Flying to India in January is always a very special experience for me. Starting with the train, ther had been fresh snow outside, after a night of storm. In the train I try to observe who will be traveling to Zurich airport like me. There was a young lady opposite me whom I later met in the airport restaurant and later at checkin to Dubai – we smiled to each other.
Entering my “flying caravel” heading to India
In Dubai I was looking out to fellow travelers to Visakhapatnam, but there was none, neither in Hyderabad. But while I was reading infront of the checkin a thrilling book, “Odonate“, by Julie Oxford (she sent it to me as a gift in December), on how she came into contact with theosophy and the Masters of Wisdom and also the World Teacher Trust (I was thrilled to see that when telling about her discovery of WTT she just took from the WTT website several point I found most thrilling when I did the site 5 years ago…), suddenly an Indian came to me and asked me, “Are you going to the Guru Poojas of World Teacher Trust? I will be there, too.”, I smiled and replied “Yes”. I knew I was being guided well. Outside the temperature had changed to 35 ° C- a bit warmer than at home. (I later heard that this year January is hot as never since long…
In Visakh Murthy was already waiting for me with a taxi – a great service. We tried to pick up another friend, but she wasn’t on her flyer.
And then the arrival at the retreat center. So many “hallo’s” and “NIce to meet you again”. This year there will be more people than in the previous years, about 115, mostly from Argentina, but also many from Spain. The retreat center being much to small for all of us, a number had to stay in a nearby hotel and in appartments at the sea. I thought I would “camp” in the hall, but I got a small single room in the 4th floor – how happy I was. And on the table there was a nice orange tableclothwith golden embroderies – and the beautiful spiritual symbol of Lord Venkateshvara – I really felt blessed. After such a stressful time having come “home”, tears shot into my eyes, I was deeply moved.
The symbol of Lord Venkateshvara reminds me much of a theme I used in my paintings in the 80ies.
In the evening Sri Kumar came to guide the evening prayer. Afterwards he just greeted us saying: “I wlecome you all to a very enlightening group life.” We then had a small gathering with him, just a few members from the national groups. Sri Kumar said, “The groups really inspired by spiritual hierarchy just have minimum outer structures, there is inner growth and just the minimum growth inthe outer. We are also nearly not known here in Visakh, the work is more done in silence. We don’t have big structures to accomodate people, we donb’t have an ashram. We rent the locations for Guru Poojas. Nobody knows how much the movements grows, it is mostly in the homes of the people, not in any outside structures where the eyes of the public, the govrnment and politicians fall upon. We believe in inner growth and not much in outer. It is the same with our groups. ” (notes by memory)
Tomorrow many more people will arrive. I’m tired but happy to be here.
(I didn’t have internet connection yesterday, so this post had to wait a bit. For want of time I don’t answer for the moment all the mails I get….)
