Donations
Board of Trustees
Patronage Committee History
Links

History

Foundation

Commissioned by the Vedic teacher Sri Haidakhan Baba, Center of Unity Schweibenalp was founded in 1982 by Dr. Sundar Robert Dreyfus, Fredy Aly and Silvia Bollag. It is a place where traditional religions and cultures connect with new spiritual approaches to form a religion of the heart. The Center was founded as a place for a multicultural community seeking to realize truth, simplicity, love and the experience of unity. Ultimately, this unity is the core of all diversity. Center of Unity Schweibenalp is one of the first seminar centres in the German-speaking area to establish interreligious dialogue with international lecturers. In collaboration with a number of persons following various spiritual directions, the founders have been involved in fulfilling the mission ever since.

SCHWEIBENALP – A PLACE OF POWER SINCE PRIMEVIL TIMES

Celtic Druids

The oldest findings made by archaeologists suggest that in Celtic times Schweibenalp used to be a Druids' place with many Druid trees and caves. This power can still be felt today. For example, there are some extremely powerful stones to be found in this area - some of them are asleep while others are awake, bristling with power. In the past few years, we started to deliberately awaken them and return to them their vitality. Whether nature is experienced as being alive or not depends on the spiritual understanding of each individual person. The Celts were closely connected to nature, the elements and Spirit breathing life into nature – similarly to many indigenous cultures that still exist today. It is possible to visit these stones. The trees, too, are very special up here, albeit not quite as old. On our property and all across the Alpine pasture, there are many sentinel trees or protection trees – mostly beech trees and sycamore trees – some of which are more than one hundred years old. In nearby Giessbachtal, there are also caves to be found.

Christianity

In the 6 th and 7 th centuries C.E., this rugged area of elemental nature was Christianized when Irish monks came to proselytize and spread the word of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. St. Beatus – after whom the miles-long St. Beatus Caves and the municipality Beatenberg have been named – and his co-monk or brother Justus (Justis Valley) lived in caves on the shores of Lake Thun. After their martyrdom, they still appeared to the locals as apparitions over the lake.

With Christianity becoming the general religion, the followers of ancient beliefs were persecuted. Anything to do with soulful nature and sensuous physicality, with magic and rituals was demonized. The Druid trees around Schweibenalp were cut down. The caves were filled in. The Alpine pasture fell to St. Gall Monastery, a large monastery – founded by the hermit and martyr St. Meinrad – which possessed much property all over Switzerland in the period from the peak of the Roman Catholic Church's power up to the Reformation. The Way of St. James, Europe's most popular pilgrimage at that time, ran across Schweibenalp. Today, there are still many ancient remainders of the pilgrims' way to be found at Schweibenalp.

Health-Resort-Turned-Orphanage

There is very little information available for the period until the turn of the 19 th century, when the Schweibenalp health resort was founded. Due to its altitude and mountain air this location was ideal to cure tuberculosis, which was rampant at that time. The half-timbered house was constructed using timber from the nearby woods and stones from Giessbach brook. Only the mortar had to be transported to Schweibenalp on the backs of mules on mule tracks. At that time, neither the road nor the hamlet Axalp existed. They were built by unemployed persons during the Great Depression. Shortly after World War II, Schweibenalp health resort was first turned into an orphanage and then into a holiday resort. Apparently, these were not the best of times for being a child. Most visitors who tell stories of that time do not have very positive memories of their stay at this place.

Purification

We still remember the first large akasha seminars at Schweibenalp with co-founder Dina Rees who reported that many souls and elements were listening in on the seminars in order to make further progress.

In January 2008, a small group of people convened a homeopathic trituaration seminar according to Samuel Hahnemann. In order to comfort and deliver the souls of those who had suffered from tuberculosis and the children who had endured times of hardship, we triturated the „Star of Bethlehem” and experienced very strong reactions within ourselves as well as a sense of great relief in this place. This work is not confined to one particular place in time and space, of course, but benefits the whole morphogenetic field of those suffering from tuberculosis or hardheartedness, of children dying, and helps to restore the dignity of women.

THE CENTER OF UNITY SCHWEIBENALP

In 1981, the physician and psychotherapist Sundar Robert Dreyfus was commissioned by the Indian teacher and avatar Sri Haidakhan Babaji to establish an ashram and centre in Switzerland. In 1982, the “Foundation for the Realization of Truth, Simplicity and Love“, founded for this end, succeeded in acquiring the Schweibenalp property. The site had been rather deserted and unattended during the preceding few years and, even today, many things are still dilapidated and need renovation. The Center managed to commence operations before its patron Sri Babaji died in February 1984. Although the most essential renovation had been carried out, work and life at the Center was characterized by utmost simplicity: temple service, voluntary work and mediation became the be-all and end-all. It was a small community of idealistic helpers living together who were dedicated to spiritual practice and work. They built a place of ritual to perform Indian fire and temple rituals on a daily basis and, occasionally, services and rituals of many other Western and Eastern indigenous traditions from all over the world. According to their function, these practices built and spread a force, furthering a restoration of the individual and cosmic order and the connection to the source of life. Accordingly, this place was called siddhashram, site of divine power, dedicated to the Divine Female or the Divine Mother, which had been forgotten in Western culture. Babaji approved of the Center's direction and the principles of living in truth, simplicity, love, unity and peace. To date, this has remained our focus. True to our name, we have carried and convened right from the beginning interreligious work and celebrations of unity, gathering spiritual representatives, believers and seekers from many different traditions. In doing so, we have celebrated that which we all have in common, while respecting and discussing our differences and our diversity, thus opening up ourselves for a form of new global humanity beyond all cultural and religious barriers. It is here that ancient traditions meet the New Age in the best sense of the word. By performing rituals, prayers or meditations, by dancing, singing, doing communal work and coping with everyday situations in a large group of people, we contributed towards a morphogenetic field that has spread widely and been recognized around the world.

