II am thinking about Deleuze, the movement of becoming. To extinguish the sound of the brook, I must become the sound; to enter the brook, I become part of it. When I linger in the forest, I take part in the silence and the chirping, the rustling of the leaves. I become one with nature. [...]
Koan
Ein koan, that is. I had often heard about these mysterious Zen riddles, which are supposed to lead the mind out of the purely rational and open up new forms of insight. I decided not to read much about it and not to ask others about it. I wanted to get one from a Zen master. During Doksan he asked me a [...]
General intelligence and the cosmic archive
II am in a sesshin, a 2.5-day short form of intensive Zen meditation. My thoughts and images keep coming back to me about the artificial general intelligence (AGI) that we are currently creating. More and more people from the fields of humanities, psychology or team organization are impressed, surprised, anxious about the capabilities of AGI. It seems that [...]
Form and emptiness
Form is empty. It has a form, but no substance; it is neither matter nor energy. Form is consciousness - seeing something as something produces form. However, form is also functional: substance, matter and energy interact according to laws. As part of consciousness, they interact in form. Form is emptiness. Form is consciousness. Consciousness [...]
Bodhi Zendo
Bodhi Zendo I had ordered a book to take with me to Bodhi Zendo: "Zen in the Art of Ink Painting" by Katharina Shepherd-Kobel. It is a beautiful book, it speaks to me and feeds my longing to learn ink painting and to deepen my meditation. When I got involved in Zen meditation 3.5 years ago, the act of [...]
Sacred Energy
Dhis is tantra. That is divine. The crucial question is whether such a sacred encounter is only possible in romantic love, as tradition and romance suggest - or whether it can arise when we open our being fully, beyond reason and rationality, beyond ego, desire or obligation. I believe [...]
Shadow
Shen I first heard about shadow work decades ago, I wondered what exactly it was. I always thought of deep abysses in the soul, traumas, taboos, secrets that you didn't share with anyone because it was too shameful to talk about them. I thought that shadows are what we hide from ourselves and [...]
Spritual growth
When I began reading the Upanishads, I realized that the inner path I had embarked upon was leading me into an extraordinarily beautiful inner landscape. Discovering that this inner landscape is connected to cosmic consciousness made me aware of the important work I must undertake-what people often call "inner work." As I committed myself to [...]
Art Before Theory
Art Before Theory (short summary) Christoph Kluetsch This lecture is the final one in my winter series. I have given six lectures so far, and I have been challenging myself throughout. Today, I am taking on my biggest challenge yet. I have been exploring topics that interest me-topics that represent a collision between Western art [...]
Yantras: Sacred Geometry in Nature, Body and Machines
The spider brings forth its own web. This image from the Upanishad invites deep meditation on how nature brings out a thread that it forms into a complex symmetry. Looking at the spider, the thread, and the web-its function and the source of the complex pattern-we have an image that invites deep speculation about mantra, [...]
Who is seeing when seeing
Auro Art World organized a series of 6 lectures at the Centre d'Art multimedia room in Auroville. These lectures, conducted by Dr. Christoph Kluetsch, explore connections between art, philosophy, and spirituality, bridging Eastern and Western traditions to illuminate the enduring questions of existence, consciousness, and creativity. The series is offered on the first Tuesday of every month. Fourth lecture - Tuesday 7th January [...]
Retinal Art and the Ruins of Representation
Retinal Art and the Ruins of Representation: Revisiting Plato's Cave and the Notion of Rasa in the Natyashastra Christoph Kluetsch "Something in the world forces us to think. This something is not an object of recognition, but a fundamental encounter." Gilles Deleuze - Difference and repetition p. 139 "Minds exist only in relation to other [...]
2nd lecture: Irumbai Temple as Yantram (Apparata)
During the Chola Empire, the layout of Shiva temples was formalized to a great degree. Based on the Agamas and Shastras, the temple was fully developed into a place in space, time, and consciousness where the microcosm and macrocosm mirror each other. When a temple is built, a site will be chosen, and it has [...]
1st lecture: Apples and Mangoes
The snake in paradise seduced Eve to eat a fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge that holds the distinction between good and evil. Why was the tree of knowledge a forbidden tree? Why did the snake seduce Eve? What did the fruit taste like? When I asked myself why I want to talk about [...]
Play and Blunder
Spiel - misstep In the West, I used to think that playing had to do with games and games had to do with rules. To play a game is to enter a space that is constrained by rules, and the player can develop strategies within those parameters to act according to the rules, with the goal of [...]
Understand
What does it mean to understand another person? It's easy to understand a counterpart when you agree, because then you simply agree with yourself, perhaps even enjoy seeing your own thinking reflected in the other, enriched by a slightly different perspective, more colorful, more lively, more energetic, because both are happy to have found someone [...].
Full moon
Et is full moon in India. Time for self-reflection, meditation and inner reflection. I have never really thought about death. It has always been a boundary for me, the thing that defines our existence in a negative way. Finitude throws us back on ourselves, or so I thought. I somewhat agreed with Heidegger here. Something [...]
Structure and process
Dhe traditional music of India, the raga, is melodic in relation to a keynote. Occidental music is harmonic, i.e. simultaneous and complex. In the Occident, much is thought in terms of structures; for a while there was much talk of structuralist and post-structuralist thinking. Complex systems can be found everywhere: in philosophy, in canonical texts and pictorial systems, in technology [...]
Enlightenment
AEnlightenment - enlightenment: the paradox of enlightenment Enlightenment is one of those things. Someone recently asked me if I was looking for enlightenment. I was a little taken aback. But because I held this person in particularly high esteem, I tried to be honest - yes, no, um, I don't really know, actually I do, if I [...]
Psychic Being
II broke off my night meditation a little earlier to switch to writing meditation. A few things suddenly seemed clear to me. The need to align my own body in meditation, to find the right position, which for me means following the movements, the tensions and relaxations of the muscles, the skeleton, the spine. Then the breath [...]