New Spirits – Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness exists only in connection with other consciousness
Texts on the Upanishads, meditation, yoga, mantras, Brahman, Aurobindo, and spiritual practice in India.
The last time I seriously asked myself what I should do was during my studies. I studied philosophy and was often asked what I wanted to do with it. What a stupid question, I always thought. It is an inner urge, almost a compulsion, that you cannot oppose. Every such attempt must fail; there is only a thinking forward. So it was not really the question of what I should do, or what was to be done, or how the…
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Yesterday I fell asleep expecting to get up early and meditate. I set the alarm for 6 o’clock. In the evening, a French yoga teacher and mountain guide tells me about the early morning hours in India, that they are the best for meditation—I already knew that they were good for Ryas. She also spoke about the morning chants in the towns; I remembered the mantra chants in the temples. I woke at 5:30; temple chants could be heard in…
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I remember that ever since childhood I have always stared into the fire in the fireplace. Many do this, I think. There is something fascinating about fire. In the Vedas, Agni is the god of fire, one of the 5 elements alongside water, air, earth and ether. These elements exist among the Greeks too. For a very long time I did not understand this and found it ‘unscientific’. I thought of the elements from the perspective of physics and chemistry,…
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For very many years I have known that I want to practice ‘yoga’, but I have never done it. As with meditation, I did not feel ready for it, or was put off by Western esoteric forms that ultimately understand both meditation and yoga as self-optimization. Meditation and yoga are philosophical, spiritual and ultimately transcending practices for overcoming one’s own Self, opening oneself to a greater consciousness. All this seems so clear now. My “study” of Indian philosophy is slowly…
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For 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 sentences in my mind without knowing why. Often they are simply experiences in a word on an endless loop, in a sense like a mantra. For a long time this worried me a great deal. I tried to find excuses and justifications for it. For example, that I had done a great deal…
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I still lack the words. The past few days have been shaped by thoughts about the Vedic scriptures. A fellow traveler from another life took me to Nishtha Muller, an Aurovilian who has devoted his life to the Vedic scriptures. For almost two hours, in his very modest dwelling in the forest he planted himself, he told us about Sanskrit, its roots, grammar, pronunciation, the deep spiritual force of the mantras, the cultural history and historical dimension. What stayed with…
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Yesterday I saw two millipedes mating. It was pretty much the most fascinating thing I have seen in a very long time. The creatures entwined themselves in one another, rubbed and courted one another; there was rhythm, devotion, engulfing. The two had met by chance, and after a few minutes moved on in different directions. An encounter. They were two forms of life that had united to beget further life. A Life – A Life Today I then reread Deleuze’s…
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Recently I listened to a podcast about dreams and was once again very surprised. The director of the sleep laboratory in Mannheim says that anyone can train themselves to remember dreams. I, at any rate, can do that, so that is true. What still surprises me greatly, however, is the reduction of dreams to the subconscious. Dreams supposedly only make use of stronger images to draw our attention to working on something we neglect in waking consciousness. A pity and…
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