January 3-9

There was more winter snow over the weekend. The snow began falling early Sunday morning, just as dawn was breaking and continued into the late morning, when the clouds parted and the sun came out.

To form a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood

Since beginning this online journal (or blog) in late October, people from all over the world have checked in for a visit. Not surprisingly, over 90% of the visitors are from the U.S. and Canada. But there have also been people looking at the site from the Netherlands, Malaysia, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, India, Australia, the UK, United Arab Emirates, the Bahamas (hi Mary!) and elsewhere.

Last week there were fifteen hits from Russia. The site that was directing the Russian traffic to the blog was www.yandex.ru/. Everything on the yandex site is in Cyrillic, so I don’t know why they were coming to the indralaya blog site, but there was a word that looked a little bit like ‘horoscope’, so maybe it was some kind of metaphysical website that randomly selected ‘This week at Indralaya’ as their site of the week or something like that. Or maybe it was H.P. Blavatsky’s relatives, generations later, checking in on theosophical sites. In any case, it is fascinating to really see at first hand the wide reach of the internet.

Additions to the Fleet

Just before the New Year’s weekend, family week one co-leader and expert car guy Elliot Toler-Scott and I met in Seattle and went car shopping for camp. A few days later, we completed the purchase of two new vehicles. The first is a 2003 Tacoma Toyota pick-up, the other a 2004 Dodge Caravan mini-van. The Caravan will be used for trips to meet people at the ferry when a full sized van isn’t necessary. There are also several times a year, particularly at work parties, when two ferry shuttle vehicles are necessary. The pick-up is intended to be a work vehicle for which we anticipate a wide range of uses to complement the larger Chevy truck that camp has had for several years.

Sound, Stillness and the Awakening of Compassion

On Wednesday, Leonie spoke at the Orcas Study group.

In addition to leading the group through several exercises (beginning, of course, with humming), Leonie shared some engaging insights on sound that are found in the theosophical tradition.

Theosophy stresses the unity of all life, and when we talk of this unity, we say that all manifestation is made from the same “stuff”. This stuff is called akasha, sometimes called the Sounding Board of Nature. Akasha is the root of manifestation and its one quality is sound. Sound is thus a basic component of the universe. One could say that sound is the substratum of manifestation.

In H.P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, she writes, somewhat poetically, that the construction of the Universe begins when perpetual Motion becomes Breath; from the Breath comes forth primordial Light, through whose radiance manifests the Eternal Thought concealed in darkness, and this becomes the Word (Mantra). It is that (the Mantra or Word) from which all this (the Universe) springs into being.

All together now: “AUMMMMMMMMMMMMM”