New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness only exists in connection with other consciousness
Texts on Upanishads, Meditation, Yoga, Mantras, Brahman, Aurobindo, and Spiritual Practice in India.
As a teenager and student, I started meditating, and I still have vague memories of my first meditations from that time. Strength and calm, concentration – mostly at night. These were very special moments. I didn't do it often. As a student, I continued to meditate very irregularly. I remember some of these mostly 1-2 hour meditations as if they just happened. I always lacked the words (when I forced myself to name it, I reluctantly said transcendental), I…
Weiterlesen
“the eye thinks even more than it listens” (Deleuze) I now recall that, before I started reading Deleuse, I had been wrestling with a process aesthetics. I had cobbled together a 100-page manuscript, with notes, quotes, structural sketches. I wanted to move away from the idea that art consists of objects perceived in a particular form, because this leads to two essential threads of consideration: 1.) What constitutes an object we designate as art, and 2.) why is the perception...
Weiterlesen
I'm slowly approaching Sanskrit. On Thursdays, Nishtha holds a seminar on the Rigveda. The joint recitation in Sanskrit, the detailed analysis of the translation, Nishtha's philological considerations, and the explanations of the psychology of the gods open up access to these ‚sacred‘ texts. I remember my Latin studies, the Indo-European roots, the sounds that echo in the Ragas, phonetics as an expression of existence, language as sound and vibration, communication as rhythm. The breath of life, yoga, vitality, thinking in...
Weiterlesen
The last time I seriously wondered what I should do was during college. I studied philosophy, and I was often asked what I wanted to do with it. What a stupid question, I always thought. It's an inner drive, almost a compulsion, that you can't resist. Any such attempt must fail, there's only thinking ahead. So it wasn't really a question of what I should do, or what was to be done,...
Weiterlesen
Yesterday I fell asleep with the expectation of waking up early to meditate. I set my alarm for 6 AM. In the evening, a French yoga instructor and mountain guide told me that the early morning hours in India are the best for meditation – I already knew they were good for *ryas*. She also spoke of the morning chants in the cities; I remembered the mantra chants in the temples. I woke up at 5:30 AM. Temple chants were...
Weiterlesen
I remember I've always stared into the fireplace since I was a child. Many people do that, I think. Fire is fascinating. In the Vedas, Agni is the god of fire, one of the 5 elements alongside water, air, earth, and ether. The Greeks also have these elements. I didn't understand this for a very long time and found it ‚unscientific‘. I thought of elements in terms of physics and chemistry, and there it only makes limited sense. Mythology Within the...
Weiterlesen
For many years I've known I wanted to practice ‚yoga‘ but never got around to it. Similar to meditation, I didn't feel ready for it, or I was put off by Western esoteric forms that ultimately view both meditation and yoga as self-optimization. Meditation and yoga are philosophical, spiritual, and ultimately transcendent practices; overcoming one's self, opening oneself to a greater consciousness. All of this seems so clear now. My ‚study‘ of Indian philosophy is slowly taking shape...
Weiterlesen
For many years now, my mind has been filled with emptiness most of the time. My memory isn't good either, and I often repeat words or sentences in my mind without knowing why. Often, it's simply experiences in a word in an endless loop, so to speak, like a mantra. This worried me for a long time. I tried to find excuses and justifications for it. For example, that I've done a lot of mental work and my mind is simply exhausted, down to...
Weiterlesen
German German 
English
French