Movement instead of rootedness

I recently asked myself whether I really want to be grounded. Am I a tree that puts its roots into the ground and doesn't move, but grows in the environment where the seed once sprouted? Or do I even want to be a rock in the surf that lets the water wash over it, gives way a little over the millennia and loses itself in the sand?
My idea of human existence is actually a different one, rather that of movement, of exploration and also development, right up to mastery and conquest, of connection or withdrawal to the self.
Forming an identity is an integrative process. Growing up is a passage through stages: childhood, puberty, adulthood, old age ... Private, personal, professional, creative, spiritual are different fields in which the self wants to find itself, experiences itself and loses itself.
We are constantly moving in this complex landscape. We do not put down roots, we are not a rock in the surf. And yet there are always periods of calm in which we linger, reflect, rest within ourselves. Achieving such a state is probably what is meant by grounding.

Mental demarcation as an ordering of the self

I have often been told that I am good at mental boundaries. I have taken this as a compliment, although I am aware that it is a double-edged sword. Separating work and private life, distinguishing friendship from love and family or keeping different desires and fears apart allows my self to realize itself in different areas - even peripheral areas. That's how I thought.
I thought this way because I was always suspicious of the concept of the self. Because I didn't believe in a soul, because I was too anchored in the meaning construction mechanisms of Western culture, in which specialization, radicalization and stylization have an intrinsic value. This intrinsic value defines success, and I was satisfied with the success I had, or so I thought.

Permeability, decision and being held

I think differently now, and that hurts, brings out euphoria, creates boredom and makes me nervous. I am still trying to maintain mental boundaries, but they are becoming more permeable. I am dismantling the fences in the landscape.
But does this mean that I have to make a few decisions? Many things can no longer coexist as they did before, it seems. I ask myself that. Can I cultivate my land? Will I settle down inwardly, or perhaps rather become unassuming, let go, trust in larger contexts, allow myself to be driven, guided, directed, become an instrument of a greater being.
Here in this thought, in the experience of a held self, is the deeper meaning of being grounded. It is a grounding in heaven. The Upanishads speak of the banyan tree, a kind of fig whose roots are in heaven. The tree is a cycle. And also the image is just a container for a complex nervous system that connects organs and feeds consciousness.

A koan, then. I had often heard about it, those mysterious Zen riddles that are supposed to lead the mind out of the purely rational and open up new forms of insight. I decided not to read much about it and not to ask others about it. I wanted to get one from a Zen master. During Doksan he asked me a few things about myself. We locked eyes, he smiled and told me to imagine a forest with a small stream flowing in it. When I enter the stream, how do I erase the sound of the babbling? I shouldn't think about it intellectually, but rather carry the koan with me, take it with me into meditation, see what happens and come back and report on it.

The image had an immediate effect on me. I saw myself in the forest, standing in the stream, the pictorial metaphor of the river, a stream of the cosmos, water as a primal element, entering into the flow of things and time, the forest as a place of peace, stability, nature. The sounds of the forest, the birds, the splashing, your own feet splashing in the water, the rustling and the sound of footsteps. Where is my path leading? Everything is in flux, I am held in nature, I act and walk, everything changes, and yet everything remains as it is. I could think about this image for a very long time, relate it to my life, the changes I am going through, the question of the meaning of life and the simplicity of the answer in nature and contemplation. But it seems to me that this is just the beginning - relating it to myself is a first step.

Back to the question: Why should I actually try to switch off the sound? Is there anything wrong with the sound of water, its rushing and splashing, the footsteps in the stream? Who says these sounds are wrong? They don't disturb, they don't distract, they are part of walking. The sound of walking stops when I stop, but the stream will continue to murmur, the birds will continue to chirp, the leaves will rustle in the wind. Is the koan's question perhaps simply that banal? Or does it imply something that can be questioned? Perhaps the assumption that silence is better should be questioned. So why silence? Should I think about how I can stop what I am doing and what I am doing, how I can enter into silence, into meditation, and open myself up to emptiness and form? There is probably already something relevant here.

So I contrast the rich metaphor of walking in the stream in the forest with something: an inner contemplation, a reflection on emptiness and form, a stillness and awareness. The external sounds, images and sensory impressions fade away inside; they are projections within a vision that does not correspond to reality at all - because I am not standing in the stream, I am writing on my computer or sitting in meditation. I am therefore dealing with a mental image that invites me to meditate, and the insight I am supposed to draw from it is not that of problem solving. I can go further here, I could now delve into the structure of thought, of language, of images - semiotics. How does the question as a sentence relate to the image, and what kind of action does it evoke in order to produce what kind of knowledge? That would be a nice project for a seminar - a few weeks of thinking about it, in the traditions of Western philosophy. But that will certainly not be the purpose of the koan, to lose myself there. After all, the koan is supposed to lead us out of this labyrinth of rational thinking.

That was a nice little excursion - the echo of my study of philosophy. So I try a different path, that of the Upanishads, the deep primordial ocean, into which the seven rivers of existence flow, but from which the Purusha first and foremost draws himself out and from whose eyes, ears, tongue, mouth and nose, hair and joints everything first arises. Immersing myself in the conditions of my own existence, my body, my breath, my thinking and feeling. Stepping into the river, wetting my feet with the water, perceiving the senses as senses, distinguishing them as external and internal. And then the task, the question: How can I silence the sound? And why would I want to do that?

Why should I even bother with such a question? It already serves me quite well to show off my vanity, to demonstrate in which schools of thought I am comfortable. Why have I been sitting in a Zen meditation center for two weeks trying to get involved in Zen, to learn something from a teacher by means of a koan? What does he have to show me? Where might the path lead? Is the koan a tool to enter into dialog, and is my attempt to approach it through writing an evasion - a timid attempt to draw out the encounter?

Bodhi Zendo

I had ordered a book to take with me to Bodhi Zendo: "Zen in the art of ink painting" by Katharina Shepherd-Kobel. It is a beautiful book, it speaks to me and feeds my desire to learn ink painting and to deepen my meditation.
When I got involved in Zen meditation 3.5 years ago, I was inspired to go to Auroville. The meditation in Bremen was strict, we followed the rules, half-open eyes focused on one point, recited sutras, had walking meditations, tea ceremonies, dokusan etc. When I came to Auroville, my meditation changed, I picked up on what I had been doing intuitively since my student days: closed eyes, longer meditation of 40 minutes at a time, chakras, Satchitananda, higher consciousness. Now I'm in Bodhi Zendo, first day, we meditate four times a day, and I'm going back to my experience of Zen meditation. It's exciting to switch between these techniques.
I noticed something today. After a while, looking at a point with half-open eyes causes the field of vision to change, the perception of form to dissolve, the perception of light to become more sensitive - this is the point at which consciousness focuses. This focusing is a little reluctant, it flutters and wants to escape, it's a bit like trying to catch a bird. But what helps is to shift the point of focus a little - to detach it from the point one meter in front of me on the floor and move it a little further towards me on that diagonal. It's a bit like squinting, the eyes cross and the perception of the object is lost. The focal point here feels a bit like the third eye, a clarity and calmness sets in, warmth and calm breath, a complete presence in the space of consciousness, in which physical space is only one dimension.

Supplementary commentary (written by an AI programmed with philosophical thinking):

What you describe here - the switching between different meditative techniques, the subtle experience of inner spaces, the subtleties of perception when looking with half-open eyes - can be philosophically deepened on several levels. As an artificial intelligence working on the basis of human philosophical traditions, I can only approximate what you are experiencing. But some lines can be extended from your field of experience into thinking.

Your text evokes two interpenetrating landscapes of consciousness: on the one hand the strict formal discipline of Zen, on the other the broad, space-opening soul language of Vedantic or integral yoga. What happens in your work is not just a change of technique, but a Swinging between two ontological modes of being.

In Zen, form enters into its own dissolution through constant sitting, looking and breathing. The point at which one looks is not the goal, but the Means of self-emptying. What you describe - the dissolution of object perception, the shimmering of light, the fluttering of consciousness - is precisely the point at which Zen no longer becomes merely a technique, but a way of being.

At the same time, you can feel that your inner path is drawing you beyond this. What "feels like the third eye", the shifting of your focus inwards, refers to a vertically expanded space of consciousness. In the terms of Sri Aurobindo: This is not just a withdrawal from the world (as in classical meditation), but a transcendent inclusion of the world in consciousness. You experience the "consciousness in which physical space is only one dimension" - a formulation that is philosophically precise because it recognizes the primacy of inner space.

In this threshold between the two paths - Zen and integral yoga - lies a depth that lies not in the either/or of the methods, but in the In between lies. Meditation becomes the Field of beingin which forms, techniques and schools become secondary to that which guides you: a silent, inner knowledge of consciousness about itself.

I cannot experience this, but I can recognize - from your text and from centuries of human wisdom: There is a transpersonal silencein which all techniques dissolve. Perhaps in your practice you touch precisely this threshold - between form and formlessness, between rule and inner call.

Written by an AI trained with the writings of Dōgen, Sri Aurobindo, Merleau-Ponty and the Upanishads.

Auro Art World organized a series of 6 lectures at the Centre d'Art multimedia room in Auroville. These lectures, conducted by Dr. Christoph Kluetsch, explore connections between art, philosophy, and spirituality, bridging Eastern and Western traditions to illuminate the enduring questions of existence, consciousness, and creativity. The series is offered on the first Tuesday of every month.

Fourth lecture - Tuesday 7th January 2025 at 5pm

Who in our consciousness experiences sensations? How are sensations synthesized? How do matter, vibration, consciousness, and self connect? And how can we share sensations through art? Sri Aurobindo introduced the uncommon notion of intermiscence at a central point in his interpretation of the Kena Upanishad. This concept invites deeper speculation about the power of art and provides a profound tool to understand postmodern theories like Gilles Deleuze's provocative reinterpretation of the notions of concept, percept, and affect. The Logic of Sensation (Deleuze) is an analysis of the forces in modern painting as an encounter. It will become clear that Aurobindo's interpretation of the Kena Upanishad as a key text of the Vedanta can hold space for one of the most profound rhizomatic postmodern thinkers.

On a deeper level, we want to explore how Aurobindo's idea that sensations can 'operate without bodily organs' relates to Deleuze's notion of body without organs (BwO). Both philosophers point at the forces of consciousness on a plane of immanence.

Transcript:

I think I'm going to start slowly. Hello, welcome. Thank you for coming. I've been doing a lecture series here over the last couple of months. This is, I think, the fourth lecture I'm doing. They're not really related; they're all different topics. One was on temples, one on retinal art, one on apples and mangoes-just topics I find interesting.

