The Significance of
Advent and Christmas
in the 21. Century
Dear friends, Today we are celebrating Advent once again. Despite my illness, I want to use this Advent season to point, in urgent words, to the realistic possibility of global healing. I have described this possibility many times; it still exists. It lives in the image of the “Sacred Matrix” and the corresponding Healing Biotopes.
by Dieter Duhm, 1st Advent 2025 – Download pdf
‘In the stable in Bethlehem’ by Walery Sijtbaalow – mouth painter
This picture was painted with the mouth. Isn’t that a pure miracle?
The word Advent comes from Latin and means “arrival.” What is arriving? Where do we arrive? The old hopes have failed. The more terrible the opposing forces, the wars, the conflicts in love, and the weather catastrophes rage on Earth, the more inevitably we face the question of how there could still be a rescue for humanity and the Earth. The more honest, urgent, and existential this question becomes within us, the clearer an answer appears:
Yes! We have a fundamental opportunity for liberation. I mean both individual and global liberation. It is about a new understanding of our own nature, which in Christmas terminology is a new understanding of our ‘birth of Christ.’ This means that human beings once more rediscover and reaccept the divine dimension of their lives and the great possibilities associated with it — not in a romanticized way, but by putting it into practice. We are familiar with the many reports of ‘supernatural’ abilities such as clairvoyance, miracle healing, or communication with the deceased. These are facts that point to the existence of ‘another reality.’ ‘Faith can move mountains,’ as Jesus said. And in a similar way, we could say today, ‘Faith can end wars.’ There is a wonderful truth in this. But we do not need to perform miracles to understand the truth of the Christ nature anchored within us. We can start where we are today, in the real world.
Every person has an inner point within themselves where they know whether they are being honest or not, whether they have spoken out of envy and anger or out of solidarity, whether they have expressed an opinion out of conviction or to impress others. This is a crucial point of truth and certainty in a community. It is a point on which everything else depends. There are countless situations in everyday life where it is habitually much easier to deceive than to stick to the truth. This prevents trust and a common goal from developing.
But when the members of a community nevertheless succeed in remaining faithful to the truth, then what Teilhard de Chardin called the ‘inner anchorage of God’ arises within them. In Tamera, we have chosen the word ‘God point’ for our morning contemplations. We wanted to gather together every morning at this point — and we still do. Let us hear once again the admonishing words that God says to Meister Eckhart: ‘I am always with you, but you are so rarely at home.’
In this context, Advent is our way home. And Christmas is then the celebration of our arrival in our true home. This is where our rebirth takes place, from which our freedom, our growth and our love germinate. It is the celebration where the human and the divine are identical, because there is no reason for separation. Where people come together in this sense, the forces for planetary healing sprout. A powerful soul world emerges that overcomes all divisions, that responds to hostility with kindness, to injury not with revenge, and to dominance not with submission: the human world of Healing Biotopes.
And this world does exist! It exists latently here at our table, and it wants to manifest itself here and now in our words and deeds. It is only a question of our decision. But it is a powerful decision that can create new (morphogenetic) fields on Earth. In this context, I would like to refer to my two writings: ‘The Decision, Part 1 and Part 2.’ Volume 3 is still in a mysterious process of birth.
I know the most horrible things that people have done and continue to do to each other. I experience the corresponding depression. Nevertheless, I must exclaim from time to time: the world is incredibly beautiful! I am aware of the privilege of being able to recognize this beauty without threat. It feels like the beauty of a newly gained life. Beneath all the rubble of the last millennia lies an almost incomprehensible reality of shapes, colours, synergies and ever-changing compositions — a beauty of encounters, greetings and thoughts. Let us drink from this nectar together, and then reflect on it with a clear mind. Then we will discover together how we can help and heal today’s world with unexpected powers. It is an experience of the ‘divine’ world and our existence in it. The world rejoices when we accompany such gatherings with music and song. Behind all our conflicts lies another world. And behind all the present confusion shines an eternal sun that has been waiting so long to be discovered.
I quote the words of the Mother of Auroville:
There comes a time when life as it is, and consciousness as it is, appear to be something that is absolutely impossible to bear…. We are in a very special situation, a highly special one, one that has never been seen before. We are now witnessing the birth of a new world. It is very young, very weak — not in its core essence, but in its outward manifestation — not yet recognised, not even felt, even denied by humanity. But it exists. It is here and striving to grow. It is completely certain of its success. But the path to get there is a completely new one, one that has never been traveled before — no one has gone there yet, no one has done that. It is a beginning, a universal beginning… That is why it is a completely unexpected and indeterminable adventure.
The authentic experience of God — that is, the living encounter with the Sacred — is one of humanity’s fundamental experiences. It is a fundamental experience in faith and love. It resonates permanently with the self-healing powers of all life. All people participate in this experience, consciously or unconsciously — and a primal longing resonates in all of them as soon as this experience touches their hearts. What they seek is security and a home in something greater.
