https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Logic_of_sensation.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\nTranscript:<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019m going to start slowly. Hello, welcome. Thank you for coming. I\u2019ve been doing a lecture series here over the last couple of months. This is, I think, the fourth lecture I\u2019m doing. They\u2019re not really related; they\u2019re all different topics. One was on temples, one on retinal art, one on apples and mangoes\u2014just topics I find interesting.<\/p>\n
It was an eye-opening experience when I discovered the Upanishads. I realized that not only are the Upanishads at least as deep as some of the most profound Western philosophies I\u2019ve read, but they actually address a lot of questions I had been searching for. One of them was the question, \u201cWho is seeing when seeing?\u201d So I want to explore that a little bit. I will talk a bit about the Kena Upanishad<\/strong>. I\u2019m not teaching it as a philosopher, because I don\u2019t have the expertise to go too deeply into it, but I will use it as material. Then I want to contrast it with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze<\/strong>, a French contemporary thinker who died in the 1990s\u2014probably one of the most prolific postmodern thinkers of the 20th century.<\/p>\nThe Laoco\u00f6n<\/strong>, from around 27 AD, is probably one of the most famous sculptures. Winckelmann<\/strong> wrote about it, and the key phrase associated with it is \u201cnoble simplicity and quiet grandeur.\u201d The way the bodies are intertwined\u2014how Laoco\u00f6n is fighting the serpent to protect his sons\u2014really captures so much of the energy and essence that defines us as humans, expressing it in a beautiful way that engages the viewer.<\/p>\nSo, when I look at the Kena Upanishad<\/strong>, I\u2019ve highlighted a few things: \u201cWhat gives sight to the eye and hearing to the ear?\u201d I probably don\u2019t need to explain much about this Upanishad to people here, but it makes us aware of how our senses work and what the binding force behind them is. It leads us to meditation and reflection on the relationship of Brahman<\/strong> and Atman<\/strong>. Sri Aurobindo<\/strong> wrote an extraordinary commentary on the Kena Upanishad, which I\u2019ve read many times. It\u2019s incredibly prolific, almost infinitely deep.<\/p>\nLooking at art in the 20th century, we can ask: What is art doing? What does it capture?<\/em> One example is Vincent van Gogh<\/strong>, who painted shoes. Martin Heidegger<\/strong> wrote about those shoes, saying they capture the very essence of \u201cshoeness.\u201d He points out how we can see the earth under the soles, how they are worn. Another example is Paul C\u00e9zanne<\/strong>, who painted apples again and again\u2014there\u2019s something significant about painting an apple instead of simply eating it. Plato, in antiquity, famously mistrusted artists, calling them liars: if you paint an apple, you can\u2019t eat it, so in a sense you\u2019re deceiving people. But C\u00e9zanne might be indirectly responding to that by painting dozens of still lifes with apples, to show we can delve into our very own way of seeing and creating art, and reflect on the world.<\/p>\nWhen I was studying Sri Aurobindo\u2019s commentary, I found a few ideas that really shook me awake. For instance, here is one of those insights: if we suppose that physical senses act through a physical body, we can explain physical phenomena that way. Still, that action is only<\/em> an organization of the inherent functioning of the essential sense<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAnd I was reading this and thought, \u201cWow, this is Sri Aurobindo, talking about the Kena Upanishad, essentially discussing a \u2018body without organs,\u2019 which is usually associated with Gilles Deleuze\u2019s way of thinking. And here it is!\u201d I wondered what he meant\u2014how one goes to the very essence of sensation and talks about it in a way that allows us to think about a body beyond our ordinary notion of organs.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s much less common to think of the body in that way. And Deleuze makes a proposal to consider the \u201cbody without organs\u201d as something that brings thinking into art. He uses Francis Bacon<\/strong> as an example\u2014a famous British painter known for distorted figures that convey pain and distress, expressing the suffering of the 20th century. But what Deleuze says is that when we look at a painting by Bacon, what we see is the actual sensation<\/em>: not merely the face or how hair is flying around, but a subtler level\u2014an inner working of the sensation someone in distress might have. It\u2019s shown through what he calls the \u201clogic of sensation.\u201d<\/p>\nSo, taking that term\u2014\u201clogic of sensation\u201d\u2014back into the Upanishads, what happens?<\/p>\n
