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.
My perception changes when I arrive in India. The smell, the sounds, the slowness, the intuition, the acceptance, hope are wonderful things I see. Others may see stench, noise, inefficiency, irrationality and resignation to fate, despair. I think it is this other gaze that allows me to feel at ease in India. So I have had quite wonderful experiences. I have learned that different people have different views of the same things. I learned by going from A to B…
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What should I take to India? I want to live a different life, in a different society, with different ideas and goals. It is warm there; life will be simple. Apart from the basics, such as a few clothes, I need my technical devices: laptop, phone, camera. And what else? A good flashlight, because the dirt roads there are not lit. And books… There will be a number of libraries there too. I have not read for ‘pleasure’ for a…
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There was a time in Europe when people spoke of polymaths. In Germany, this would be Alexander von Humboldt, or Goethe; in France, an Enlightenment thinker; in Italy, the Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci. In antiquity, Aristotle. Surely there are wise people in many cultures and epochs of whom history tells us that they knew everything one could have known at the time. Of course, that is nonsense. But this narrative serves a longing. We want to know everything, yet…
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Black holes pose riddles for us. I am not a cosmologist and engage with black holes through popular science, with a philosophical interest. They mark a limit of our imagination. Gravitational force influences space and time, science says. Concentrated at one point, it compresses matter into its pure substance, squeezes atomic nuclei and electrons together into a mass (atoms consist largely of emptiness, after all). With its incredible gravitational force, this mass draws everything in and bends and distorts space…
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It is now definitely time to rethink. What our fathers and grandfathers called progress is destroying our planet. Science is not an end in itself, not everything technically possible is good, not everything that is fun and satisfies our senses is meaningful. Now we hear again and again from many sides that we should concentrate on the small steps in front of us; only in this way would we move forward together. This may occasionally be right too, but it…
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Last year I took part in a Zen meditation circle. Less because I understand myself as a Zen Buddhist than because I sought the quiet community in which to pursue my practice. During Dokusan, I allowed myself to actively trace my questions. I gave up much and left it behind. That was surprisingly easy. The ‘teacher’ drew my attention to the fact that the homelessness I am actively setting in motion in practical terms is also a spiritual state. That…
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An intense month comes to an end. Moving, physical separation, friends separating, the love of godchildren, new friendships, longings, waiting… I could write a screenplay about the past few weeks in Provence. Every day filled with pain, compassion and love—collectively in different constellations. But I do not want to tell these small stories, although Marcel Pagnol might perhaps have enjoyed them. What occupies me is the question of pain. Life is suffering, Buddhists say—to put it very briefly. Wanting and…
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In the Kena Upanischade it is described how the Self as such does not exist. Who sees in seeing, who hears in hearing? This cannot be answered. In the Christian tradition, a Self was constructed for this. I see, I hear, cogito ergo sum, imago ergo sum… What is that supposed to be, this cogito (I think), this imago (I imagine)? That I which establishes identity, bears responsibility, acts and interacts. It seems clear that thinking, when it is conscious…
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