Early Morning Life

In the retreat center 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 center – 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 center which obviously didn’t find any other place. But there remains a little space for the clothes.

Morning laundry sunrise over the neighbor 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.