Sri Aurobindo, in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad<\/strong>, makes a distinction of five different elements. It\u2019s quite a complex idea. I stumbled over the word \u201cintermissence\u201d<\/strong> because I didn\u2019t know what it meant. When I looked it up, I saw maybe three books in the world use it. It\u2019s a very obscure word, but a valid (though out-of-use) English term.<\/p>\nWhen Aurobindo discusses sensation in relation to the Kena Upanishad, of course he speaks about the five senses and the five elements, intertwining them. He starts by saying, first, we have rhythm<\/strong>, which is sound. Secondly, we have intermissence<\/strong>, this \u201cflowing into each other,\u201d which is touch. If I touch a surface, then my skin and the surface of the object are flowing into each other to a certain degree\u2014otherwise, I wouldn\u2019t be able to touch it. Something stops my body and makes clear there is something else there.<\/p>\nThird is shape<\/strong>, which relates to sight. Fourth is taste<\/strong>, involving \u201cupflow,\u201d or water. Fifth is the discharge or compression of force and movement<\/strong>, which he relates to smell\u2014atoms evaporating from the object and being received by my nose. Beyond these correlations, there is something deeper, as Aurobindo notes. He\u2019s exploring how these senses operate at a profound level.<\/p>\nSo again, the correlation is:<\/p>\n
\n- Rhythm = Sound<\/li>\n
- Intermissence = Touch<\/li>\n
- Shape = Sight<\/li>\n
- Taste = Upflow\/Water<\/li>\n
- Compression\/Discharge = Smell<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I was thinking about what example of 20th-century art could help illustrate this. In 2009, I was at Tate Modern in London for the installation How It Is<\/strong> by Miroslaw Balka<\/strong>. In the Turbine Hall, there was this massive black container, completely dark inside. You walk in, and it\u2019s really a journey into yourself. People move slowly. At the end, you turn around, and light pours in. You see everyone coming toward you, slowly, and you see how you yourself must have looked walking in. So there is this interplay between perception and self-awareness.<\/p>\nSri Aurobindo, in his Kena Upanishad commentary, states that all the senses have a kind of complex unity<\/strong>. They aren\u2019t separate compartments\u2014hearing here, seeing there, taste there, all in isolated boxes within a human being. Instead, it\u2019s a complex unity at the core.<\/p>\nSo, in a way, seeing is connected to hearing, taste, and touch, and they all operate upon each other. I don\u2019t want to go too deeply into modern scientific or philosophical discussions about \u201cWhat if someone is blind or deaf?\u201d\u2014that might raise interesting questions, but at the core, it\u2019s still valid that when we talk about consciousness, when I speak of my<\/strong> experience of the world, these senses flow together. A little like I said before: in Sri Aurobindo\u2019s terms, there is rhythm, intermissence, form, the \u201cupgoing force\u201d (related to rasa), and compression of energy. Somehow, these aspects combine.<\/p>\nSo, when we ask, \u201cWho is seeing when seeing?\u201d it\u2019s really about the consciousness behind everything\u2014whether you call it my consciousness, your consciousness, or Brahman in manifestation. There\u2019s a larger consciousness of which we\u2019re a part, and we participate in that manifestation, thereby allowing the world to \u201csense\u201d itself.<\/p>\n