In this spirit, teachers, such as mystics Dina Rees, Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, Sri Muniraji and Sri Ammaji, Sufi teacher Scheikh Nazim, Dr. J.J. Hurtak and Desiree Hurtak, his wife, various Tibetan Buddhist Lamas, teachers of Zen, representatives of various indigenous peoples, priests and ministers of Christian churches visited our place to convene retreats and seminars.

Being a seminar and training venue, we have hosted many long- and short-term seminars, covering personal realisation as well as collective and ecological issues. In addition, there have also been festivals of spiritual art and music.

The Center is connected to many movements, places and teachers with a common spirit, and was part of an international group of centres, including Findhorn, Auroville, and Esalen, that used to meet annually for an exchange of ideas.

One of the first centres of its kind in Europe, it has become a point of departure for the foundation of many other small and large centres, in cities and beyond, that facilitate the development of a new consciousness in all corners of the world.

Since the mid-1990s, counter-cultural life has started to become saturated and increasingly commercial. It became apparent that grand-scale changes in consciousness would be longer in coming than previously hoped for. Tensions between the fundamental and orthodox representatives of ancient traditions, tensions on the grounds of vast economic differences widening the income gap in industrialized countries, endless centres of conflict, civil wars, genocides and increasing one-sided exploitation of the earth bear testimony to the fact that we have not yet reached the point of a general turnaround or change. Bearing testimony to this are the millions of youths and street kids who are lost in mega cities and also the fact that all over the world women, girls and anything female-motherly-intuitive-merciful are still being suppressed by those pursuing the male-rational-competitive-unfeeling way.

Partly Concluding its Mission, the Center Got Ready for New Tasks

Despite all these many changes, the Center's aims and ideals have remained unchanged: being a location where visitors may develop their hearts and minds in order to integrate this development into their everyday lives. However, we have noticed that seekers today pursue new ways and means to bring about change within and without. The area of interest, both individually and collectively, has shifted towards transmuting the personal and the spiritual/transpersonal at the same time and focusing more strongly on one's own experience rather than on the ideational. Consequently, the Center's focus has shifted away from connecting to the invisible world by performing traditional rituals – although we will continue to do so – in favour of experiencing directly the universals of human life in the “here and now”. Unity may be experienced by integrating all the partial aspects of life while trusting in the positive forces within and without. In the context of our everyday life at the Center, we are now exercising ourselves in the art of communal life that includes members and guests, and using techniques such as silence, contemplation, thankfulness, bonding, clearing, creativity of playing, singing, dancing, the arts and knowledge teaching, in order to integrate these practices into our daily routine.

Today, Center of Unity, does not subscribe to any one tradition, religion, teaching, philosophy or to any specific master or belief system.

We profess our faith in transreligious and intercultural ideas, i.e., the one within the many that transcends the particularity of the individual.

Having said that, the following description of Schweibenalp's patron, Haidakhan Babaji, is to be understood as an expression of our connection to the invisible helpers and masters in the spiritual world whose support is essential for the world's progression.

BABAJI

From 1970 – 1984, Babaji taught in the Himalayan foothills in his ashram by the Gautam Ganga river. Having been prophesied two decades before by his predecessor Sri Mahendra Maharaj, he manifested in 1970 in a cave in Haidakhan and spent the first few years barely speaking or eating.

The best part of the first 14 years of his teaching in public Babaji spent in the remoteness of his ashram, located in a hardly accessible mountain vale. He travelled to India to visit sacred pilgrim sites, to revive ashrams and temples, and to give his disciples and students the opportunity of being near him and celebrating with him ancient Vedic rituals.

Not a man of many words, he nevertheless possessed a very powerful presence. His way was a very unusual one, Tantric and Yogic at the same time, and, depending on their nature and origin, everyone experienced him completely differently.

He asked his students to implement his teachings, which can be summarized in a few lines:

1. All is One

2. As a result: focus on what you have in common instead of what separates you and realise this consistently, bravely and fearlessly in order to bring about a just world.

3. Humanity is the highest of religions. Live out the religion of your heart. All religions come from God and are one.

4. We are living in times of great change. Great transformation is about to happen. The most important and most effective way to weather these changes is work, selfless work – in terms of mind, soul, society and body – done both on and for oneself as well as the greater good.

5. Incessantly remember God and repeat his name in your heart.

6. Cultivate the community, live in truth, simplicity and love.

7. By devoting ourselves to God's will we can deliver, realise and save ourselves and the whole world.

In 1982, Siddhashram Schweibenalp was founded by order of Babaji.

Siddhashram means “centre of spiritual power”.

Further information on the Internet:

www.babaji.net

“I am no-one and nothing. This body has no meaning. It is here to serve people... I am the mirror, in which you can see yourself.”

“Seek the consciousness that we are all one. I have come to show you a unity beyond all duality. I have come to remove the divisions between all religions.”

“I have come to unite all people regardless of their origin. There is only one humanity. I want to show you a freedom beyond all your imaginings. I will build a water-hole where the lion and goat may come together and drink. If you are happy, I am happy. If you are in peace, I am in peace. Have faith. Everything depends on faith.”

I have shown the way; now it is up to you to become liberated and bring relief to the world.”