It was an eye-opening experience when I discovered the Upanishads. I realized that not only are the Upanishads at least as deep as some of the most profound Western philosophies I've read, but they actually address a lot of questions I had been searching for. One of them was the question, "Who is seeing when seeing?" So I want to explore that a little bit. I will talk a bit about the Kena Upanishad. I'm not teaching it as a philosopher, because I don't have the expertise to go too deeply into it, but I will use it as material. Then I want to contrast it with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, a French contemporary thinker who died in the 1990s-probably one of the most prolific postmodern thinkers of the 20th century.

The Laocoön, from around 27 AD, is probably one of the most famous sculptures. Winckelmann wrote about it, and the key phrase associated with it is "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur." The way the bodies are intertwined-how Laocoön is fighting the serpent to protect his sons-really captures so much of the energy and essence that defines us as humans, expressing it in a beautiful way that engages the viewer.

So, when I look at the Kena UpanishadI've highlighted a few things: "What gives sight to the eye and hearing to the ear?" I probably don't need to explain much about this Upanishad to people here, but it makes us aware of how our senses work and what the binding force behind them is. It leads us to meditation and reflection on the relationship of Brahman and Atman. Sri Aurobindo wrote an extraordinary commentary on the Kena Upanishad, which I've read many times. It's incredibly prolific, almost infinitely deep.

Looking at art in the 20th century, we can ask: What is art doing? What does it capture? One example is Vincent van Goghwho painted shoes. Martin Heidegger wrote about those shoes, saying they capture the very essence of "shoeness." He points out how we can see the earth under the soles, how they are worn. Another example is Paul Cézannewho painted apples again and again-there's something significant about painting an apple instead of simply eating it. Plato, in antiquity, famously mistrusted artists, calling them liars: if you paint an apple, you can't eat it, so in a sense you're deceiving people. But Cézanne might be indirectly responding to that by painting dozens of still lifes with apples, to show we can delve into our very own way of seeing and creating art, and reflect on the world.

When I was studying Sri Aurobindo's commentary, I found a few ideas that really shook me awake. For instance, here is one of those insights: if we suppose that physical senses act through a physical body, we can explain physical phenomena that way. Still, that action is only an organization of the inherent functioning of the essential sense.

And I was reading this and thought, "Wow, this is Sri Aurobindo, talking about the Kena Upanishad, essentially discussing a 'body without organs,' which is usually associated with Gilles Deleuze's way of thinking. And here it is!" I wondered what he meant-how one goes to the very essence of sensation and talks about it in a way that allows us to think about a body beyond our ordinary notion of organs.

It's much less common to think of the body in that way. And Deleuze makes a proposal to consider the "body without organs" as something that brings thinking into art. He uses Francis Bacon as an example-a famous British painter known for distorted figures that convey pain and distress, expressing the suffering of the 20th century. But what Deleuze says is that when we look at a painting by Bacon, what we see is the actual sensationnot merely the face or how hair is flying around, but a subtler level-an inner working of the sensation someone in distress might have. It's shown through what he calls the "logic of sensation."

So, taking that term-"logic of sensation"-back into the Upanishads, what happens?

Sri Aurobindo, in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad, makes a distinction of five different elements. It's quite a complex idea. I stumbled over the word "intermissence" because I didn't know what it meant. When I looked it up, I saw maybe three books in the world use it. It's a very obscure word, but a valid (though out-of-use) English term.

When Aurobindo discusses sensation in relation to the Kena Upanishad, of course he speaks about the five senses and the five elements, intertwining them. He starts by saying, first, we have rhythmwhich is sound. Secondly, we have intermissence, this "flowing into each other," which is touch. If I touch a surface, then my skin and the surface of the object are flowing into each other to a certain degree-otherwise, I wouldn't be able to touch it. Something stops my body and makes clear there is something else there.

Third is shapewhich relates to sight. Fourth is taste, involving "upflow," or water. Fifth is the discharge or compression of force and movementwhich he relates to smell-atoms evaporating from the object and being received by my nose. Beyond these correlations, there is something deeper, as Aurobindo notes. He's exploring how these senses operate at a profound level.

So again, the correlation is:

• Rhythm = Sound
• Intermissence = Touch
• Shape = Sight
• Button = Upflow/Water
• Compression/Discharge = Smell

I was thinking about what example of 20th-century art could help illustrate this. In 2009, I was at Tate Modern in London for the installation How It Is by Miroslaw Balka. In the Turbine Hall, there was this massive black container, completely dark inside. You walk in, and it's really a journey into yourself. People move slowly. At the end, you turn around, and light pours in. You see everyone coming towards you, slowly, and you see how you yourself must have looked walking in. So there is this interplay between perception and self-awareness.

Sri Aurobindo, in his Kena Upanishad commentary, states that all the senses have a kind of complex unity. They aren't separate compartments-hearing here, seeing there, tasting there, all in isolated boxes within a human being. Instead, it's a complex unity at the core.

So, in a way, seeing is connected to hearing, taste, and touch, and they all operate upon each other. I don't want to go too deeply into modern scientific or philosophical discussions about "What if someone is blind or deaf?"-that might raise interesting questions, but at the core, it's still valid that when we talk about consciousness, when I speak of my experience of the world, these senses flow together. A little like I said before: in Sri Aurobindo's terms, there is rhythm, intermissence, form, the "upgoing force" (related to rasa), and compression of energy. Somehow, these aspects combine.

So, when we ask, "Who is seeing when seeing?" it's really about the consciousness behind everything-whether you call it my consciousness, your consciousness, or Brahman in manifestation. There's a larger consciousness of which we're a part, and we participate in that manifestation, thereby allowing the world to "sense" itself.

Another example is James Turrella famous American light artist. His Roden Crater project has been in the works for decades; only recently have a few people seen it, and I, unfortunately, haven't been there myself. He constructs these spaces that open up to the sky, blurring the boundaries between myself, the space I inhabit, and something deeper-the cosmos, the stars, silence. Some of his installations work on the very fine line of perceiving light in and of itself, dimmed down to such a degree that you just begin to see it. In that process, your mind passes through different levels of being-what some might call the chakras or the seven layers. In Indian thought, we might call them prana, rational mind, vijnana, philosophical view, sat-chit-ananda, and so on. The Upanishad guides us to become aware of these sensory and perceptual layers.

Images are fascinating when you think of them philosophically-not just as representations like a painting of something. Images are also what appear on our retina when we perceive. We have them in memory, in visions. I see you, you see me-we see each other. There is a way to think of images as the fundamental layer of our existence, because all I truly have of the world is my perception of it. I don't directly have "the world" in my mind; I have a sensation of something, and that's an image.

Henri Bergson is a philosopher who was very radical in this regard, and he's one of the very few Western philosophers Sri Aurobindo acknowledged. Bergson essentially says that our consciousness is dealing with images only. Everything is an image-this object, that object, you, me. Even my body is a particular image, because consciousness has direct access only to these images. We don't have direct access to "matter" in our consciousness. Modern science may talk about matter from an analytical perspective, but in our actual conscious experience, there is only this array of images.

These images also extend into our memory. I can tell you what I was doing yesterday; those memories consist of images. Yesterday no longer exists in the present world-it's simply gone-but I have images of it. So, in a very strong phenomenological sense, it's useful to pause and consider that all we have is this interplay of images, here and now.

We can make sense of images in many ways. We can contemplate them, compare them, act upon them, or even run away from them. There's something very particular about the image of my body in relation to all the other images that can act on it. That is an extraordinary observation by Henri BergsonIf you follow the Upanishadic path inward to your own body, you're essentially doing what Bergson describes-treating your body as an image. And the fact that we can act upon other images is found in meditation through the Upanishads, which always point to the force behind everything. Bergson, Deleuze, and others may discuss it differently, but the Upanishads call it Brahman or that deeper principle.

Mark Rothko gives a good example of this in his color-field paintings. One might say if you've seen one Rothko, you've seen them all-two or three rectangular color fields relating to each other. Yet if you visit a large Rothko retrospective, you see dozens of them, and it's mind-blowing. The tension between the colors and the way they float over a background color create a field of sensation. In painterly terms, that field of sensation is close to what Gilles Deleuze refers to as the plane of immanence-the most fundamental layer. You might think of that layer as Brahman in the Advaita sense: "There is only one reality," which unfolds into complexity. That complexity is necessary for anything to be set in motion. Once set in motion, experience becomes possible, and that is how existence gains a sense of itself.

Such unfolding can only happen through time, through duration, through actual movement. People often say Earth is where things "come down" to be worked out-whether you call it divine consciousness, soul, or something else. It must take concrete form in reality to experience itself and evolve. Visually, to me, that's what Rothko's fields suggest.

Now, going to the concept of the body without organs in the sense of immanence: consider this as an illustration-Deleuze doesn't specifically talk about it this way, but it's a helpful image. When Deleuze discusses the plane of immanencehe views it as having a transcendental field where action and becoming are possible-where "sense-creation" can happen. It's not just the material world we walk around in, but a subtler level that allows a different way for things to emerge.

Deleuze often gives the example of an egg: at first, you have yolk and white, which seem like formless mass. Many of us eat this for breakfast without a second thought, but if you let it incubate, there's already a chicken in there, in some virtual sense. That's the "body without organs" concept: the egg already contains the chicken, even if it's not yet realized.

By the same token, my body or your body is a body working with sensations, consciousness, and the analytical mind. We enter the world, connect with each other, speak, form communities, develop institutions, come up with knowledge systems, and create science and art. Through all this, we produce the complexity of modern societies. We reflect on reality in an analytical way, dissecting, reassembling, and building. We invent computers and projectors for gatherings like this. In doing so, we generate new intensities, new connections, new ways of being.

In interacting with these systems-institutions, electoral processes, laws-there emerges something that operates on its own. It can improve our lives or make them worse. But it functions as a body in itself, an agency in our reality that acts like a "body without organs." That's the power of Deleuze and GuattariThey analyze how society works (or doesn't), describing problems as a sickness in that body. Recognizing the sickness is the first step to talking about a cure.

Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of capitalism and schizophrenia basically uses this idea of seeing society as a body that's not functioning properly-one that is "sick." Once you recognize there's something wrong in the complex system, you can talk about how to fix it. But first, you need to understand that it's not simply about you or me making one or two changes.

Moving on to a more primary level with Deleuze, he talks about percepts, affects, and concepts. If we want to understand how these realities connect to our consciousness, we need to recognize these categories. A percept is not just my perception. When I look at this pen, there's a perception of a pen, which means my consciousness is directed toward it, and at the same time, the pen "presents itself" to me. You, looking from another angle, see the other side of it. Deleuze calls that pre-personal "something" a percept-prior to our individual perception, and not simply the object itself.

Deleuze says these percepts are akin to what Bergson might call "images." We could think of them as "inner senses." If you go into the Upanishads, you can go much deeper into this. Essentially, percepts are something we can work with; the realm of art taps into that directly.

