Abstract: One year ago, in an unguarded moment while lying naked under the sun of the wonderful Neredu Valley in India, I predicted to my wives that the upcoming year was going to be ‘The Year of Decline’. We had come to rest and recuperate from the efforts of the previous year (2014). A year whose summer we had named ‘The Tragic Summer” that followed on from ‘The Magical Summer” of the year before (2013). The statement was more intended to be humorous, however, it already told of disturbing premonitions that through the experiences of the past months seemed to tarnish the view of what was to come. Though none of us would have realised, how appropriately this would finally describe the events of last year (2015). The Year of Decline.

Abstract: Before we can turn in my newsletters to the most important and fundamental concerns of the movement which we form together, as announced in our first letter, we would like to honour in this second letter a great support which can best hold together and nourish such a movement, dreaming. Dreaming, as described by Castaneda's Don Juan Matus. In Castaneda or rather his teacher Don Juan, we have found, next to Krishnamurti, another important teacher who has contributed towards the forming of intelligence in humanity as no other has done. Along with his comrades he found a language suitable to describe the unknown and the unknowable; realms that will only open up to humanity as a whole in the distant future.

Abstract: With what are you occupied right now, at this moment? Do you ever wonder about this in the midst of the turmoil of your life? And what do you see? What do you recognize? What is your honest answer? Are you driven by fear, ambition or envy? Do you find yourself entangled in conflict? Are you full of defence, controlling and intellectualizing? Or are you at the moment taken up by love, embraced by love? Does one find you loving, do you find yourself loving, in every moment of life, whenever you stop for a while and ask yourself this question? Or are you at the moment occupied with something else? Self-knowledge. A good means to self-knowledge is every now and then to halt and confront such a question.

Abstract: Are you really out there? Is there a movement out there at all? Is there anyone at all who is listening to me? Or am I deluding myself? Am I imagining something to protect myself from loneliness and indulge in an intoxicating sense of belonging? We are talking about a movement that we are building together. But is there really such a thing? Don’t worry, we are sober people. Not people who get carried away with things. We are not fooling ourselves. We know that there is no one out there. Running around out there are a lot of egomaniacs who want to have nothing to do with each other, all of whom are chasing the imaginations of their egos. Egomaniacs, who are not connected with each other in love. Isn't it so? We are alone. When we talk about movement, we mean the larger, impersonal movement of life, of love itself, that each one of us can join for himself, totally alone.

Abstract: The fact that we form a movement together does not mean that we belong to a group, that we submit to some authority. It simply means that we pursue common concerns, common interests, concern ourselves with meaningful things together, work cooperatively in the same field. Each individual stands alone in such a movement, he is a light unto himself. He is free. This is easily recognized by the fact that such movements hardly have any organizational structures. We are not an organization, we form a living being in motion.

Abstract: Our life, our whole being, all existence is like a dream, transitory like a dream. Everything that appears will pass away again. We know vaguely how to distinguish a fleeting dream of the night from the material experience of our day’s hard reality. But when we try to grasp this difference, we quickly doubt whether there is an essential difference at all. Everything is ephemeral, all striving is just chasing the wind. Nothing remains at the end. We and everything, whatever counts together with us as existing, belong to the transitory. Everything is only a dream, only an ephemeral dream. Is it therefore surprising that people have always searched for something that is everlasting, that is eternal? Is there something that is not subject to time, that can escape the dictate of death? Something that does not know death? Is there something in us that corresponds to this?

Abstract: You could say that the movement that we form is involved in healing. Involved in healing and becoming healthy, on the one hand; involved in being healthy and using that state of health to give birth to a new world, on the other hand. We want to write a new healthy, wholesome story. A mind in meditation is wholesome, a spirit blossoming in love.