After all my political activities, I see that we must take the religious question seriously in a new way. This is an aspect of life without which much can no longer be understood or changed. In order to achieve the intended goal of peace, we need a strong common will and a realistic relationship with reality, and this includes, first and foremost, a realistic relationship with the divine dimension of our existence on Earth. If this dimension no longer exists in our consciousness, if we have truly negated or lost it completely, then we can no longer recognise the path to healing for ourselves and for the world.
In concrete terms, this means that if we do not incorporate the divine dimension of our possibilities into our thoughts and actions, into our love and our struggles, into our own development and into the development of our communities, then we will fail because our concept of ‘reality’ is too narrow. This is one of the reasons for the failure of most communities — and for the unresolved conflict in love.
We have largely lost the divine power inherent within us, which I described in my book ‘The Immanent God.’ How can we rediscover it today? That is the ‘religious’ question of our time. It is also the fundamental political, social, ethical, artistic and philosophical question of our time — and it is the fundamental question of healing on which the further course of our destiny and our future depends, including the destiny of our children and our children’s children.
After all the historical atrocities committed by cults, churches and religious wars, we are now faced with a precarious task if we want to give the concepts of ‘God,’ ‘religion’ and ‘Christ power’ a new and truly humane interpretation. But it is precisely here that we are seeking a global understanding that transcends all religious churches and divisions, because what is meant does not belong to a particular religion or race, but to the spiritual nature of all human beings.
Divine power is the healing power of life. It lives as a self-healing force in all living beings, guides the actions of a gifted healer and brings about miraculous healings in seemingly hopeless situations. How can we open ourselves to its arrival? How can we celebrate true ‘Advent’? This question is honest and at the same time a little absurd, because we all have this divine dimension and power within ourselves, deeply embedded in our hearts and minds. I recall once again the words of God in Meister Eckhart: ‘I am always with you, but you are so rarely at home.’
We carry God as the spiritual central organ in our entire organism. This also applies, on various levels, to all other living beings. That is why we are — consciously or unconsciously — in constant cooperation with our fellow creatures. We are all — from grubs to humans — colleagues in the structure of evolution. Our inner growth consists of entering into this cooperation with enthusiasm and joy (the vision of Healing Biotopes). Then the opening happens by itself. If we understand this, we have understood almost everything.
The living cooperation between humans, animals and nature naturally means that we encounter our animal and plant companions in a new way. Above all, it is an encounter in the wonderful frequency of trust. This is where our futurological report on the arrival of the new era begins; it is a dream of a world that dreams within us until we have realised it. In such a community of trust, a common heart beats. Here there is no fear of one another, no lies and violence, no enmity, no hecticness and no war. Nor are there any slaughterhouses. People, matured by the experience of new possibilities for contact, now look into a new world, set foot on a new earth and paint new pictures. They welcome their fellow creatures in the solidarity of their common development.
Now they have arrived at the source of power of their existence, and now the process of global healing begins, for true healing is reconnection with the primal force field of life. Small, determined groups can be enough to initiate the planetary healing process.
The primal force field of life includes the spiritual twins faith and love. They both proclaim the power that has been trying to reach us for so long. When it finally arrives, we marvel at the historical labyrinths that we humans have had to navigate since the Neolithic Age in order to find the way. Faith and love are a fact. The divine dimension of our lives is a fact; love is its mystery. The mystery reveals itself when we create the right spaces for experience. When the mystery has reached us, we find ourselves in the ‘state of grace of love,’ and then we celebrate Christmas. That is the goal of the journey, the goal of all journeys, all future places and Healing Biotopes. Wherever this goal is achieved, the ‘Holy Land’ emerges. Our present biography is a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. With love and faith, the inner struggle ceases, and the gates of power and compassion open of their own accord. The inner space of knowledge opens up, giving the coming peace activists the courage to serve life and its truth without restraint.
Service to truth and life. Even in the taboo areas of our lives, in the areas of sexuality and love! Eros and love are the greatest gifts we have received from the universe. The participants in the Healing Biotopes live in a spiritual world that is based on contact and trust. In this world, free sexuality and committed partnerships can complement each other wonderfully. We still envision a community in which one person’s sexual affection for another no longer causes fear, jealousy or hatred in a third person. All lovers are warmly invited to participate.
Every true love — whether heterosexual or homosexual — is a service to the world. And every loving relationship that has overcome jealousy receives the kiss of the goddess.
High Spirit, many of us have reached places so dire that we could only cry out for help. Now we are beginning to realise that it was we ourselves, we humans, who, through many errors, attempts at correction and new derailments in the karma of history, have repeatedly recreated this collective pain. Today we recognise the task and the real possibility of ending the pain. In this context, we ask for worldwide support for the path of Healing Biotopes and for all other paths of healing.
We stand at a turning point with all creatures on our planet. Enough of the horror. Lead us step by step and word by word into the image of our resurrection and Your revelation. And so that we may believe in it ever more firmly, please reveal Yourself to us, in our own bodies and our own rebirth.
In the name of love for all creatures.
THANK YOU AND AMEN.