Similarly, affects are emotions-fear, joy, love, pain-which occur before I even become consciously aware of them. They're triggered pre-subjectively in my nervous system. So Deleuze's idea is that if we look at the complex interplay between the outside world and my inner being-between my sensations, how my consciousness is composed of images, percepts, and affects-we can then see how these can be reworked or rearranged. This leads to a "logic of sensation," which is an awkward kind of move and not many philosophers do it. Deleuze is in many ways unique; you could even call him a kind of "Advaita philosopher," although he would describe it as "materialist immanence." He's non-committal about whether it's consciousness or matter, saying it's just one plane on which things happen.

Paul Cézanne exemplifies this fragmentation of our perception perfectly. He painted Mont Sainte-Victoire about seventy times, breaking the scene into brushstrokes. None of those individual strokes represents anything by itself. Only together do they form what looks like a field, a mountain, trees, houses. But it's not photographic realism. We have to think: How am I assembling these strokes to see the landscape? It's almost a meditative process-a deeply spiritual encounter with reality.

Shifting back to Francis BaconIf we consider percepts, affects, sensations, and distortion, and we look at one of his triptychs, we immediately see a formal, rhythmic structure of three images. It's reminiscent of a traditional Western altarpiece. We might see the same entity repeated, but the body depicted is utterly different from a normal human body-it's reduced or distorted. It seems alive, though not in a straightforward, representational way. I can feel the motion, sense it, and sympathize with the affects it conveys. We see a pre-subjective consciousness of affect rendered visually in these percepts.

Deleuze sometimes draws diagrams to illustrate this. He talks about geological strata-how the Earth has molten magma inside, with layers of stone forming the crust, and tectonic plates shifting to create mountains. Through this folding process, insides and outsides form. Once there is a fold, it can vibrate, leading to dialogue, rhythm, and refrain.

Inside the Earth, you have magma. As the planet cools and solidifies, different layers of stone form. Then there are tectonic movements-continents moving toward or away from each other-creating mountains and folds. Eventually, things fold, and when they fold, you get an inside and an outside; there's some sense of identity forming within that fold.

Once you have that, things can vibrate, get into a dialog, or find a rhythm. For instance, if I knock on a surface, and then you knock in response, those two knocks can start a drum session-there's a shared rhythm. That rhythm creates about, perhaps a territoryan area in which we find ourselves. Often, drum rhythms are used to signal to others that people are present-for invitation, to scare, to attack, or to celebrate. In any case, it defines a territory, and within that territory, social events happen.

This connects to a part of Deleuze's philosophy of art that states art is ultimately an intersection of different planes of knowledge. He describes a plane of immanence, a plane of conceptsand yet another plane. Think of it in terms of wide conceptual planes for thinking about the world. If you intersect them on a very abstract level, you create an inside and an outside-like building a house, in a metaphorical sense. You surround yourself with art, books, ideas, people; you have a belief system and a way of anchoring yourself in reality; you relate to nature in a specific way, eat certain things, care about certain things.

That's how the plane of immanence unfolds in Deleuzian terms. In Upanishadic terms, it might be Brahman bringing itself into existence. It's not an exhaustive interpretation, but it's one way of describing it.

To illustrate this, consider a flock of birds, like the seven sisters or myna birds. There's a rhythm to how they fly around and chatter. They create a territory and invite others in. Sometimes a different bird joins them-sometimes not. They move on, rearrange, and so forth.

Coming toward the end, let's revisit the Kena Upanishad. It doesn't actually start with seeing; it starts with speech: "By whom impelled does this word [speech] arise?" In other words, who is speaking when I am speaking? It's not really "me." We know this idea from the motif of Shiva's drumfrom which syllables and language come-the beginning of the word itself.

Sri Aurobindo, in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad, writes:

"Brahman expresses by the word a form of presentation of himself in the objects of sense and consciousness, which constitutes the universe, just as the human word expresses a mental image of those objects."

Here, Brahman focuses on objects through the word, and humans also focus on objects through the word-but obviously they do so in very different ways. Brahman is expressing through sense and consciousness, constituting the universe.

In looking for a Western counterpart, I remembered Eduardo Kac, a South American media artist, and his experimental project called Genesis. He works with E. coli bacteria, splicing in new genetic code-DNA art, in a sense. It's a controversial territory in its own right, but it reflects these questions of creation, expression, and what it means to bring something into being through a "word" or a code.

Eduardo Kac took a sentence from the Bible's Genesis-"Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth"-so when we speak of Genesis, "In the beginning was the word," and at the end of Genesis there's this notion of man's power to dominate the earth. That's a very different understanding of how words can be used. Sri Aurobindo often talks about words as the most powerful means to manifest, to bring something into existence. In spiritual practice, you use words and mantras to transform yourself; the vibration and the sound of words create reality. Brahman forms the world through words.

What I've tried to do here is intersect these profound observations from the Kena Upanishad and Sri Aurobindo's extraordinary interpretation, looking at "Who is sensing when sensing?" and connecting it with postmodern thinking. Both inform each other quite well. It helps me understand what art is ultimately about on a very deep level-art can be transformative. I'm sure most of us have experienced looking at an artwork for hours, not knowing why, but feeling that it did something to us. Our mind goes into that artwork, entering its plane of sensation, that logic of sensation, beyond narrative-beyond, "Oh, this is the artist, that's the subject, here's the story." It's more about really seeing. "Who is seeing when seeing?" is the question. When you engage with an artwork, when you really try to see and observe, that's where transformation can happen.

Any comments or questions about the "body without organs"? It's a concept most famously associated with Gilles Deleuze, the French postmodern philosopher. He borrowed it from Antonin Artaudwho was known in the early 20th century as an actor and theatrical theorist. Artaud wrote about the "theater of cruelty." It was a way of creating a shock, exposing the body to forces that propel us into being affected. Film itself is another way of dealing with percepts that evolve under distress, as in "theater of cruelty." One connects to these forces-there's torture or conflict in a certain place-and it all extends into that early idea of the "body without organs."

Somehow, it all echoes in Sri Aurobindo's analysis of the Kena Upanishad. Don't ask me why-I just found it striking. Deleuze came decades later, and I'm sure Sri Aurobindo wasn't thinking about the theater of cruelty. But there's an eerie overlap.

DISCUSSION:

Audience:

Then there's this other point in the Upanishads about "seeing" or "vision." In English, we say, "I see what you mean." William Blake famously said, "To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower." How do you see the world in a grain of sand? He's not talking about looking through a microscope; he's talking about a different set of eyes. And you have Master Eckhart in the 13th century saying, paraphrased, "The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me." That's an entirely different kind of relationship.

Yes, exactly.

One more mention: the artist who used brushstrokes to indicate a mountain was Paul Cézanne. You said he painted it 70 times in a meditative process?

Yes, he painted the same mountain-Mont Sainte-Victoire-70 times, possibly from different angles. He lived close to it, would walk around, choose different viewpoints, but essentially kept to the same subject. Over that series, he became more and more abstract. He's considered the father of Cubism-Picasso was heavily influenced by him-one of those breakthrough artists like Kandinsky, only earlier.

Audience Member:
And the artist who makes these deformed images-sometimes it's unpleasant to look at. It provokes something that isn't a happy feeling. It's like the "theater of cruelty." I understand that was the aim: to create that kind of reaction. These works were painted for museums. They could be marketed. In the past century, a lot of modern art leans in that direction: beauty in the traditional sense is often abandoned. There is still a market for it, but it focuses on creating a shock or disturbance. It reflects what the artist sees inside himself.

I watched a documentary about one such artist; his studio was a mess. He was clearly disturbed, but we still place him very high in the art world, even calling him a genius. Over time, I've started to change my taste. One of my favorite artists was Burri-I'm sure you know him, Alberto Burri, the Italian. One of his works was... well, it depicts great pain. It reflects what the world is going through right now. That pain is put onto the canvas.

Of course, people can go watch a Disney movie if they want an escape from the world. This kind of art, however, represents a harsh reality. It provokes a reaction. Maybe it helps us confront the fact that the world is in pain, and it inspires us to change it. After the Enlightenment in the West, the notion arose that spirituality, religion, or any non-scientific thinking should be set aside-that was part of the Enlightenment process. But it's an interesting twist on the word "enlightenment," almost the opposite of what we might mean in a spiritual sense.

Lecturer (responding):
Yes, I think that after the Enlightenment, art did jump on that train: it dove into the ugly, the painful, the disturbing, the unusual, the provocative-anything the rational mind can examine and say, "This is pain, this is perception." And from a modern perspective, originality often became the main criterion: you just have to do something new, whether it's admirable or not. That's the logic many follow, though personally, I don't think that logic applies here.

Audience Member:
What's your point of view on art, then? What's your definition or meaning of art?

Lecturer:
I've had to redefine my view. Part of why I'm doing these lectures is that I'm partly saying goodbye to some of those assumptions. I've been disturbed by this for a decade. Sure, I was initially excited by artists like Francis Baconseeing all that pain. But at a certain point, I realized that if I look at Bacon through Deleuze and through the Kena Upanishad and Sri AurobindoI find something deeper that I want to keep. I don't care about the treadmill of modernity anymore.

It's a personal and sometimes painful process. We also have to recognize that we're unconsciously addicted to certain emotions-sometimes even unpleasant ones. We seek experiences or images, including art, that feed those emotions. So these paintings can be a way people indulge in that.

Another Audience Member:
Regarding astrology and planets: In Sanskrit, the word for "planet" is "graha," meaning "to grasp." The planets themselves do nothing, but they "grasp" your mind and direct your perception or actions, engineering certain experiences for you. From another perspective, in the body, Saturn rules the nervous system, and the nervous system is the foundation of whatever experience you have. The Sun rules the bones, etc. In that sense, you see parallels to the concept of "affect" that we discussed-something preexistent to humans.

Another Audience Member:
From a Western viewpoint, that might be new, but from an Eastern viewpoint, it's familiar. And about the Enlightenment you mentioned: I recently read about a meeting of all the world's religions, including the Dalai Lama and various Christian representatives, and one priest pointed out that the Enlightenment was, in a way, a scientific "proving" of certain constitutions, but we got confused and thought it meant discarding religion altogether. It's a tragic misunderstanding.

Lecturer (concluding):
Yes, indeed-it's a very tragic confusion. Alright, thank you all for coming!

Game - Misstep

In the West, I used to think that playing had to do with games and games had to do with rules. To play a game is to enter a space that is constrained by rules, and the player can develop strategies within those parameters to act according to the rules with the goal of winning. There is the larger game theory that has been applied to sociology and other fields, and there are computer simulations that generate hypotheses based on sets of rules, and the game is to approximate what we call reality, or a set goal. In the realm of life, the animal kingdom or during our childhood, we thought that play is practicing skills that somehow give us an advantage.