Abstract: Is it not difficult at times, amid all the nonsense that surrounds us, to nevertheless find and sustain a perspective, to still believe that one day there will be a change in mankind towards more love and compassion? A real change, triggered not by regulations or dictates, but rather through understanding and self-knowledge. To be awake and blessed with intelligence in the midst all the superficiality and confusion that surges around us, seems almost as a risk factor for melancholia and doom. For without meaning and perspective, which can really get lost at times, one can hardly escape the abyss of depression. Every psychotherapist can tell you a thing or two about that. Against such, even though understandable notions, the warrior has an appropriate recipe: He creates his own mood. Even though he knows that this is the most difficult of all his endeavours, he nevertheless shows himself all the more persistent in accomplishing it. Is enlightenment ultimately a result of one’s own effort? Something you bring about by your own power? On the one hand, I would certainly agree with the warriors. The mood of the enlightened person ultimately comes from his unyielding intent to self-knowledge. That reaching this “goal” finally also needs grace, is another story that it seems we will get to talk about much later.

Abstract: In Buddhism and Hinduism one is familiar with the spiritual concept of karma. According to this idea every action has its effect according to the karmic law. These consequences do not necessarily take effect in the present life, they might also only manifest themselves in a future one. The idea of karma is also strongly connected with the belief in reincarnation, another concept that assumes a chain of re-embodiments of the soul in diverse forms after their respective death. Whether these concepts describe reality according to observations or are just dogmatic beliefs of these world religions, is something that everyone will have to examine and judge on their own. In any case, fact is that these conceptions are often misunderstood or have been oversimplified for the masses, so that they are then definitely no longer comprehensible, as is often the case with religious concepts. True Psychotherapy, or rather transpersonal and psycholytic psychology, has, however, made similar discoveries but can also give the psychological explanation for these and for the psychological mechanism behind it.

Abstract: To the psychological justification of the karmic law, which we have discussed last time, there is a supplement, which we had left out, as it is more suitable for the topic community than the topic psycholysis. There is actually another universal law that governs our access to joy, happiness, love and ecstasy. It is the law of ultimate justice. As all beings, we strive to feel as much joy, happiness, love and ecstasy as possible. Normally we tend to “get” these states, meaning we make them dependent on others who should impart these to us by their presence and affection. Though in fact, the measure of joy, happiness, love and ecstasy, which we can enjoy in the end, depends on our ability to feel. Everyone receives exactly as much as they can allow inside themselves. This again depends on how blocked someone is, i.e., how many feelings one has rejected, suppressed and repressed inside during one’s development period, and as a result, has to carry around unconsciously as muscular armour. This means, we are not only being “punished” by the accumulation of negative karma, meaning the blockage of the bliss-giving flow of energy as a result of many years of deeds of repression of feeling – but that we are also “rewarded” by our will to find self-knowledge, in that we can gain positive karma, the de-blocking of the energy flow within ourselves, and thus an abundance of ecstasy.

Abstract: The Year of Foretold Promise that we talked about at the beginning of this year is coming to an end. We had announced it with a sense of humour, almost carelessly, at our Christmas meeting twelve months ago at the end of the Year of Decline in 2015. At that time we did not really know what the foretold promise might be and yet in the meantime it has become clear to us that we had not understood this correctly at the beginning. Last year we mistakenly looked out for what could have been promised and should now come true. But this would then have been the Year of Fulfilment, which, as far as we can see, will only come in two or three years' time. No, only in the Year of Promise Foretold did it become clear that a fulfilment was even promised. And this has ultimately carried us through the year. We expect next year to be the Year of Clarification.

Abstract: Unfortunately self-knowledge at the beginning usually brings out unpleasant things for a long time. It is no coincidence that we humans tend to repress much of what we are, and how we behave and think, and even to hide it from ourselves. There is a lot about us that is not very noble at first. It is understandable that we then like to think that we are different, that we prefer to fool ourselves. Often only after a long process does the beauty of our being emerge and for many who embark on this journey, there is no guarantee that they will ever find their way out of the swamp of human misery into the inner beauty of this essence of being. It therefore takes a great passion for the beauty of the process of self-knowledge per se and a comprehensive perseverance to get to the bottom of the truth. It takes a passionate love for truth to fathom it all.

Abstract: Self-knowledge is so fascinating because it will explain the entire world to you as part of the truthful recognition of yourself. Whether you study an atom, an elementary particle or even a quark, or whether you look at a social system or attempt to understand an individual human being or some part of nature, you will always be confronted with the basic characteristics and principles that apply throughout the universe. As soon as you study in detail an aspect or a part without isolating it from the whole, you will very quickly recognise that everything is connected, that nothing can be divided and the fact that everything follows the same call. So why not start with yourself?