Another example is James Turrell<\/strong>, a famous American light artist. His Roden Crater<\/strong> project has been in the works for decades; only recently have a few people seen it, and I, unfortunately, haven\u2019t been there myself. He constructs these spaces that open up to the sky, blurring the boundaries between myself, the space I inhabit, and something deeper\u2014the cosmos, the stars, silence. Some of his installations work on the very fine line of perceiving light in and of itself, dimmed down to such a degree that you just begin to see it. In that process, your mind passes through different levels of being\u2014what some might call the chakras or the seven layers. In Indian thought, we might call them prana, rational mind, vijnana, philosophical view, sat-chit-ananda, and so on. The Upanishad guides us to become aware of these sensory and perceptual layers.<\/p>\nImages are fascinating when you think of them philosophically\u2014not just as representations like a painting of something. Images are also what appear on our retina when we perceive. We have them in memory, in visions. I see you, you see me\u2014we see each other. There is a way to think of images as the fundamental layer of our existence, because all I truly have of the world is my perception of it. I don\u2019t directly have \u201cthe world\u201d in my mind; I have a sensation of something, and that\u2019s an image.<\/p>\n
Henri Bergson<\/strong> is a philosopher who was very radical in this regard, and he\u2019s one of the very few Western philosophers Sri Aurobindo acknowledged. Bergson essentially says that our consciousness is dealing with images only. Everything is an image\u2014this object, that object, you, me. Even my body is a particular image, because consciousness has direct access only to these images. We don\u2019t have direct access to \u201cmatter\u201d in our consciousness. Modern science may talk about matter from an analytical perspective, but in our actual<\/strong> conscious experience, there is only this array of images.<\/p>\nThese images also extend into our memory. I can tell you what I was doing yesterday; those memories consist of images. Yesterday no longer exists in the present world\u2014it\u2019s simply gone\u2014but I have images of it. So, in a very strong phenomenological sense, it\u2019s useful to pause and consider that all we have is this interplay of images, here and now.<\/p>\n
We can make sense of images in many ways. We can contemplate them, compare them, act upon them, or even run away from them. There\u2019s something very particular about the image of my body in relation to all the other images that can act on it. That is an extraordinary observation by Henri Bergson<\/strong>: if you follow the Upanishadic path inward to your own body, you\u2019re essentially doing what Bergson describes\u2014treating your body as an image. And the fact that we can act upon other images is found in meditation through the Upanishads, which always point to the force behind everything. Bergson, Deleuze, and others may discuss it differently, but the Upanishads call it Brahman or that deeper principle.<\/p>\nMark Rothko<\/strong> gives a good example of this in his color-field paintings. One might say if you\u2019ve seen one Rothko, you\u2019ve seen them all\u2014two or three rectangular color fields relating to each other. Yet if you visit a large Rothko retrospective, you see dozens of them, and it\u2019s mind-blowing. The tension between the colors and the way they float over a background color create a field of sensation<\/strong>. In painterly terms, that field of sensation is close to what Gilles Deleuze<\/strong> refers to as the plane of immanence<\/strong>\u2014the most fundamental layer. You might think of that layer as Brahman in the Advaita<\/strong> sense: \u201cThere is only one reality,\u201d which unfolds into complexity. That complexity is necessary for anything to be set in motion. Once set in motion, experience becomes possible, and that is how existence gains a sense of itself.<\/p>\nSuch unfolding can only happen through time, through duration, through actual movement. People often say Earth is where things \u201ccome down\u201d to be worked out\u2014whether you call it divine consciousness, soul, or something else. It must take concrete form in reality to experience itself and evolve. Visually, to me, that\u2019s what Rothko\u2019s fields suggest.<\/p>\n
Now, going to the concept of the body without organs<\/strong> in the sense of immanence: consider this as an illustration\u2014Deleuze doesn\u2019t specifically talk about it this way, but it\u2019s a helpful image. When Deleuze discusses the plane of immanence<\/strong>, he views it as having a transcendental field where action and becoming are possible\u2014where \u201csense-creation\u201d can happen. It\u2019s not just the material world we walk around in, but a subtler level that allows a different way for things to emerge.<\/p>\nDeleuze often gives the example of an egg: at first, you have yolk and white, which seem like formless mass. Many of us eat this for breakfast without a second thought, but if you let it incubate, there\u2019s already a chicken in there, in some virtual sense. That\u2019s the \u201cbody without organs\u201d concept: the egg already contains the chicken, even if it\u2019s not yet realized.<\/p>\n