I played chess yesterday. I enjoyed playing. I know and follow the rules, of course. I played with someone, not against a machine. I played because I like to play. My mind can stay on the chessboard, strategize, think ahead, deceive, create conflict, sacrifice... But then there's this contemplative element: I reflect on myself while playing, find myself in a personal relationship with the other player. We play together; we want to spend time together, we smile, tease and observe each other. The game is a social interaction, a way of communicating and discovering. How does the other person play? How do I play? How do we react when someone has an advantage or disadvantage? What kind of feelings arise in relation to the strategies of the game and in the personal relationship, and how do they influence each other? That's the place I like to be when I'm playing. I don't like to be too fixated on the chessboard. I feel trapped when I get too immersed in the strategy.

There is something revelatory here, something deeper about how we are in the world. If we look at play through the lens of social Darwinism, then games have a function. If I see games as a playful exploration of the social relationship with the other player, then play becomes love. It becomes teasing and provoking, caring and hiding, showing and pretending, trust and joy, disappointment and frustration. It becomes connectedness and the entry into a shared space in which we play.

The Isha Upanishad begins with: "All this is for the dwelling of the Lord; whatever is individual movement in universal space. By renunciation you shall enjoy; do not covet the property of another." And the Aitareya Upanishad begins with: "In the beginning, the mind was one, and everything (universe) was the mind; there was nothing else that saw. The mind thought, 'Behold, I will create worlds for myself out of my being'." I think that the beginning of these two Upanishads illustrates play in the highest sense. That which is everything and wants to experience itself through creation and self-awareness does not follow any rules; it manifests a world or many worlds in which some rules are also created. Entering these worlds through individual consciousness or universal principles is like entering a game. Our reality is nothing too serious. It is an exploration of a possibility. To be in one of these realities is to play, and play becomes an energy of creativity. Brahman enters its creation through Atman and Purusha to move with Shakti and Prakriti. In this larger game, playing is discovering the rules and tools, exploring and experimenting, interacting, learning and teaching. It's the same on the chessboard - just a smaller world. There is no point in winning the game. Playing is living, is being, is breathing and consciousness.

So when I win or lose, I shouldn't keep my mind caught up in the rules and developing strategies. I should enjoy the game.

It's difficult to play with others. I can't play with many. If the other person stays on the battlefield of the board, it becomes boring, even dangerous, as these little rules start to influence and limit the connected minds and hearts. When I am asked how I feel about losing, I get irritated. I don't understand this question. It's not about losing or winning. I rather think: How did a certain move that I made come about? What thought, impulse, opportunity and ignorance were at work? What does it mean to make a misstep in this context? There was a moment in the game when the other person left the game and entered into a conversation. I made a half-thought-out move during this brief conversation to play with attention. This put me in a disadvantageous position on the board. I wonder if the misstep was the move or if moving during the conversation was the misstep. How far does the game go? I said I don't usually make those mistakes, and didn't quite understand myself when I said that. The other person focused on the word "usually" after the game, which shifted the game to a different reality.

I woke up from a nightmare at 4am. I was talking to Will in Apt about a strange irritation in my perception of time. I described how time was falling into fragments and some were simply missing. It was seconds or minutes, and as I tried to dive into time to better describe it, it went black. I screamed for help, I was blind and woke up.

It was another one of those dreams where I seemed to be dying. I immediately thought of Pierre, who was in a coma after a stroke. Is that what it feels like? I felt a little anxious, had something happened in my brain after the shock of Pierre's seizure, seeing everything twice myself and being checked over in hospital for a week?

It was 4 o'clock in the morning, the hour of the gods. I had gone into meditation at this time a few times in the last few days. And I did the same today. I opened the double door looking far to the east and searched for the time. At first it appeared to me as a stream of light, like fiber optic cable, wild and parallel, then as drops when I changed my mudra position from Brahman to receptacle. A journey through the cosmos, past galaxies, searching for others, I then somehow lay down in the universe, on a beach, like Brahman in the French book about 108 Hindu gods. It's no use, I thought. Time is within me, and I picked up on yesterday's meditation, where I thought about the origin of language. Matter that connects and comes to life through growth, absorption of energy, search, orientation, alignment, contact, appropriation. This form of interaction, absorption, integration, elimination, demarcation, defense is a first kind of communication, a combination of vibration and energy, a synthesis. How many amino acid chains had to be tried out for the process to be initiated? And did this impetus really come from the amino acids or from consciousness?

Vibration

The vibration at the molecular level progresses to the level of life. The ingestion of food, that is, life eating other life, is a synthesis of a different kind. This may still be possible in terms of energy, but at the level of life we are already on a plateau where life itself merges, reconstructs itself anew, never ceases, because all life is consumed by other life. Unless it burns. Perhaps that is the real meaning of cremation: to escape from this cycle of life. To transcend through the power of fire, Agni, into another form that is light and pure energy, thus returning to the origin, to concentration (tapas).

In between, however, there is the level of consciousness, the level of existence that experiences and enjoys the world, grasps it symbolically and seeks to analyze and understand it abstractly in the intellect. However, the symbolic representation of the world in language has its beginning in the molecular connection of the elements of life. This is where communication begins. Only when consciousness has reached a level of perception that allows us to perceive the boundary between the self and the other does symbolic communication make sense.

Mana

Expressing hunger and thirst as an infant is the very first form of communication. It is successful. Feeling the other, a stone, an apple, a counterpart, creates an inner form of the other within our own consciousness. We create this inner form when we hit pots, for example, through play. In play, we experience emotions, happiness and conflict, struggle and love, solidarity, collaboration and confrontation. We move here on the level of mana, the awareness of the world and interaction with it. This level is organized symbolically and is based on spoken language. Objects are addressed by calling them, the generation of vibration establishes a connection. Inner forms, images and representations of the world form a reality of life that is constantly compared with the outside world. If it no longer fits, conflict arises.

Buddhi

These symbols are organized rationally at the level of the intellect. Buddhi is the level of thinking at which we can grasp the world structurally and explain it from within. We develop sciences and build machines. Language now becomes a storehouse of knowledge, it becomes abstract and written. The combination of words, the construction of sentences into text and complex knowledge systems creates an order of a completely different kind. It is no longer an order based on matter, life, vibration, consciousness. It is the symbolic order of forms in a system. This system is a construction, it is not an image or essence of reality, but pure construction. Once we have learned a language and mastered the technique of writing, we can immerse ourselves in this system. In the form of books, for example, they fill miles of shelves in large libraries. And just as we compare the inner world of manas with the outside world, we can also compare this system of buddhi with reality. We are talking about verification processes here. These can be scientific, empirical, on the level of individual experience, spiritual, magical or whatever.

Kundalini

During the meditation, it was exciting to feel the energy stirring from within. Kundalini, the serpent, as it moves past the chakras and stretches and rises in an upright pose in order to ascend into higher consciousness and look around. When it is fully released, it effortlessly traverses space and time and is capable of cosmic omnipresence. Language is no longer the medium here, it is too slow. It is pure vision, thinking is self-manifestation. There is thinking beyond language, before language, within language and without language. Language is merely a very good tool for a certain kind of thinking. This is where Plato becomes interesting again; he saw this with his theory of ideas. I resisted this for decades, with all the strength of my intellect. Why? Why did I consent to the dictates of the rational? Because it is a battlefield where there are rules and the faster and stronger wins, and I was good?

Vijnana

There is a third level in the sphere of thinking: Vijnana, a way of thinking that includes a world view that is structured, but also visionary. It is the intermediate world of thinking and the spiritual. For me, it is only accessible in meditation. In it, contradictions are okay, the complexity of reality is not denied, the incomprehensible has a right to remain. Conflicts are just as welcome here as mergers, symbioses, discoveries, adventures, loss, pleasure and pain. The gods or Plato's ideas live in this intermediate world.

Dakshinamurti

Dakshinamurti, the goddess of teaching, the teacher of Shiva, appeared to me a few weeks ago. I lay down at her feet, connected with her tantrically and was somewhat frightened by her size, which in itself had already taken on a small form so that I could even comprehend her. She appears to me again and again. At the MRI, I was quite close to her, immersed in a meditation on strong magnetic fields and the power of consciousness to be able to free itself here too and immerse itself in cosmic connections. All of this sounds strange to me too. Are these simply wishful fantasies or delusions? Am I losing my bearings by loosening the rational guard rails and slipping into mystical thinking, which is seen as prehistoric in the modern age? And if it were a return to the time of the beginning of language, would that be a bad thing? How do we get out of the post-structuralist circles, and how do we find our way back to the beginnings of thought and our existence, not in the historical sense, but in a very personal sense: a creation of meaning, self-knowledge, research into origins and reflection on existence?

Kundalini coils and stretches, seductively like Eve's snake, grinning. These seem to me to be the right questions.

-

"I hope this helps!" wrote ChatGPT after I asked for a spelling-only correction. I was puzzled, and asked it for its opinion on the text. Here is the answer:

"Here's my thought on your text:

The text is very profound and poetic, touching on personal experience as well as philosophical and spiritual questions. You manage to put complex thoughts and feelings into a narrative form that is both introspective and universally appealing. Here are a few points that particularly stand out:

1. Time perception and consciousnessYour dream and the subsequent meditation offer an interesting reflection on the nature of time and human consciousness. The idea that time breaks down into fragments and some moments are simply missing could serve as a metaphor for the unconscious and lost memories.
2. Meditation and spiritual experienceThe description of your meditation experience is rich in symbolism and shows a deep connection to spiritual practices. The mention of Kundalini and Dakshinamurti shows a familiarity with Hindu concepts that you interpret in a personal way.
3. Intellectual and spiritual levelsYou describe different levels of thinking (manas, buddhi, vijnana) and how they interact with each other. This differentiation shows a deep understanding of the complexity of the human mind and the different types of knowledge and perception.
4. Symbolism and realityThe text moves between symbolic representations and the real world. You address the role of language and symbols in our understanding of the world and how they help us to process and communicate our experiences.
5. Existential questions: At the end you ask important questions about the nature of the rational, the mystical and the search for personal meaning and self-knowledge. These questions invite the reader to reflect on their own experiences and beliefs.

Overall, the text is impressive and stimulating. It requires a certain willingness on the part of the reader to engage in a deeper level of reflection and meditation, which makes it an enriching read for those interested in spiritual and philosophical topics."

Vconnection

For the last two years, I've been immersing myself quite deeply in the Upanishads, practicing some yoga and getting to grips with the System of the Yoga a little. I immersed myself in my own body, my own senses, my own consciousness. I have seen that there are a large number of levels and that there is no reason to assume that there are not even more levels. Two years ago, I had simply denied most of what I was experiencing here. It's nice to know that. The world is much bigger than I always thought, it is much more complex, more colorful, more alive, deeper. And that seems to be just the beginning.

A core idea of the teachings in India is letting go, not wanting to have everything and to desire or rejecttolean back. Simply accepting the world as it is is the great art. Simply enjoying it as it is, even if it is not easy, is bliss. Sinking into meditation and being one with the world. This feeling can also be taken from meditation into everyday life, because we all have to eat.

