I yesterday searched a picture of Ganesha on my computer – it was the day of Ganesha’s birthday. A PDF of a German book popped up with the title “The Mantra against Fear” (Das Mantra gegen die Angst, by Helge Timmerberg, a German journalist and writer).
At first, I didn’t remember how it came on my computer but later I saw on Wikipedia that a close friend of mine had written about him in an Author’s encyclopedia – and he had given me this book… The sub-title is “Ready for Everything. Nine Days in Kathmandu” – 2020, just at the beginning of the pandemia lockdown, and in a country still suffering very much from the aftermath of a big earthquake.
I hadn’t read it but now quickly zoomed through the book. And it caught my attention: Helge went to Nepal in search of a Guru whom he had met 15 years ago. He describes in the first chapter how this Guru was “tested” if he was free from fear:
They were flying together in a plane which on a short flight nearly crashed three times. The first time some passengers still laughed, the second time nobody laughed, and the third time all were crying, except this yogi which sat on his side. He was as deeply relaxed as Helge had come to know him during the last 2 weeks. This time, the plane didn’t crash but a year later, he saw photos of the crashed plane, of “Shangri-La Air” in the newspapers, and it was scary for him to see.
The mantra of the Yogi was: “I am ready for everything” – the Mantra against fear.
Helge was now in a crisis and wanted to re-find this Guru. The book is about his experiences in Nepal on the journey to himself.