By the same token, my body<\/strong> or your body<\/strong> is a body working with sensations, consciousness, and the analytical mind. We enter the world, connect with each other, speak, form communities, develop institutions, come up with knowledge systems, and create science and art. Through all this, we produce the complexity of modern societies. We reflect on reality in an analytical way, dissecting, reassembling, and building. We invent computers and projectors for gatherings like this. In doing so, we generate new intensities, new connections, new ways of being.<\/p>\nIn interacting with these systems\u2014institutions, electoral processes, laws\u2014there emerges something that operates on its own. It can improve our lives or make them worse. But it functions as a body<\/strong> in itself, an agency in our reality that acts like a \u201cbody without organs.\u201d That\u2019s the power of Deleuze and Guattari<\/strong>: they analyze how society works (or doesn\u2019t), describing problems as a sickness in that body. Recognizing the sickness is the first step to talking about a cure.<\/p>\nDeleuze and Guattari\u2019s analysis of capitalism and schizophrenia basically uses this idea of seeing society as a body that\u2019s not functioning properly\u2014one that is \u201csick.\u201d Once you recognize there\u2019s something wrong in the complex system, you can talk about how to fix it. But first, you need to understand that it\u2019s not simply about you or me making one or two changes.<\/p>\n
Moving on to a more primary level with Deleuze, he talks about percepts<\/strong>, affects<\/strong>, and concepts<\/strong>. If we want to understand how these realities connect to our consciousness, we need to recognize these categories. A percept<\/strong> is not just my perception<\/em>. When I look at this pen, there\u2019s a perception of a pen, which means my consciousness is directed toward it, and at the same time, the pen \u201cpresents itself\u201d to me. You, looking from another angle, see the other side of it. Deleuze calls that pre-personal \u201csomething\u201d a percept\u2014prior<\/em> to our individual perception, and not simply the object itself.<\/p>\nDeleuze says these percepts are akin to what Bergson<\/strong> might call \u201cimages.\u201d We could think of them as \u201cinner senses.\u201d If you go into the Upanishads, you can go much deeper into this. Essentially, percepts are something we can work with; the realm of art taps into that directly.<\/p>\nSimilarly, affects<\/strong> are emotions\u2014fear, joy, love, pain\u2014which occur before I even become consciously aware of them. They\u2019re triggered pre-subjectively in my nervous system. So Deleuze\u2019s idea is that if we look at the complex interplay between the outside world and my inner being\u2014between my sensations, how my consciousness is composed of images, percepts, and affects\u2014we can then see how these can be reworked or rearranged. This leads to a \u201clogic of sensation,\u201d which is an awkward kind of move and not many philosophers do it. Deleuze is in many ways unique; you could even call him a kind of \u201cAdvaita philosopher,\u201d although he would describe it as \u201cmaterialist immanence.\u201d He\u2019s non-committal about whether it\u2019s consciousness or matter, saying it\u2019s just one plane on which things happen.<\/p>\nPaul C\u00e9zanne<\/strong> exemplifies this fragmentation of our perception perfectly. He painted Mont Sainte-Victoire<\/strong> about seventy times, breaking the scene into brushstrokes. None of those individual strokes represents anything by itself. Only together do they form what looks like a field, a mountain, trees, houses. But it\u2019s not photographic realism. We have to think: How am I assembling these strokes to see the landscape?<\/em> It\u2019s almost a meditative process\u2014a deeply spiritual encounter with reality.<\/p>\nShifting back to Francis Bacon<\/strong>: if we consider percepts, affects, sensations, and distortion, and we look at one of his triptychs, we immediately see a formal, rhythmic structure of three images. It\u2019s reminiscent of a traditional Western altarpiece. We might see the same entity repeated, but the body depicted is utterly different from a normal human body\u2014it\u2019s reduced or distorted. It seems alive<\/em>, though not in a straightforward, representational way. I can feel the motion, sense it, and sympathize with the affects it conveys. We see a pre-subjective consciousness of affect rendered visually in these percepts.