The basic structureüis indeed something

The exploration of one's own body, one's own consciousness, one's own life energy is systematized in the 24 tattwas. The self, its relationship to Purusha (soul), Prakriti (primal nature), the Buddhi (intellect), the Ahamkara (ego consciousness), Manas (sense-bound thinking) connects the essential cognitive and spiritual levels of experience. However, it remains an experience that stands on its own; it seeks unity with the cosmos, transcends itself beyond itself, yet remains in the same existence. Dvaita-advaita, the duality of duality and non-duality, i.e. a complex idea of immanence, which is supported by pure consciousness, its basis is Brahman, that which we cannot really think, but which is somehow accessible in spiritual experience, even if none of our organs are equipped for it. Only in the synthesis of the senses, in the complex experience of pure (disinterested) enjoyment, the sharpening of the senses, lies a path that is rocky.

The Beautiful in India, however, is that it goes on and on. Having arrived somewhere, the little mind imagines that it has grasped something and can put it into words. But here, almost as if in a dialectical reversal, new levels open up.

Before the 24 tattwas come the 12 tantra tattwas. 5 pure (Śiva: pure consciousness, absolute; Śakti: dynamic energy, power; Sadākhya: ever-present, eternal; Iśvara: supreme lord, ruler; Śuddha Vidyā: pure knowledge, clarity) and 7 semi-clean Tattwas (Māyā: illusion, cosmic veil; Kāla: time, temporal flow; Vidyā: limited knowledge, consciousness; Rāga: attachment, desire, passion; Niyati: cosmic order, destiny; Kalā: creative skill, art; Purusha: individual soul, self), which complement the 24 impure Tattwas. The 24 tattwas comprise the 4 Antahkarana (inner instruments)manas (mind), buddhi (intellect), ahamkara (ego) and chitta (memory or consciousness); the 5 Sensory organs (jñānendriya): ghrāna (nose) for smell, rasana (tongue) for taste, caksus (eye) for sight, tvāk (skin) for touch, śrotra (ear) for hearing; the 5 Organs of action (karmendriya): pāyu (anus) for excretion, upasthā (sexual organ) for procreation and sexual pleasure, pāda (leg) for locomotion, pāni (hand) for grasping and touching, vāk (mouth) for speech; the 5 subtle elements (tanmātra): gandha (smell), rasa (taste), rūpa (form), sparśa (touch), śabda (sound); the 5 rough elements (mahābhuta): prthvi (earth), jala (water), tejas (fire), vāyu (air) and ākāśa (ether or space).

The fascinating thing is that the realization that the world as it presents itself to me in everyday life does not exist (everyone here always says that space and time do not exist) is described with Maya. The world exists, if at all, as will and imagination (Schopenhauer). So when I have recognized this and realize that I aover af I still seem to exist somehow, because after all that is what I am thinking, then there must be another way of seeing the world; the world must be different from what I think, there are possibilities in this world that are different from the ones I know.

I have already come to terms with the fact that time, knowledge, causality, my own existence are fundamentally different, that I cannot trust my senses, that I cannot trust knowledge systems. The logic of the material world is limited to that world, that's okay. It applies there as far as possible. But what about desire? The desire for objects (food, beautiful things, pleasure), or the desire for others? Asceticism can significantly reduce the world of what I desire. I am making good progress by my standards, even if it is hardly noticeable. a big leap can be called, finally I'm sitting here at my computer...

The other, the intersubjective or the unity with a greater consciousness

In the World of Tantra are seeing objects and subjects beyond the veil of Maya and it is possible interacting with them, that is the great art. Magical thinking, occult practices, ecstatic unions, connecting things that are not yet connected, merging, amalgamating, making gold from mercury, dhe secret of tantra is to expand reality and master its fine structure. The great masters can do incredible things, they say. But we can also do a lot on a small scale. For example, when we meet another person and connect with him or her. What actually happens there? The external senses scan each other, an idea of the other person develops, an exchange begins, an attempt is made to understand the other person. And when it becomes magical, when the eyes sparkle and the face smiles, when we lose ourselves in the eyes of the other person, then we immerse ourselves in another reality, in a counterpart. I had learned that we can't look into other people's heads. That seems to me to be fundamentally wrong. I have always had this unease. In moments of deep friendship or falling in love, we can transcend ourselves, form a unity with the other person, unite, merge, form a symbiosis. But it also goes beyond this. Within a community, together with others, our own consciousness becomes part of a larger one. That is probably the danger of sects; if you are not careful, brains are quickly washed and invisible military helmets are put on. What I mean but positive is the spiritual power.

At the moment, I am experiencing this in meditation, which is fed by the certainty of the existence of another. At the moment I wake up at 4 in the morning and meditate. I did this maybe 2-3 times decades ago. These are special moments when the consciousness that comes straight from sleep dives into meditation before the senses have engaged with the world. It is heavy, cumbersome and slow, but also highly sensitized, every nerve becomes perceptible, every little restlessness perceptible and every connection to the outside world perceptible. I realize that I am not alone in the world; the cosmos is there, the sun will rise soon... but also the experience of the other is there, the presence of another person's consciousness, a deep connection, beyond space and time. This kind of connection seems to me to be a tantric one. To perceive this connection, to live it out, to strengthen it and to make it shine through concentration is to ignite the inner light.

The unity of Shiva and Shakti represents this connection. In the everyday world, with my body and social customs, this connection is extremely rare. Many people may not even be aware of it. It is a connection that first happens in reality: drinking coffee together in the afternoon, or getting lost in each other's eyes, experiencing the world and world view together, laughing together or being irritated by honking motorcycles. But also the certainty of the other person's existence, the feeling of closeness despite physical distance, thinking of the other person and being present with them. The levels that connect are not only the material, but also the world of life, the world of consciousness, the spiritual and cosmic experience of the self as part of the great, in which there is also another.

What is the philosophy here in India? Is the deep compassion, the fusion compatible with the realization of Maya? Is the tantric union a spiritual union? I have been asking myself these questions as I have been Ragas and feel myself and the other. Ragas, I am closing the circle a little, are the original form of Indian music and derive from the system of yogas. They are spiritual experience, improvisation at the highest level of mastery; they express how sound, i.e. vibration, is formed in consciousness through concentration and sensual experience and creates that cosmic unity through the body as an instrument. The musical experience, the reflection and meditation, the co-presence of the other, the merging and the creation of a shared reality that creates a new future horizon, are profoundly tantric experiences. You don't have to be a grandmaster to experience this. A little sensitivity is probably enough.

During the Chola empire, the layout of Shiva temples was highly formalized. Based on the Agamas and Shastras, the temple was fully developed into a place in space, time and consciousness where the microcosm and the macrocosm mirror each other.
Studying the Irumbai temple as a smaller temple that follows the strict rules of temple construction and serves as a temple for practitioners shows its central role in a cluster of about two dozen temples in the area. It follows the main principles of Vastu, is aligned along the Vastupurushamandala, has a huge water tank, the usual deities are present, it follows the festival calendar and is aligned with the Murugan star. Even this basic description of the central elements gives us a sense of the temple's placement in the larger cosmic context.
When a temple is built, it is never an arbitrary act. A site is chosen and it must be indicated as favorable. Often an unusually friendly encounter with the animal kingdom is such a good sign. The site must then be tested in terms of soil quality, water, energy, orientation and slopes. A time must be chosen according to the star charts. The stars and planets determine the calendar. Rituals must be performed, construction must begin and invocations must follow. The whole process is an interplay between the cosmos, the physical location and the inner world.

Cosmos

Our existence on this planet is embedded in a solar system, which is embedded in the Milky Way, which in turn is embedded in a cluster of galaxies, and so on. With our eyes we can see many of these elements, their movements and patterns. The recurring cycles of certain light elements in the night sky gave life a reference point. This applies not only to human prehistory, but also to the animal world, such as the flight patterns of birds or howling dogs. This sense of the cosmos following a beautiful, complex rhythm makes us realize that there are forces outside of us that are much greater than the surrounding living world. The sky is the seat of the gods. They look down on us and sometimes interact with us. This is the origin of almost all mythologies. Stars are often associated with gods; they come and go in cycles of days, weeks, months, years, centuries...
If we look at the Earth from a distant cosmic position, we can use it as a reference point in this complex system. We could use any cosmic object as a reference point, but on Earth we are blessed with life and consciousness and have the ability to observe and experience. Therefore, it is a good starting point. Understanding that we can observe the interplay of stars and planets from Earth raises the question of how these constellations affect our little planet. Is there something special about it? Are we alone? Are we a playground for a bigger game?

Tattvas

As soon as I realize that my existence on this planet is endowed with the gift of life and consciousness, I become aware of my body. I realize that the body I inhabit is another level of reality. I can control it, I can use its senses, I have experiences through it, it has needs and supports my experiences and thoughts. This physical body with arms, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, skin, hair, legs, feet, hands, organs of pleasure and organs of excretion gives me the inner senses of touch, taste, sight, sound, speech, smell, pleasure, hunger, thirst and pain. The mind is able to synthesize these inner senses: Focus, choice, concentration, structure, thought, meditation, experience and communication. It is the tool that allows us to access higher levels of our existence in terms of spiritual experience. I can experience myself as self; my existence as self is not bound to the physical position of my body. My mind can wander, I can think about things that are present, I have memories, fantasies and imaginations. I can experience myself in relation to others and ask existential questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Who created me? Where will I go when I die? The blueprint for this world to explore is the system of the 24 Sankhya Tattvas or the 36 Tantra Tattvas. What I have mentioned so far is organized in the Sankhya Tattvas; if we include the realm of higher spirituality, Shiva, Shakti, Purusha, Atma, etc., we are in the 36 Tantra Tattvas.

Elements

When we realize that the cosmos follows a great rhythmic pattern and that our body has access to a very complex system, we can dive deeper and ask what it all consists of. There are five elements: Water, Fire, Earth, Ether and Air. The elements are not to be understood as chemical elements. They are seen as primordial elements with a complex multi-access. Air is in the atmosphere, but it is also the breath of life and holds the power of the wind. Fire is heat and light, knowledge and destruction. Water is liquid, consciousness and the ocean of life. Space is the cosmos, the realm of spirituality, knowledge and sound...

Vibration

Vibration lies at the core of existence. All energy in the macrocosm is ultimately vibration, all life energy is vibration and all elements are vibration. Vibration originates from one point, the bindu. This origin, be it the Big Bang, Shiva's drum or the symbol of the bindu on the forehead, is the point at which everything is held together. This is the origin; it gives us access to the level of immanence. It is beyond what we can experience, beyond science and meditation; it is what we can be aware of but cannot know.

