I don’t mean to criticize the younger generation, but in my opinion jogging with music in your ears through a forest is not a very good idea. Why? I have recently discovered that human beings have a need for silence. If we knew how to incorporate some silence into our lives, we would not need that much psychotherapy and tranquillizers. Really? What am I talking about? Meditation in Eastern/Asian sense is based on silencing first your surroundings and consequently your mind. The final goal of meditation, reached only by monks, is a state without thoughts. We live in a crazy world, where we have to...

I read an article about new developments in virtual reality technology. I would like to quote Palmer Luckey, where he gives a definition of virtual reality: “At the bare minimum there’s some threshold you cross into a sense of presence, being in a space and forgetting that it is not a real space but a virtual one.” (Total Immersion by Jerry Beilinson, Popular Mechanics, June 2014, p. 76─81, 118─120) Having had experience with hallucinations my first reaction was fear that such technology might disrupt my brain. I actually never tried any of it. But then again my fears are just my fears....

Are there more lives or just one? With this dilemma I am done. What matters is to always be fair. Which makes it easy to make friends everywhere. I was not raised in any religious way. And since I was a diligent student, I believed in science. Life had many surprises in store for me though. Exploring alternative psychology in my thirties I involuntarily started to explore the spiritual level of human existence. I liked the idea of reincarnation right away, because it gives us so many opportunities to make things right. I found it much more gentle than the harsh catholic...

Success is such a sacred word in our Western world that it is rarely questioned. As long as you can measure something and compare it with others it is a potential success. Consequently, the Westerners have neglected things that cannot be measured: love, trust, health, honesty. A man is successful, if he makes a lot of money. If, on the other hand, his colleague at work makes less money but is a lot nicer to his wife, this other colleague is not successful. Kindness is not only hard to measure, it is also a private thing. And in order to show success one has to concentrate on public things like money...

To be or not to be – It is a rare dilemma to see. The question of life is how? To burn in the here and now? Or to smoulder in fear of tomorrow? When I was really young I used to think I could work all the time. Resting was optional. Until at the age of 22 bipolar disorder with psychotic traits broke out. First I had a raging mania and then I was lying in bed all the time. I experienced two extremes that were both very difficult to bear. Ever since I have been trying to balance the extremes in order to have a more normal life. So I do burn, but just a little and then I continue the safe smouldering....