<\/p>\nDeleuze sometimes draws diagrams to illustrate this. He talks about geological strata<\/strong>\u2014how the Earth has molten magma inside, with layers of stone forming the crust, and tectonic plates shifting to create mountains. Through this folding process, insides and outsides form. Once there is a fold, it can vibrate, leading to dialogue, rhythm, and refrain.<\/p>\nInside the Earth, you have magma. As the planet cools and solidifies, different layers of stone form. Then there are tectonic movements\u2014continents moving toward or away from each other\u2014creating mountains and folds. Eventually, things fold, and when they fold, you get an inside and an outside; there’s some sense of identity forming within that fold.<\/p>\n
Once you have that, things can vibrate, get into a dialogue, or find a rhythm. For instance, if I knock on a surface, and then you knock in response, those two knocks can start a drum session\u2014there\u2019s a shared rhythm. That rhythm creates something<\/em>, perhaps a territory<\/strong>, an area in which we find ourselves. Often, drum rhythms are used to signal to others that people are present\u2014for invitation, to scare, to attack, or to celebrate. In any case, it defines a territory, and within that territory, social events happen.<\/p>\nThis connects to a part of Deleuze\u2019s philosophy of art that states art is ultimately an intersection of different planes of knowledge. He describes a plane of immanence<\/strong>, a plane of concepts<\/strong>, and yet another plane. Think of it in terms of wide conceptual planes for thinking about the world. If you intersect them on a very abstract level, you create an inside and an outside\u2014like building a house, in a metaphorical sense. You surround yourself with art, books, ideas, people; you have a belief system and a way of anchoring yourself in reality; you relate to nature in a specific way, eat certain things, care about certain things.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s how the plane of immanence unfolds in Deleuzian terms. In Upanishadic terms, it might be Brahman bringing itself into existence. It\u2019s not an exhaustive interpretation, but it\u2019s one way of describing it.<\/p>\n
To illustrate this, consider a flock of birds, like the seven sisters or myna birds. There\u2019s a rhythm to how they fly around and chatter. They create a territory and invite others in. Sometimes a different bird joins them\u2014sometimes not. They move on, rearrange, and so forth.<\/p>\n
Coming toward the end, let\u2019s revisit the Kena Upanishad<\/strong>. It doesn\u2019t actually start with seeing; it starts with speech: \u201cBy whom impelled does this word [speech] arise?\u201d In other words, who is speaking when I am speaking? It\u2019s not really \u201cme.\u201d We know this idea from the motif of Shiva\u2019s drum<\/strong>, from which syllables and language come\u2014the beginning of the word itself.<\/p>\nSri Aurobindo<\/strong>, in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad, writes:<\/p>\n\u201cBrahman expresses by the word a form of presentation of himself in the objects of sense and consciousness, which constitutes the universe, just as the human word expresses a mental image of those objects.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here, Brahman focuses on objects through the word, and humans also focus on objects through the word\u2014but obviously they do so in very different ways. Brahman is expressing through sense and consciousness, constituting the universe.<\/p>\n
In looking for a Western counterpart, I remembered Eduardo Kac<\/strong>, a South American media artist, and his experimental project called Genesis<\/strong>. He works with E. coli bacteria, splicing in new genetic code\u2014DNA art, in a sense. It\u2019s a controversial territory in its own right, but it reflects these questions of creation, expression, and what it means to bring something into being through a \u201cword\u201d or a code.<\/p>\nEduardo Kac took a sentence from the Bible\u2019s Genesis\u2014\u201cLet man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth\u201d\u2014so when we speak of Genesis, \u201cIn the beginning was the word,\u201d and at the end of Genesis there\u2019s this notion of man\u2019s power to dominate the earth. That\u2019s a very different understanding of how words can be used. Sri Aurobindo often talks about words as the most powerful means to manifest, to bring something into existence. In spiritual practice, you use words and mantras to transform yourself; the vibration and the sound of words create reality. Brahman forms the world through words.