I was born in Zurich in 1938 into a family of entrepreneurs. At an early age, having left school without any formal qualifications, I was entrusted, alongside my cousin, with managing and expanding the music business founded by our grandfather and built by our fathers. The lesson I learned was that entrepreneurial success flourishes best on a combination of inner fire, professional expertise and service to the common good.
As a singer, my wife Elisabeth was more active musically, and we were lucky enough to experience music’s incredible capacity to touch people’s souls and bring them together. Music is one of the focuses of our lives to this day.
Many years ago, Elisabeth and I discovered Jungian psychology, and this encounter marked the starting point of our personal development. Later, Zen, Tao and our experiences of the paths of yoga helped us to grow further. It is to the convergence of these many and varied paths to Oneness that I owe my experience of an essence that transcends the boundaries between religious belief systems as well as encompassing them.
If the intention to express this infinite love and wisdom in the way we feel and think and act in our everyday lives is not to remain an empty promise, we must acknowledge and incorporate the darker aspects of our nature – the overwhelmingly unconscious personal, cultural and animal influences that can surreptitiously confound our actions. Instead of being ashamed and irritated by them, we may recognise them with an open heart and acknowledge their potential to enrich our being. If we do so, we will gradually learn to perceive the constantly emerging challenges of each moment with greater clarity. Abundance fuels our emotions, our thoughts and our actions!