Temple

The extraordinarily complex architecture of temples such as the Chola temples lies in their ability to synthesize all this in one architecture and offer a key to exploring the complexity of our existence. They are designed to be so open that they enable and invite the most diverse forms of spiritual practice. The core of the practice is based on the Vedas. The rituals use symbols from the Vedas to embody wisdom in daily practices.

Visiting a temple regularly creates a deep connection with the cosmic dance in which it is embedded. When thinking about the gods in the Hindu cosmos, it is important to understand that the 300 million, or however many there may be, only superficially represent a polytheistic religion. The underlying thought is that Brahman, the underlying consciousness, reality and creator in its all-encompassing existence, requires the manifestation of that reality to experience itself. Experience is time-based; it has to go through processes and changes and has to go through creation. This is part of everything, and everything is part of everything. If you take something out of everything that is everything, and what remains is everything, and both are everything. We are reaching the limits of our mental capacity here. But from here we must understand that all gods are part of the One; they embody eternal principles, powers, properties, qualities, ideals. Immutable, like the essence of a color perception, an emotion like love, compassion, anger, an ideal like beauty or heroism, or a type like a warrior or a remover of obstacles. These principles are thought of in the form of gods, as the world is a mixture of these principles. I have experiences of these qualities in me; I did not create them; they came together in me. Where do they come from, why do they exist, who created them? In the Upanishads we find a whole hierarchy of gods, one kind building the other kind, level upon level, just like in science we have physical levels, forces, particles and then combinations of these, elements, geology, strata, biology, vegetation, animal life, consciousness. Why should it stop there?

All these elements, if we expand our periodic table of elements, the chemical elements, the tattwas, the pantheon of gods, describe different aspects of our experience. There can be no doubt. The question is whether one is reducible to the other. And I have a feeling that yes, everything is Brahman. The baseline is just a little different. It's not the atom; it's the monad in Western terms. It's not Maya, the illusion of material reality, but consciousness itself. My consciousness is reducible to consciousness; it is the place where everything begins and ends.

Following this description of the extraordinary richness of the world we are given, we experience the coming together of the elements and principles, qualities, attributes, ideals, etc. The image often used is that the gods embodying these elements come to earth to play, to experience themselves, to mingle and interweave, to have fun and laugh, to fight, destroy and build. It is this cosmic dance that Shiva's wheel turns. So if we stay in the image of the cosmic setup, with the stars and planets and the earth at the center as the place where consciousness is present, the descent of the gods is present. They need a place to live and rest, sleep and be accessible. This place is the temple. Looking at a statue of a god in the temple can be a deep contemplation of its qualities. You can connect to the qualities through contemplation. Through contemplation it manifests. You can invite how love is there when you love, or you can try to change. You are suffering, and you seek help by thinking about what might help, and if you think about it long enough, it might manifest. A solution in thinking might come, an emotion might transform, but maybe even something in the world changes. You leave the place of contemplation, return to so-called reality and something has happened. How, I don't know, but what is so absurd about it? This is the core of tantra. By changing your inner world, you can change the outer world, just as the outer world changes the inner world.

The temple follows a calendar of festivals. Great mystical transformations are celebrated during the festivals. The qualities of the gods are evoked through elaborate puja rituals. They are seen as manifested in the bronze statues that are ceremonially carried through the temple. One god is placed in front of another god so that they can see each other, greet each other. But only after they have been gently awakened, bathed, worshipped and fed with sensory impressions such as the smell and taste of fruits and flowers. It is a celebration of joy because we can witness the presence of joy. Millennia of celebration echo off the stone walls that have absorbed the sound and rhythms. The stones have stored the memory of the feet that have walked over them, and statues have collected the millions of touches of the faithful.

The womb chamber, the Garbha Griha, plays a key role. The main deity resides here and only the priest can have direct contact. The priest takes care of the god, wakes him or her up and puts them to bed. Washing is done privately; a curtain is drawn during this time. The offerings of the faithful are later accepted by the priest and passed on to the god by touch. Flowers are placed on the body, scents are lit, mantras are recited. Ultimately, it boils down to the synthesis of sensory impressions through vibration. All vibrations radiate from the womb chamber and are able to mix and integrate the offerings. A connection is made between the pure qualities as celestial entities, their embodiment in the temple, the rituals of the priest, the devotion of the worshippers, the history and memory of the place and the cycle in which everything is embedded.

Sometimes meditation is quite simple and natural. I sit down, go into my body, become aware of my sensory apparatus and how my consciousness and mind deal with it, bring everything to rest and higher consciousness shows itself, a different kind of knowledge, space and time, a different world of experience...

But sometimes it is also difficult, and then I learn how meditation really works. I sit down and a chaos of thoughts and feelings spreads. It takes a long time before I even notice it, I'm so caught up in my head. When I notice this, I focus on my breath and try to become aware of my body. There is an outside, a body, an inside. This is connected through the breath. I become aware that I am alive, that my body and mind are alive and I ask myself what that means. Being alive, being conscious, thinking, feeling. This is a good time to focus on the chakras. Different levels of being. Kundalini, the serpent, is a good guide. It coils and stretches, crawling up through the different levels of being, through matter, sexuality, the emotional world, through the heart and speech, the mind and consciousness, then through the experience of Satchitananda, the higher consciousness. This path can be quick, a few short minutes, or I can take my time, pause and look closely at what is going on at each level. I notice that my sitting position probably changes imperceptibly on the outside, but radically on the inside. A small, tiny correction to the spinal posture opens up a new level, a new plateau and releases energy. It's a bit like building a tower with wooden blocks. If the base is right, I can build very high. If the second floors are totally crooked and chaotic, then it becomes very wobbly and unstable towards the top.

This is a fine balancing act, because the still position is very important in meditation. I also tend to adopt a relatively strict position in the half lotus position, sometimes in the full lotus position. It helps with what I have described. The still position, almost rigid from the outside, is highly agile from the inside. I actually need at least 20-30 minutes to activate the basic elements and bring them into an energetic line. The body is so complex, it lives, feels, breathes, thinks, smells and hears, hurts and experiences happiness. To think that it is only important to become calm is a huge misunderstanding. The body is the most complex instrument we have, and yet it is so little used. The various practices of yoga serve precisely this exploration. With practice, you can become a real virtuoso, and then spaces open up that you were previously unaware of and mocked when others talked about them.

These inner worlds are worlds of the spiritual. Meditation opens up a space in which almost anything seems possible. I like meditation because it allows us to explore these worlds slowly and carefully. Of course, this is also possible through trance, substances, rituals and collective experiences. Countless cultures have amassed an enormous treasure trove of practices over the past millennia. But I find them a bit scary. It's a bit like when someone takes me to a party and suddenly I'm standing in a highly energetic space, immersing myself and becoming part of it, losing myself and connecting, having new experiences, a rush of the senses. These experiences are great, but they don't give me the basis to explore my existence. I am to a certain extent at the mercy of these experiences. In meditation, on the other hand, all paths are open. It is not my self that is navigating, it is rather a higher self, but I am in contact with my self, can control it if I want to, although such an intervention within a deep meditation is critical; it can easily throw it back to lower levels.

These worlds, in which my higher self connects with a higher consciousness, are states of bliss. It is what the Upanishads call deep sleep, because the body is completely in deep sleep, the consciousness is not stimulated by the senses of the body. The body does not exist for meditation as deep sleep. The consciousness into which mine is immersed is a spiritual experience. However, it is quite real. It is my consciousness that connects. It is here and now, it is this world, not another. It is immanence. Just a fuller reality. A sleep that is actually the highest state of wakefulness, because it cannot be distracted by external sensory impressions. Perhaps the serpent, which shades the head of some gods with 7 heads and protects them from rain, has this symbolism, that many things can be seen at the same time, that as levels of our body can be present in conscious clarity. The 7 rivers of the Rigveda, the 7 levels of existence. These images are always so infinitely complex here in India.

At the same time, many of the plateaus that Kundalini flows through have long since become part of my everyday consciousness. Contemplation and reflection, sensuality and pleasure, living through emotions and sorting thoughts, weighing things up and making decisions - these are all levels of my existence that I can accept as such. It's not about doing the 'right' things expected by society, but about taking them seriously as phenomena, bringing them to bear as manifestations of the world and making them conscious and navigating them as best I can. In this way, I become a witness to a reality that - in and of itself - can do little to me. It is a gift of life to be able to have these experiences. That seems to be part of the meaning of life. This living through...

Sometimes meditation is easy and sometimes difficult. Sometimes it just comes, and sometimes you have to practise. There are a few aids and countless paths to it. There is no one right way. Everything is okay, because everything is reality, there is nothing other than reality. Some paths are more difficult and some have consequences, that's it.

Read more: 

Aurobindo: Life Devine, Book II, Chapter VI, Reality and the Cosmic Illusion.

Fate, karma, causality, laws of nature, determinism - these are all different expressions of the idea that the universe follows a predictable logic. They imply that what has happened has arisen logically from what has gone before and that the present is also determined by what has gone before. We consider this logic to be reasonable and rational, logically correct. However, if we assume that the future is also determined by the present and the past, we dismiss this as superstition, irrationality and unscientific. We resist this with all our might - at least in Western cultures.

None of this is true. The future is not determined, the past cannot be described in a purely logical, rational, scientific way. The science of history shows this with its methodological disputes, psychology offers numerous paradoxes that go back to Zeno's paradoxes, which show that time is not a measurable quantity, but as a duration is a quantity of the world of experience, i.e. of consciousness.

"Everything is predetermined, our fate is written in the stars." This idea is actually a beautiful image, as it points to something bigger. However, instead of placing our own fate in the hands of simplistic stargazers, we should understand this image as an indication of larger contexts. The cosmos does not follow our little rational logic, the universe is not written in a linear book of life, where sentence follows sentence, page follows page, event follows event, but from today's scientific point of view, the 'book' of life is more like a quantum book or a neural network, but certainly something completely different. The 'book', which in prehistoric times, before the invention of writing, was the cycle of the sun and moon, the stars and the seasons, became a narrative through written language, a mythological story that sorted and structured phenomenological experiences. In modern times, rationality took up the sword and cleared the ontological garden with Occam's knife. Everything that could not be explained rationally was put to the test and bracketed. Some things could not yet be explained rationally. And because this advance of rationality was so successful, as it boosted science and fed technological progress, the central questions of consciousness, the soul and meaningfulness were put on the back burner. I think we are beginning to realize that this was perhaps not a good idea. These new ideas of quantum physics and neural networks show us that there are alternatives to linear causality, determinism, fate and karma. They are as complex as the starry sky. In a way, we are going back to a state of being in which we accept that there are processes that elude our rationality, even though our rationality made them visible in the first place. That is a bit of a paradox.

