New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness only exists in connection with other consciousness
I have just returned from a devotional meditation. It's the anniversary of Sri Aurobindo. He left his body 72 years ago, as they say here. I have been thinking and talking a lot about his commentaries on the Kena Upanishad for the last few days. I came across the word 'intermiscence'. It is almost only used by Aurobindo. [...]
I am 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 reflections and the explanations on the psychology of the gods open up access to these 'sacred' texts. I remember my Latin studies, the Indo-Germanic roots, the sounds that [...]
The last time I seriously asked myself what I should do was during my studies. 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 urge, almost a compulsion that you can't resist. Every such [...]
I remember always staring into the fire since I was a child. Many people do that, I think. There is something fascinating about fire. In the Vedas, Agni is the god of fire, one of the five elements alongside water, air, earth and ether. The Greeks also have these elements. I didn't realize this for a very long time [...]
Yesterday I saw two millipedes mating. It was pretty much the most fascinating thing I've seen in a very long time. The creatures intertwined, rubbed and entwined, there was rhythm, devotion, engulfment. The two met by chance and after a few minutes moved on in different directions. A [...]
I've been reading in India for three weeks now: Deleuze, Upanishads, Sri Aurobindo. Sometimes I meditate in between. The rest is still a remnant of everyday life in the New World. Reading the news, consuming entertainment media, organizing things that don't really have any meaning here but need continuity so that they don't break down in old Europe and the New [...].
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 [...]
Yesterday, after many years, I finally went to the village 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 [...]
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