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 [...]
Meditation
II have always resisted the word mediation. I was suspicious of many things about it. At the same time, however, I have always practiced my own forms of meditation without calling them that or without having learned them. For me, mediation includes: a.) contemplation, i.e. sinking into a thought [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
Flusser
Goday, after many years, I finally drove to the center of Roubion. Vilém Flusser lived here for many years. I quoted his books a lot in my seminars and used them as a basis for discussion. Especially his philosophy of photography. Flusser is a wild theorist. He has written a lot about images, media, language, technology, signs, history... It seems to me that [...]
Packing
What should I take with me to India? I want to live a different life, in a different society, with different ideas and goals. It's warm there, life will be easy. Apart from the basics like a few items of clothing, I'll need my technical devices such as my laptop, cell phone and camera. And what else? A good flashlight, because the field paths there [...]
Knowledge
Ehere was a time in Europe when it was said that there were universal scholars. In Germany this would be Alexander von Humboldt or Goethe, in France an Enlightenment philosopher, in Italy the Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci. In antiquity, Aristotle, there are certainly wise people in many cultures and epochs, of whom history tells us that they [...]
Encounter
SI've been waiting for some time now. Actually, I like waiting. Waiting is a space and a time in which there is nothing else to do but wait for time to pass. As a rule, there's not much else to do apart from read, talk or think. Waiting times are therefore always free spaces for me. [...]
Freeway
Aighways have always been special places for me. Most of the time I wasn't under time pressure, I rarely had to get from A to B in a certain time. Rather, highways are travel routes. I find myself in intermediate states there, a kind of no man's land with an infinite number of possibilities. That opens up thinking spaces. They are often simply empty. The brain is busy [...]
Protected: Soulmate
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Getting out is a question of perspective
Doday life is so complex and there are so many different ways of living. There is no right or wrong way to live. Life is a gift. But what do you say about the negative energies, the destruction and aggression, the greed and resentment? That's all part of it. There is only acceptance. But acceptance means [...]
Moist media
Uur brain is not the seat of our mind, but the medium with which we can reach the spiritual. When I heard this for the first time many years ago at a conference on media theory, I was amazed. Were they really serious? Is it crazy or brilliant? There is this wonderful old-fashioned word 'subtle'. [...]
Carried by feelings
II live in a hyper-complex society. I notice this in political and social issues that no one can really grasp in their complexity anymore. We can cling to principles such as justice, equality, freedom, consideration, sustainability, etc.. But when it comes to the specifics, it becomes difficult. Should I stand up for myself in a conflict [...]?
Kinematograf - Images of thought
While meditating, I often watch my thoughts come and go and try to slow them down. Thoughts come and go, and often I don't understand where they come from and why they are replaced at some point by a completely different thought. What chain of associations is at work here? These chains of thought seem to [...]
Elan Vital - Vitality
Ialways had a stomach ache with an atomistic world view. We learn at school that the smallest components of the universe are atoms. Now physics has moved on and we are talking about protons, electrons, positrons, quarks and strings etc. ... ... But at its core, the idea remains the same: the world is made up of the smallest pieces of matter. This is [...]
How do you build a city?
II am embarking on an experiment. A city is being built in Auroville. It is dedicated to humanity. It is about exploring consciousness, spirituality and unity. UNESCO is supporting the project, the state of India, many people around the world. There is a charter, a plan, many plans, many opinions, progress and difficulties. [...]
Social utopia
Ene of the most serious misunderstandings of recent generations is the confusion between economic and political theory. It seems to be almost a consensus that capitalism is understood as a political theory. There may be many reasons why capitalism needs to be understood politically. There are certainly also reasons why capitalism is often thought of together with democracy. For many [...]