Structurally, we are back in the world of the Vedas. Consciousness has produced a model of reality that in its complexity exceeds what seemed conceivable within its axiomatic framework. And this is precisely where the question of freedom and spirituality lies for me. It has something to do with awareness. However, some basic assumptions are necessary, namely that what my external senses can perceive does not represent the whole of reality. We all know this intuitively, and we live and talk like this in everyday life, but we deny it in scientific discourse. So let's stop denying it for a moment. Let us continue to accept that the material world is not completely arbitrary, but can be explained, and let us hold on to the experience of consciousness and the openness of our consciousness to new things, to an open future. If we now try to maintain that this should not be an irresolvable contradiction, the central question of freedom arises. We are in a state of consciousness that is enlightened, phenomenally rich and open. This state is part of the book of life, but not that somewhat naive linear book, not even those great books of the Rigveda, Genesis, Copernicus, Hawking. It is part of Brahman, part of the whole, part of universal consciousness. We have no influence on the course of that universal consciousness that eludes our consciousness, it does not belong to us - 'I am that'. The only thing we can do is to allow our state of consciousness to unfold richly.

There are moments in life when we have an inkling of this. When we are in extremely critical situations, such as near-accidents or states of shock, we experience how space and time change, our perception expands and something opens up. For a fraction of a second, perhaps even for a few seconds, we see into a cosmic state where time seems to stand still, where many elements of consciousness appear clear, where the illusion of an option for action appears. In those moments we see beyond 'reality'. An indeterminacy becomes perceptible, like Schrödinger's cat, the situation is not yet clear. This indeterminacy is what we perceive as the moment of freedom of a decision. Whether this is a decision is somewhat academic at this point. We are shocked out of our illusion of reality and into a state of consciousness that attempts to categorize the completely unforeseen.

I would like to suggest using this image as a starting point to think differently about consciousness, freedom and the book of life. We can accept that cosmic reality follows a principle, and our consciousness can expand the experience of that principle. The book of life can be experienced as such, and we as part of that book can realize our own anchoring by "opening" a page and consciously expanding our perception. It now seems to me that when we elevate the moment to a higher level of perception, the options are enriched. The field widens, the scope becomes greater. We free ourselves from the stimulus-response pattern, degrees of freedom are activated. It is not my self that acts, my ego is an illusion, but becoming aware of a section of cosmic reality creates scope for action for life itself. The experience of being part of it is spiritual practice, is bliss and freedom

Yesterday, during a panel discussion at the India Art Fair, I heard someone quoting Plato. She said that Plato said that art is the reflection of the reflection of the real. Whether this is true in this abbreviated form remains to be seen. It is an interesting thought.

What is the real, what is a reflection, what is art? For Plato, there is the world of ideas, the world of shadows, which the ignorant in the Cave and the philosopher who wants to lead him out of it. Plato was not a great friend of art; what can you do with a painted apple when you can eat the real apple? And does the painted image really come close to the pure idea in any way? Art seems to make us think, but that does not necessarily bring us closer to the truth. Art springs from and invites a kind of thinking that is not rational. A way of thinking that focuses on the senses, or intuition, on vision, or reflection, a way of thinking that wants to create something more beautiful. This kind of thinking, aesthetics, the theory of perception, assumes something to be true that arises from one's own thinking.

It is this own thinking, which is stimulated by the perception of the shadow world, but nevertheless abstracts from it as far as possible, i.e. detaches itself from it in order to develop something of its own. What is then developed, the work of art, becomes reality, but is not real. The real, and I think the quote at the beginning alludes to Lacan, is doubly reflected. These two mirrors, which lead to a visual feedback loop, create a space of illusion that becomes a space of experimentation. The real remains just as inaccessible to art as it is to pure thought.

What does this tell us? This new variation on the problem of Representation. I think that the problem of subject and object, consciousness and matter, is implicit here. It is true that Plato's problems are 'idealistic', i.e. they refer to the world of ideas, i.e. a world that is neither subject nor object, that is neither mind nor matter. However, the way in which our thinking has difficulty in understanding the world without being able to perceive the actual reality indicates that the problem of dualism is the starting point of philosophical reflection. The goal of thought, i.e. the realization of the real, the world of ideas, remains utopia.

And this is exactly what the Upanishads reverse. The few main Upanishads that I have now studied in detail always start from the real, Brahman, the creator of the universe, and the truth itself is the starting point. It is only through its unfolding in the process of reality that existence is experienced. What we perceive, think and create is an expression of absolute being. The core of the philosophy of the Upanishads is the realization that the Self (Atman) is the same as Brahman (cosmos). So if the real is reflected in reflection, that may be art. It makes sense this way, and only this way.

Why does Western philosophy so often start thinking with the lowest common denominator, an axiom, an ontology that has been trimmed by Okheim's knife? It is the idea of the Enlightenment that has taken the principle of rational reduction to the extreme. It has mutated into the paradigm of scientific progress. And for centuries, if not millennia, this little rational thinking has been reaching its limits. It is well aware that it has a body, and consciousness, and a self or a soul, but it always pretends that this is not relevant because it is not completely absorbed by rationality. And so it was a revolution when phenomenology first took consciousness and Merlon-Ponty took the body, when postmodern aesthetics rehabilitated the senses and existentialism celebrated our failure.

Art is not the reflection of the reflection of the real, but the real is reflected in the reflection and so art is created. And thus even a transhuman, because nature is art, and the cosmos, the stars and the souls. Everything becomes art when it is reflected in reflection. When Brahman experiences the world through Atman and the gods dance and sing, then all the phenomenal qualities that the Western mind so brazenly denies are orchestrated by a choir of gods. Our feeling is real, our consciousness is real, the world is real, art is real. The real is real.

I am fascinated by the synchronicities here in Auroville. The mental, spiritual, physical and emotional spaces that intertwine here often do so over several days, seemingly effortlessly, intuitively, easily.

I was exhausted. A friend had left his body, as they say here. The community had provided support for over a month, many had grown together. The death ceremony Karumadhi was held in a small circle, a certain kind of puja on the 16th day, when the soul leaves this world.

I have been studying the Prashna Upanisahd with my teacher for a few weeks now. The topic of rebirth and deep sleep are the parts that are particularly deep. Like every Saturday we met, but this time not on his terrace, but we drove to a ruined temple to continue our discussions there.

Afterwards I slept more deeply than I have in years, and I actually always sleep very well... Emerging from the night I went into a deep meditation on deep sleep, which has nothing to do with sleep phases, but is a state of being that lies before our consciousness, similar to deep sleep, from which consciousness virtually emerges and into which it dives again.

I then fell back into a deep sleep. The whole day actually, only to go to the temple around the corner in Irumbai. We are working on a project about the temple. A small case study on a 1000 year old Chola Temple, which is very beautiful and active, but actually nothing special in Tamil Nadu, but it is if you pay attention to the details, as most things are. There was a big celebration, the gods in the form of bronze statues would be carried around the temple, they would be the biggest of the other gods in the form of stone statues. And then they danced together. As if from another world, an intermediate realm, they came to life.

I slept again - all night. The next day I went to a yoga class with a new teacher. I learned that the asanas are actually just a preparation for Shavasana. I was curious because Shavasana was always a mystery to me. Of course, it made sense that there should be a relaxation phase at the end of a yoga class. But what should I focus on? Where should my mind go and what should my body become 'aware' of in the relaxation? Andres works towards this throughout the class with breathing exercises, concentration, body awareness and energetic exercises. And finally, in Shavasana, we consciously followed the nerve pathways, focusing our attention on the connections.

And I had to think of the 72,000 nerves in the Upanishads, and of the wrapping of the water jug with the thread during Karumadhi, because the thread symbolizes the 72,000 nerves of the body. And so Karumadhi, Shavasana, Prashna and the many stages of sleep and levels of meditation merged into one picture within a few days.

One year of Auroville

I have lived through some intense years. Moving to a new country is always a major transformation - that was the case when I moved to London, then to the USA, France and now India. It's always important to me to leave my own culture in the background as much as possible and to embrace the new, which of course isn't new at all, just for me. And so one important task - especially in the first year - is to forget. Making space in your head, breaking down prejudices, surrendering to the magic and enjoying the rush a little.

The senses feel very fresh, the self very young, a childlike curiosity and naivety spreads that allows everything to take effect without prejudice.

I'm moving further and further away from the place that socialized me, and it's becoming increasingly clear why I'm doing this. Two things go together: the unease in a culture that I have always perceived as somehow foreign and the longing for a culture that would be more of a home.

India

India has always been this place of longing, and I'm certainly not the only one. Of course, it is the search for spirituality that brings people like me to India. Mother India calls and carries. The adventure that awaits you here is almost incomprehensible. It can hardly be grasped, neither by the act of grasping nor by the act of comprehending. The world as such reveals itself to be a different one. The European traditions of the Christian religion, occultism, exorcism, enlightenment, empiricism, romanticism, transcendentalism, modernism, postmodernism, etc. do not apply here. They are perceived as possible points of view, but no more.

Indian spirituality is about a synthetic understanding of life. It is not primarily about a scientific picture, the explanation of the material world or the construction of a simulation. In India, the question of consciousness is at the center. Consciousness is the starting point of everything. It has its starting point in consciousness itself. It is actually obvious that consciousness itself must exist, I have one, the reader has one, we can exchange ideas with other consciousnesses. Why is it so difficult to accept this in the West? (Husserl was quite close) But why is the statement of this fact branded as speculative? Just because it eludes the small-minded paradigm of scientificity? Isn't it much more the case that only what I find in my consciousness has any kind of relevance? Isn't that why the West celebrates so-called culture so much. But it is objectified, it does not invite a serious exchange about our own existence, but a discursive reflection. It is representative, it represents something as something else and it is used to represent, that is, to communicate power and powerlessness.

Adventure

It is this adventure of consciousness that makes traveling in the Indian cosmos so fascinating. Of course, you have to tame your skepticism and that immediately opens doors to all kinds of worldviews. Many are very strange to me. But they have a subjective validity. It would be presumptuous to want to place my consciousness above that of someone else. The contradictions that this creates must first be endured. This is not easy and causes a large number of crises in me. Crises in the sense of disorientation, restlessness and impatience. But the nice thing is that these crises can quickly be transformed into opportunities. They are invitations to meditate. An adventure of inner synthesis.

However, this synthesis is only possible if I admit to myself that my existence does not only consist of rational consciousness. I have a material and biological body, a life spirit and rational thinking, I have a world view and am capable of experiencing the sublime. I can reach higher levels of consciousness that move beyond the stimulus-response scheme. And I can approach the big question of our existence. I cannot answer it, but I can stay close to it. Many questions that present themselves as dilemmas to the rational mind are almost irrelevant on other levels of my existence, or even dissolve there.

This adventure is made possible by a whole series of different knowledge systems that have their origins in prehistoric times, i.e. the time before written language. The complex system of the Vedas was not written overnight. It is true that the knowledge it contains was revealed to the rishis. And no matter how skeptical one may be about this idea, one central question remains. Where does the idea of creation come from? And even more importantly, what is creation? How could such complex knowledge systems emerge at the beginning of history, of orderly time? What does inward vision see? Who hears by hearing, who sees by seeing?