Abstract: Self-knowledge leads to freedom. But what is freedom? Is it something that you can establish in opposition to something else? Is it something that someone else can gift you? Freedom that depends on someone or something else cannot be freedom. It would leave you castrated. It does not exist in opposition or dependence on something. It stands for itself and knows no opposite. Freedom is an inner state, a space that opens up across all energy centres and emerges when we are not in conflict with anything at all, when we are able to accept everything as it is, when we are able to just be without reacting, when we internally stop the world, which is how the warriors summarise this state. Freedom arises from self-knowledge, the process in which we learn to practice merely pure seeing as an adequate response to everything that happens internally and externally. The freedom to see what is, however, must be there from the beginning so that the great space of freedom can open up in us during the process of seeing. Being able to accept everything as it is does not mean approving everything as it is.

Abstract: What is needed in everything you do, including the process of self-knowledge, is passion. And such passion arises when you see a sense of purpose in what you are committed to. To break through conditioning, you first and foremost need to see it and recognise that you have been conditioned personally, and above all be aware of how and to what you were conditioned. It is not very helpful to think deeply about conditioning. You need to really feel the conditioning in yourself and sense what you have been drilled or trained for. To feel this, to actually perceive it, is already half of the necessary breakthrough. Real recognition takes power away from the patterns of conditioning so that they eventually fall away without difficulty and you can easily detach yourself from them. For example, admitting to myself that I am drilled to be dutiful and unobtrusive, to go through life fearful of my own strength and the authenticity of my own expression, quickly frees me from such or similar patterns of behaviour. You have to develop a great passion for all this if you want to make progress.

Abstract: It is already cool. But the sun is warming me despite the crisp air. A cleansing barrenness fills the autumn days here in the mountains. It is good to be alone, far from the madness of humans and feel once again the centre of everything. The leaves cast shadows and sway in a light breeze. They form a swell of oneness. The sky is cloudless, now in the evening hours, and so transparently clear. It is quiet despite the cowbells in the distance. And all is still in itself even though there is this motion in everything. One is permeated by order, the sacred order of glorious being. In this newsletter we will deal one last time within the framework of our examination of self-knowledge with the defensive feelings that first overwhelm us when we venture out of the realm of conditioning, compliance and conformity, and honestly start trying to explore the question "What am I really?" or maybe better "What is it, that actually perceives?".

Abstract: As promised, in this and the next two newsletters we will deal with the real feelings, those previously suppressed by these fear-con-trolled defensive states. We call them the rejected or original feelings, those which do not arise as a reaction to another unwanted feeling, but rather occur directly in the life process, triggered by traumatisation and hurt. To be more precise, we should of course add that defen-sive feelings do not only suppress rejected feelings, they can also suppress other defensive feelings. In the process of self-knowledge, the entire nested ego-structure created by this pro-cess has to be dissolved once again layer by layer and illuminated with consciousness. All the states, feelings, reactions and thoughts that we can perceive within us, usually hide something deeper that has been pushed out of our consciousness by defence and dissociation. In the same way as there were defensive feelings such as hate, avarice and jealousy lurking behind a wall of conformity reinforced by fear and defiance, using a precise approach we soon discover those things that these emotions and associated reactions want to suppress and control. And as we have already discovered beforehand, in the end there is even something beautiful hiding behind fear and defiance. While defiance is our latent power that, once liberated, breaks through every wall that constricts us, fear – exposed to the light of choiceless perception – re-fines itself increasingly into a careful, considered and cautious looking and acting that ulti-mately originates from seeing reality, from exact self-knowledge. In the light of conscious-ness, everything finds its way back into the natural pre-existing order that is actually present in the universe.