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019ve tried to do here is intersect these profound observations from the Kena Upanishad<\/strong> and Sri Aurobindo\u2019s extraordinary interpretation, looking at \u201cWho is sensing when sensing?\u201d and connecting it with postmodern thinking. Both inform each other quite well. It helps me understand what art is ultimately about on a very deep level\u2014art can be transformative. I\u2019m sure most of us have experienced looking at an artwork for hours, not knowing why, but feeling that it did something to us. Our mind goes into that artwork, entering its plane of sensation, that logic of sensation, beyond narrative\u2014beyond, \u201cOh, this is the artist, that\u2019s the subject, here\u2019s the story.\u201d It\u2019s more about really<\/em> seeing. \u201cWho is seeing when seeing?\u201d is the question. When you engage with an artwork, when you really try to see and observe, that\u2019s where transformation can happen.<\/p>\nAny comments or questions about the \u201cbody without organs\u201d? It\u2019s a concept most famously associated with Gilles Deleuze<\/strong>, the French postmodern philosopher. He borrowed it from Antonin Artaud<\/strong>, who was known in the early 20th century as an actor and theatrical theorist. Artaud wrote about the \u201ctheater of cruelty.\u201d It was a way of creating a shock, exposing the body to forces that propel us into being affected. Film itself is another way of dealing with percepts that evolve under distress, as in \u201ctheater of cruelty.\u201d One connects to these forces\u2014there\u2019s torture or conflict in a certain place\u2014and it all extends into that early idea of the \u201cbody without organs.\u201d<\/p>\nSomehow, it all echoes in Sri Aurobindo\u2019s analysis of the Kena Upanishad<\/strong>. Don\u2019t ask me why\u2014I just found it striking. Deleuze came decades later, and I\u2019m sure Sri Aurobindo wasn\u2019t thinking about the theater of cruelty. But there\u2019s an eerie overlap.<\/p>\nDISCUSSION:<\/p>\n
Audience:<\/strong><\/p>\nThen there\u2019s this other point in the Upanishads about \u201cseeing\u201d or \u201cvision.\u201d In English, we say, \u201cI see what you mean.\u201d William Blake<\/strong> famously said, \u201cTo see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.\u201d How do you see the world in a grain of sand? He\u2019s not talking about looking through a microscope; he\u2019s talking about a different set of eyes. And you have Meister Eckhart<\/strong> in the 13th century saying, paraphrased, \u201cThe eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me.\u201d That\u2019s an entirely different kind of relationship.<\/p>\nYes, exactly.<\/p>\n
One more mention: the artist who used brushstrokes to indicate a mountain was Paul C\u00e9zanne<\/strong>. You said he painted it 70 times in a meditative process?<\/p>\nYes, he painted the same mountain\u2014Mont Sainte-Victoire<\/strong>\u201470 times, possibly from different angles. He lived close to it, would walk around, choose different viewpoints, but essentially kept to the same subject. Over that series, he became more and more abstract. He\u2019s considered the father of Cubism\u2014Picasso<\/strong> was heavily influenced by him\u2014one of those breakthrough artists like Kandinsky<\/strong>, only earlier.<\/p>\nAudience Member:<\/strong>
\nAnd the artist who makes these deformed images\u2014sometimes it\u2019s unpleasant to look at. It provokes something that isn\u2019t a happy feeling. It\u2019s like the \u201ctheater of cruelty.\u201d I understand that was the aim: to create that kind of reaction. These works were painted for museums. They could be marketed. In the past century, a lot of modern art leans in that direction: beauty in the traditional sense is often abandoned. There is still a market for it, but it focuses on creating a shock or disturbance. It reflects what the artist sees inside himself.<\/p>\nI watched a documentary about one such artist; his studio was a mess. He was clearly disturbed, but we still place him very high in the art world, even calling him a genius. Over time, I\u2019ve started to change my taste. One of my favorite artists was Burri<\/strong>\u2014I\u2019m sure you know him, Alberto Burri<\/strong>, the Italian. One of his works was\u2026 well, it depicts great pain. It reflects what the world is going through right now. That pain is put onto the canvas.<\/p>\nOf course, people can go watch a Disney movie if they want an escape from the world. This kind of art, however, represents a harsh reality. It provokes a reaction. Maybe it helps us confront the fact that the world is in pain, and it inspires us to change it. After the Enlightenment in the West, the notion arose that spirituality, religion, or any non-scientific thinking should be set aside\u2014that was part of the Enlightenment process. But it\u2019s an interesting twist on the word \u201cenlightenment,\u201d almost the opposite of what we might mean in a spiritual sense.<\/p>\n
