New Spirits – Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness exists only in connection with other consciousness
Posts on consciousness, thought, immanence, representation, and philosophical transformation in the Reading Deleuze in India project.
There is a strange place within me, there where the word Self tries to point something out. That place of stillness and calm where I am with myself and look out for the Self. A place deep in the heart, free of ties to the outside world, a place where being alone feels right. No expectations are active there; other people are certainly present in memory or in thought, but they have no influence. That place where the word Self…
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Movement Instead of Rootedness Recently I asked myself whether I really want to be grounded at all. Am I a tree that drives its roots into the earth and does not move, but grows in the surroundings where the seed once sprouted? Or do I perhaps want to be a rock in the surf, washed over by water, yielding a little over millennia and losing itself in the sand?My image of human existence is actually a different one: rather that…
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Sometimes I react strangely. Someone does something unexpected, and an insecurity in me is awakened. How do I classify it, and how do I react to it — and what does reacting mean here? It is therefore about expectation, about a being in the world that anticipates. The future is considered predictable, and is also seen as such. If I do this or that, then someone will perhaps react in this way or another. But sometimes it happens that the…
WeiterlesenRamana, one of India’s great enlightened ones, lived in Tiruvannamalai. At the center of his teaching stands the concept of the Self: its emptiness and, at the same time, its immeasurable vastness. His teaching is simple; he does not follow a long tradition of interpretation. He was a simple man who meditated on the mountain and held satsangs. He was a contemporary of Aurobindo; people listened to both of them and compared their radically different approaches. I am in Tiruvannamalai…
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An apple, a strawberry, a melon or a passion fruit, a banana or plum, a tomato or cucumber, a bean or a grain, a coconut and a pomegranate. Fruits want to be consumed; they want to give pleasure, to nourish, and at times also to intoxicate. They shimmer and ferment, decay and give off scents; they catch the eye, bewitch the senses, generate pleasure and enjoyment. They are not quite like this by chance. Fruits mirror a desire in those…
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In Zen, the task is to find the true Self. But it does not exist, and that is the mystery of our existence. In a world of representations, cognitive dissonances, and alternative facts, it feels good to sink into the essence of existence, into non-dual being. Thinking helps only in a very limited way, because thinking is, in fact, always a thinking-of-something, a thinking-about-something. Thinking is an activity that relates to something, that concerns itself with representations of the world.…
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Ever since I first heard of shadow work decades ago, I have wondered what exactly it is. I always thought of deep abysses in the soul, traumas, taboos, secrets one had shared with no one because it was too shameful to speak about them. I thought shadows were what we hide from ourselves and from others. And there is probably something to that idea. But now I have noticed that the shadows first appear elsewhere. They are, in fact, more…
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The snake in paradise seduced Eve to eat a fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge that holds the distinction between good and evil. Why was the tree of knowledge a forbidden tree? Why did the snake seduce Eve? What did the fruit taste like? When I asked myself why I want to talk about this, I felt like Eve standing in front of the tree, talking to a snake who attempts to seduce me to eat the fruit. Do…
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