Et was a magical four days. The Auroville Film Institute organized a residency with Ustad Bahauddin Dagar from 7 to 10 November 2022. It took place at Bhumika Hall, Bharat Niva's Auroville. Dhrupad - the movie (1983) Ustad Bahauddin Dagar is a Rudraveena player. His family has been playing the instrument for 20 generations! His father and [...]
Roots - Edible
Dhe Solitude Farm in Auroville is a 'food forest'. This is one of the few English terms that is difficult to express in German with a compound noun (Esswald?). We don't have anything like that, and it's hard to think about. An orchard that we would let run wild with other edible annuals and short-lived plants until [...]
Empty
Sor many years now, my mind has been filled with emptiness most of the time. My memory is not good either and I often repeat words or phrases in my mind without knowing why. Often it is simply experience in a word in an endless loop, like a mantra so to speak. This worried me a lot for a long time. [...]
Mantras
Me are still at a loss for words. The last few days have been characterized by thoughts about the Vedic scriptures. A companion from another life took me to visit Nishtha Muller, an Aurovillian who has dedicated his life to the Vedic scriptures. He spent almost 2 hours telling us in his very humble abode in the forest that he himself planted [...]
Music
II didn't take much with me to India, a backpack full of clothes, books and technology. But I packed a good pair of headphones and bought an external cell phone hi-fi sound card from Tempotec for the USB-C output - it wasn't cheap, but it's excellent. I was very pleased when it [...]
Immanence
GYesterday I saw two millipedes mating. It was pretty much the most fascinating thing I've seen in a very long time. The creatures intertwined, rubbed and entwined, there was rhythm, devotion, engulfment. The two met by chance and after a few minutes moved on in different directions. A [...]
Sleep research
Nhe other day I listened to a podcast on the subject of dreams and was once again very surprised. The head of the sleep laboratory in Mannheim says that anyone can train themselves to remember dreams. At least I can, so that's true. But what really surprises me is the reduction of dreams to the subconscious. Dreams would only remember stronger images [...]
Healing
Curry! Every morning there are mildly spiced, wonderful Indian dishes. They are light and complex, there seem to be 1001 spices in them. At lunchtime, Solarkitchen, the community canteen, is simple, vegetarian and good. The principle is healthy food for everyone, everyone can afford it. In the evening, these wonderful dishes again. What they don't serve: Alcohol, meat or fish, [...]
Read
Se have been reading in India for three weeks now: Deleuze, Upanishads, Sri Aurobindo. Sometimes I meditate in between. The rest is still a remnant of everyday life from the New World. Reading the news, consuming entertainment media, organizing things that don't really have any meaning here but need continuity so that they don't break in old Europe and the New [...].
OM Choir
Hoday I was in a choir lesson. What happened there was a very intense shared experience. I'll try to describe it as objectively as possible. We (around 60 participants) started with breathing exercises, 'warmed up' our vocal chords, sang four-part chords and scaled the pitch. The choirmaster pointed out to us that we were not here by chance [...]
Temple building
II recently met a young Indian here. He comes from Delhi and for him, South India is also a foreign world, although not as foreign as it is for me. He doesn't speak Tamil and his spirituality is also a bit more serene or enlightened, as you might say. I met him again on the street [...]
Protected: Meditationsnotitzen – 10.10.22 Matrimandir
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Meditation notes - 6.10.22 Matrimandir
Hoday was my first time at Matrimandir. I had a guided tour 6 years ago, which is a prerequisite for going there alone later. It's also useful to have a rough idea of what kind of place it is, how to behave there, what would disturb others. During my Monday meditations in the Zen circle in Bremen [...]
Context
Schopenhauer, who was a great admirer of the Upanishads, wrote a small book "Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde" (1847). He identifies 4 forms of causality, e.g. small cause - large effect, or large cause - small effect etc... I was fascinated by this because it offers a broader understanding than the purely [...]
Gauges
IToday I was at a place for village children with special needs (Deepam). Someone from the guest house here had invited me to accompany them. It was a kind of ceremony as part of Navarathri in honor of Goddess Saraswathi - she stands for education, prosperity and success. In India today, the objects used for work [...]
From the archive
In 2017 we were in Varanasi. Varanasi is the spiritual center of Hinduism. Those who are burnt here in the fires that Shiva lit 2500 years ago and which have been burning ever since are freed from the cycle of suffering.
Center guest house
Iany films feature good hotels that are centrally located and where the political, intellectual and economic elite meet. I have always perceived this as something very elitist, colonial and power-hungry. What I missed in the films, and was probably rarely a topic there, is the networking that takes place in such places. [...]
Arriving in Auroville
MMy perception changes when I arrive in India. The smell, the sounds, the slowness, the intuition, the acceptance, the hope are wonderful things that I see. Others may see stench, noise, inefficiency, irrationality and doom and despair. I think it is this different view that allows me to feel comfortable in India. So I have quite [...]
Birdsong
Auroville was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfasse. The architect Roger Anger developed the city plan for it. It is based on a cosmic spiral nebula. The land that was made available to Auroville was a dry plateau. A forest has been planted since the early years. There is a beautiful, slow documentary about it (Ever Slow Green (2020) - S.O.S. [...]
Attention
An a boulevard in Paris, café and bad music, sun and lots of people. So many people want to be seen. They are busy, sexy, cool, knowing, adventurous, sporty, educated, cultured or indifferent. Many want others to take notice. They see themselves as what they want to be. Perhaps they live their lives in a certain [...]