some crows and a couple of birds of prey – probably kites –  flew around – messengers of the Spirit.

Probably a kite – as a friend wrote me

I first wanted to take a bath, but the others didn’t want to come – the sun was too glaring. People also had told me that in the bushes near the beach there are living several poisonous snakes, so I resigned from my favorite swim in the ocean.

We woke up the taxi driver who had slept all the time in his car and so he brought us back to the city. In the meantime a part of the Argentinean group had arrived and lunch was already waiting for us.