Exotic WomenExpelled from SchoolYoga and Farming

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Exotic Women, Expelled from School, Yoga and Farming

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‚Women always got me into trouble.‘
‚What I really would like to do is to have an organic farm.‘

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Then, of course, it’s always been women who got me into trouble in my life, always.

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It’s their fault. Nothing to do with me.

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I’m glad you said that.

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My wife …

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Anyway. So, I was in Düsseldorf. In Düsseldorf we had a big Japanese community at the time.

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There were about 1,200 companies, Japanese companies.

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Yeah, I remember.

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And in downtown Düsseldorf there’s an underpass under the tram in between the department stores and stuff.

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I was going down an escalator and this Japanese girl was coming up.

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I can still see it now.

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I’d never seen anything like that before.

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Such a beauty, such a… and so different from what I knew. I was just like ….

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Like I’d … looked into the face of God. It was really like that. Beautiful.

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And I thought, ‚Boy, I must go to Japan.‘ Really.

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That’s how it started. But then it took a few more years and it didn’t work out the way, the same way that I had imagined it, of course.

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So, I was doing the autogenic training. Then I learned about Zen Buddhism.

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And then I thought, ‚Okay, they talk about meditation, these guys. What the hell is that?‘

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‚And how am I going to learn that? From whom?‘

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I had a friend at school. His father, his dad was from India. And his mum was German.

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And he seemed different than other people. So, one day I asked him.

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I said, ‚Hey, tell me, do you meditate?‘ I didn’t really know what it was.

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He said, ‚Yes.‘ Because I felt he was different. He was quiet and somehow centred in himself.

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And I asked him, ‚Would you teach me how to do that?‘ He was a bit hesitant.

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Long-haired, youngster.

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Yeah, yeah. And he said, ‚Okay, you know, there are some prerequisites.‘

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I said, ‚Okay, I’m listening.‘ He said, ‚Okay, so you stop talking badly about other people for three months?‘

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‚You don’t harbour negative thoughts for three months.‘

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‚You wake up at the same time. You follow the same schedule. Eat at the same time.‘

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‚No drugs.‘

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‚And read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. And then if you could do that in three months, come again.‘

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I said, ‚Oh, I already read Siddhartha.‘ He said, ‚Read it again.‘

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‚Okay.‘ So I did. And then he taught me Raja Yoga for a couple of years. Between 16 and 18.

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And that really set me off.

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Fantastic.

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So meanwhile, I had gotten kicked out of school.‘

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And then thought, ‚What I really would like to do is to have an organic farm.‘

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At the time there was … maybe the most important proponent,

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almost like a guru kind of figure of organic farming, it was somebody called Erven, Mr. Erven in Germany.

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He had an organic farm somewhere south of Bonn on the river, on the Rhine.

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And he had this incredible organic farm.

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He gave a lecture in Düsseldorf. I went to see him. I was so impressed.

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I thought, ‚This is what I want to do.‘

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So I talked to him just after I left high school.

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I said, ‚You know, I would really like to learn organic farming. This is my dream. I’ve been thinking of that for a while.

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Can I do an apprenticeship with you?‘

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He looked at me and said, ‚You know what? Do a conventional farming apprenticeship first.‘

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‚Then you know why you shouldn’t do that.‘

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And he said to me, ‚I was the same. I used to be a city planner. I was building highways.

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I learned to understand why we should not destroy nature but nurture it and help it.‘

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And I thought, ‚Okay.‘ So, I started a conventional farming apprenticeship,

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moved into a farm about 30-40 kilometres from Düsseldorf towards the Dutch border.

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And I stayed there for a year and a half or so, learning farming.

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Thank you to our sponsors! This depicts a segment of a four-day interview with Frank Arjava Petter

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For all the videos and the list of sponsors visit our website:
www.reiki-conciliation.org

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Translation: AI
Transcript: René Vögtli