Lecturer (responding):<\/strong>
\nYes, I think that after the Enlightenment, art did jump on that train: it dove into the ugly, the painful, the disturbing, the unusual, the provocative\u2014anything the rational mind can examine and say, \u201cThis is pain, this is perception.\u201d And from a modern perspective, originality<\/em> often became the main criterion: you just have to do something new, whether it\u2019s admirable or not. That\u2019s the logic many follow, though personally, I don\u2019t think that logic applies here.<\/p>\nAudience Member:<\/strong>
\nWhat\u2019s your point of view on art, then? What\u2019s your definition or meaning of art?<\/p>\nLecturer:<\/strong>
\nI\u2019ve had to redefine my view. Part of why I\u2019m doing these lectures is that I\u2019m partly saying goodbye to some of those assumptions. I\u2019ve been disturbed by this for a decade. Sure, I was initially excited by artists like Francis Bacon<\/strong>, seeing all that pain. But at a certain point, I realized that if I look at Bacon through Deleuze<\/strong> and through the Kena Upanishad<\/strong> and Sri Aurobindo<\/strong>, I find something deeper that I want to keep. I don\u2019t care about the treadmill of modernity anymore.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a personal and sometimes painful process. We also have to recognize that we\u2019re unconsciously addicted to certain emotions\u2014sometimes even unpleasant ones. We seek experiences or images, including art, that feed those emotions. So these paintings can be a way people indulge in that.<\/p>\n
Another Audience Member:<\/strong>
\nRegarding astrology and planets: In Sanskrit, the word for \u201cplanet\u201d is \u201cgraha,\u201d meaning \u201cto grasp.\u201d The planets themselves do nothing, but they \u201cgrasp\u201d your mind and direct your perception or actions, engineering certain experiences for you. From another perspective, in the body, Saturn rules the nervous system, and the nervous system is the foundation of whatever experience you have. The Sun rules the bones, etc. In that sense, you see parallels to the concept of \u201caffect\u201d that we discussed\u2014something preexistent to humans.<\/p>\nAnother Audience Member:<\/strong>
\nFrom a Western viewpoint, that might be new, but from an Eastern viewpoint, it\u2019s familiar. And about the Enlightenment you mentioned: I recently read about a meeting of all the world\u2019s religions, including the Dalai Lama and various Christian representatives, and one priest pointed out that the Enlightenment was, in a way, a scientific \u201cproving\u201d of certain constitutions, but we got confused and thought it meant discarding religion altogether. It\u2019s a tragic misunderstanding.<\/p>\nLecturer (concluding):<\/strong>
\nYes, indeed\u2014it\u2019s a very tragic confusion. Alright, thank you all for coming!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Auro Art World organized a series of 6\u00a0lectures\u00a0at the Centre d\u2019Art multimedia room in Auroville. These\u00a0lectures, conducted by Dr.\u00a0Christoph\u00a0Kluetsch, explore connections between art, philosophy, and spirituality, bridging Eastern and Western traditions to illuminate the enduring questions of existence, consciousness, and creativity.\u00a0The series is offered on the first Tuesday of every month. Fourth\u00a0lecture\u00a0– Tuesday 7th January […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[718,371,376],"tags":[230,56,36,35,20,203,13],"class_list":["post-5020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-aurobindo","category-upanischaden","tag-auroville","tag-cezanne","tag-francis-bacon","tag-ich","tag-religion","tag-system","tag-theorie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5030,"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5020\/revisions\/5030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/readingdeleuzeinindia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/04.Seeing-354x500.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLogic of sensation<\/a>\n