Abstract: When people set out on the path of self-knowledge, they awaken for it and are at first often enthusiastic and progress rapidly. However, at some point their life theme, which for many people lies in the realm of rejected feelings, catches up with them. They come to a standstill and the breakthrough into the Innermost, which seemed so tangible at the beginning of the process, moves further into the distance again. Of course, there are also people, in fact the majority, who in connection with their life theme are already at a standstill in the defensive feelings. Jealousy, possessive thinking, need for control, competition and envy, are the ‘popular candidates’ among the feelings which they simply cannot let go. It is to be expected, however, that the people who are attracted to self-knowledge are those who are already a little more mature and that their main concerns are ra-ther the deeper feelings.

Abstract: In our exploration of the path of self-knowledge in this newsletter, we come back one last time to the rejected feelings. In later letters we want to turn to specific aspects and transitions within the process of self-knowledge and then finally to our Innermost, which we hope to open up through this venture. Of course, there are many other emotional facets within the realm of rejected feelings - such as despair, sorrow, disappointment, rejection, being not understood, hopelessness, being lost, neediness and many more - that would be worth paying our attention to. They are all expres-sions and offshoots of the pain and woe that people always like to avoid. However, since eve-ryone adept in self-knowledge must anyway walk the entire path in substance and in person and cannot rely on the theoretical knowledge of others, it will suffice here to discuss only the most important rejected states in more detail. Within this process, every aspect of this inten-sive journey will anyway reveal itself to any serious explorer. And the principle behind it, which always remains the same, will also become increasingly clear to them: behind every defence and resistance, if we investigate carefully, we always discover repressed states, which in the case of defensive feelings, such as anger and hate, suppress other original rejected feel-ings, such as sorrow and shame. That these rejected feelings are still responsible for a certain evasion of reality and thus alienate us from our Innermost, is something that we will outline more clearly in a few months' time, when we get to know the core within ourselves.

Abstract: In the forthcoming newsletters, dear friend, in order to meet our aim of outlining the path of self-knowledge – which was our intention in this second part of our discourse – we would like to examine, alongside our look at our innermost, some specific aspects of the entire theme, without which our work would not be complete. We expect to discontinue this letter project next summer. In this newsletter we want to look at what we have called the death point, and then in the next newsletter look at the other important transition, the stillness, power or insanity point as we call it.

Abstract: After discussing the death point in the last newsletter, the transition from the defensive feelings to the rejected feelings between solar plexus and heart, we want in this newsletter to take a vertical view of the head level in our energy system and examine the second important transition: the stillness, power or insanity point. In a horizontal cross section through our personality, in the layer model, this would correspond to the even more difficult transition between the layer of rejected feelings and the core of the personality, the Innermost within us, for which we will then be ready in the next newsletter.

Abstract: Actually, it's much too early to sing of the Innermost. There are still too many defensive structures in us that we need to understand and so many rejected feelings to open up before we are ready for it. But in India, in the Neredu Valley where we are currently staying, the innermost mystery is so close. Nothing else seems to be written and philosophized about here but this inner sanctum, which opens up to us in the end as soon as we have built up sufficient energy in the process of self-knowledge. The Samuel Gita , which I promised our Indian friends during our last visit here two years ago, and which I have now written and brought back with me, also tells us about this incomprehensible, this quantum sea in our Innermost, which opens itself up to us once we are able to escape from the restricting laws of the Newtonian object-world, or rather the accompanying monopolising structures of our ego-reality, and into an inner reality. At night, the sea of stars, the quantum sea, is so wide, so immense here! Is it external or internal?

Abstract: Having advanced into the Innermost in our last newsletter, we have actually reached the goal of self-knowledge. What we are as human and energetic beings, we have now examined and understood. As we have seen earlier, the path of self-knowledge ends here. It affords access to the pathless land of meditation, which opens up from the Innermost, from the core within us, into the immensity of the mystery of the universal being. It is at this point that the perception of the adept of self-knowledge definitively detaches from his own self and begins to turn increasingly to the mystery that surrounds him, of which he is a part. Of course, this detachment from the fixation on one's own self and thus the commencement of meditation had already started long ago. It was with the awakening of the heart, with the awareness of the rejected feelings, that the compassion for everything and everyone began to awaken in the serious seeker. And it is with the complete comprehension of the wonder of one's own energy system through the awakening for the stillness point and crown, that the seeker’s exploration of himself is completely at an end.