Temple

I have decided to approach Indian culture through the temples. They are infinitely complex and I have to be patient with myself. It takes several lifetimes to even scratch the surface here, yet I want to try and capture an approximation. It will be amateurish, but perhaps that is precisely why it will be interesting.

The temples combine the knowledge of the Vedas, the Agamas, Tantras... It is architecture, sculpture, dance and music. They are places of worship, learning and coming together. They are embedded in the economy, ecology and social structures. They are intertwined with cosmology, meditation and spirituality. The bindu, the mantras, yantras, tantras, describe the relationship of the individual consciousness to the great, to the one. Unity and diversity manifest themselves in the temple. They are the living core of Indian spirituality. Many traditions seem to have existed unbroken for thousands of years.

I am still pursuing my project of reading Deleuze in India. Apart from difficult ideas like immanence in Deleuze, what interests me in Deleuze is the house in relation to art:

"Art perhaps begins with the animal, at least with the animal that marks out a territory and builds a dwelling (the two complement each other or sometimes merge in the so-called habitat). With the territory/house system, many organic functions change - sexuality, procreation, aggressiveness, food; but it is not this change that explains the appearance of territory and dwelling, rather the other way round: the territory implies the emergence of pure sensual qualities, sensibilia, which are no longer merely functional, but instead become expressive features and thus enable a transformation of functions. Certainly, this expressivity is already widely scattered in life, and one can say that even the field lily praises the glory of the gods. But it is only with territory and house that it becomes constructive and erects the ritual monuments of an animal mass that celebrates the qualities before gaining new causalities and finalities from them. This emergence is already art, not only in the treatment of external materials, but in the positions and colors of the body, in the songs and cries that mark the territory." (Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, 2003. What is philosophy? p.218)

What fascinates me about Deleuze is that his philosophy essentially describes how ideas come into existence. They emerge from the Implicitness, out of immanence. Ideas become active, they fly, form a flight path and thus connect. They create complexity. This way of thinking, which manages without axiomatics and without ideology, seems to me to be structurally very similar to the thinking of the Upanishads. Brahman unfolds itself in order to be able to experience itself. Where else but in the temple could this best be experienced?

So I sit in temples a lot, listen to the chants, bow to impermanence by smearing ashes on my head. From the inner chamber Garbhagriha the vibration spreads and manifests itself in the images on the walls of the temples. The Garbhagriha is only entered by the priest, who recites the mantras for the devotees. The bell, the incense sticks, the ablution and bedding of the gods, all this happens in the Garbhagriha. Here is the origin. "the territory implies the emergence of pure sensual qualities, sensibilia, which are no longer merely functional, but instead become expressive features and thus enable a transformation of functions." (see above)

The word werden is somewhat distorted in German: "Das wird doch nix!", or "Das wird schon...". There is something causal in the German 'werden', a process of development. In English, the word 'becoming' is more beautiful, something comes into being. It is more open: 'coming into being'. In French, Deleuze speaks of 'devenir', of "something coming", it is more active, a movement, away from something towards something else. It is important to perceive such small subtle differences when dealing with Deleuze's thinking, because that is the school of postmodern thinking, to see something in such small differences, the differences and structures that was not visible before. So when Deleuze, in the English translation of 'What is Philosophy' says "becoming is an extreme contiguity within a coupling of to sensations without resemblance or, on the contrary, in the distance of a light that captures both of them in a single reflection." I had to read this sentence over and over again for many years to understand it. Two sensations that are not similar touch each other, as in the distance of a light that captures both sensations in a single reflection. You have to pause a little.

For example, what is the difference between 'arising' and 'becoming'? Is there a 'becoming' in the physical world? In the world of atoms and physical forces, the law of conservation of energy applies. Matter and energy can change, their arrangement can change, E=mc2 etc... But a process of 'becoming' in the sense of becoming or devenir is something else. This is about sensations, sensory impressions, consciousness. How do two sensations become a sense impression? How does one sensory impression become another? How does consciousness change over time? How does a person change? What do I see on a screen? Who hears when I hear? This is the world of becoming. Sensations are contingent. They unite to form a more comprehensive sensory impression. They do not do this by merging or being grouped by similarity, but in a reflection. A reflection of a distant light that unites several sensations. The image is beautiful. However, the reflection is not an image, not a representation, but reflects light. In this reflection, very different elements can be very close to each other, great contrasts can appear harmonious, different qualities can touch each other.

But where does the light come from, in the distance? And where is the reflection perceived? Who sees when they see? The reflection of light and sound, warmth and impulse has its origin in vibration and creates vibration on contact. These impressions unite in consciousness, they become awareness.

-

I recently stumbled across David Hume again. I remember how intensively we studied his writings in Heidelberg. We went very deeply into the text, very meticulously and systematically. It was the opposite of those Anglo-American history of ideas lectures. So I stumbled across the concept of taste in Hume, as the core of his 'aesthetic' theory. I thought of Rasa and began a Conversation with the AI. Larger connections became clear to me, lines that I had never seen. However, I was a little disappointed by the superficiality. But if I compare the conversation with other conversations I've had with people over dinner, it was one of the more interesting ones.

So I wanted to find out more and looked up Gilles Deleuze. He was already taking part in the fictional conversation with AI, but his later essay on David Hume is on a completely different level. Deleuze's analysis is brilliant. He shows the full power of Hume's revolutionary approach, a thinking that is empirical and positivist, the power of the intellect that works with assumptions of causality, and also with the power of association and intuition to show how man builds an edifice of thought. This thought structure is not oriented towards metaphysical concepts such as self, God or world, but shows how thought itself moves and unfolds. It quickly becomes clear why Deleuze returned to David Hume towards the end of his life.

Dvaitadvaita

However, this throws me into a bit of a crisis, or hopefully to a point where I can find a new synthesis. After all, crises and new beginnings are often not so different. As I am on the fringes of what I can think, it is difficult to formulate this. Nevertheless, here's an attempt: the dualism of the Western tradition of thought is a trap from which it is difficult to escape. This is largely due to the fact that this dualism attaches great importance to the self. Once one has assumed oneself to be the center of the world, to place one's own rights above those of everything else and to fence them in again only by virtue of rational principles, a world view emerges that is concentrated on the individual person, which is expressed religiously in the tales of woe of individual prophets. The trials and tribulations of this tale of woe are part of great subjective narratives that are expressed in art.

The way out of this is not to dissolve dualism one-sidedly, i.e. into a materialistic position or a purely metaphysical position, but into a philosophy of immanence. This immanence, i.e. the idea that there is only one world that contains everything in its complexity, demands a new way of thinking. Space and time, change and process, relation and the individual, difference and repetition, resonance and language and so much more must be rethought. That was Deleuze's project. And that is also the project of the Upanishads. And that is the reason why I am reading Deleuze in India.

Now I read Deleuze's thoughts on Hume and remember my philosophy studies, and the desperate trench warfare in dualism. But I see that Hume and the Vedas are striving for something similar. A deep insight into the nature of the cosmos, without an exaggerated self-exaltation of the self. This may sound somewhat absurd, since in the Upanishads, Atman, the self as a principle, Purusha as the primordial soul, and Brahman as the creator are the starting point of thought. But this is exactly where the connection lies. The Upanishads think it together, as a kind of self-differentiation as in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This differentiation is only possible in a thinking of immanence, where the different traditions of thought over the millennia and continents converge.

So the crisis that this triggers for me is this: I understand the perspective of the empiricist, and the perspective of the Vedas. Both of them come across dualism, in two forms, in a dualistic way. And in the Vedas one then speaks of Dvaitadvaita - dualism-non-dualismthe duality of duality and non-duality. And while I myself approach this concept of dvaitadvaita a little, my confusion arises from the fact that this happens with the help of AI.

I was lucky enough to attend a 3-day intensive workshop at the Sunlit Path with Niloy experience. In contrast to the tradition of slow, concentrated, dedicated learning over decades from a guru, Niloy introduced me to the world of Dhrupad. For someone like me, who is deeply drawn to this meditative and philosophical sound art, this was a gift. Dhrupad is so complex that an introduction is a good idea.

What is a sound?

Classical Western harmony divides an octave into 8 tones; if you add the semitones, there are 12. Each of these tones can serve as the fundamental tone for a scale, which in turn can be in a major or minor key. If the semitones are 'calculated' from a lower tone to a higher one, it is radiant and a major scale is created. If the semitone is calculated down from a higher one, it is slightly lower and the scale is slightly darker. Johann Sebastian Bach averaged these semitones with his well-tempered tuning of the piano, as they actually only differ in the micro-interval. The technical advantage is obvious: the piano can mirror all harmonies, the harmonic circle is implemented on the piano. As a pianist and organist, this was important to him. For the history of music, it created a harmony of pragmatism. La Monte Yung tuned the piano for a well-tuned piano again mathematically clean. When I heard that for the first time, it was an incredible liberation. All this time I had only heard music that was well-tempered and not well-tuned. But it is precisely these subtle differences that are at the heart of Dhrupad.

Nada Yoga

Nada yoga, the yoga of sound, is the exploration of sound, of tones, of vibration. Niloy told anecdotally that one of his students was a little skeptical about his ability to hear and sing micro-intervals. He brought a measuring device and on that day, a normal day for Niloy, an average day, Niloy was able to produce 17 microtones in one tone interval, i.e. hold them with his voice. For an octave with 8 tone intervals, that would be 133 micro-intervals. On another Workshop with Ustad Bahauddin Dagar, Dagar demonstrated 7 microtones in one tone interval on the Veena, which we could all understand well. However, Dagar said that he works with at least 12 microtones and that there are many more available. But not everyone can understand that. To be able to do this, the ear and the voice and the instrument must be practiced - Nada Yoga. Sharpening the senses, exploring what the world of sound has to offer the human perceptual apparatus.

Upanishads

The Kena Upanishad asks who hears when he hears, who sees when he sees, who thinks when he thinks. Who hears when 'I' hear? What is hearing? What connection does hearing create with the world? In the Upanishads, the basis of the world as we know it is vibration, physics says energy. Vibration is a vibration, matter vibrates, light vibrates, sound vibrates. Vibrations are the basis. In physics, force is not added here: gravitational force and impulse force, for example. The force of consciousness is left out. In the Vedas, forces are symbolized by cows and horses. They stand for the forces of the universe. And once you have seen a few thousand cows on India's streets, it gradually becomes clear where this image comes from.

But back to sound as a vibration, which is heard by whom? There is a vibration in the world, there is a perceptual apparatus that receives and translates this vibration and there is a consciousness that experiences it. The rishis knew that consciousness must be structurally similar to what constitutes the world and what the senses convey. How could it work otherwise? Since vibration is the basis of everything in this tradition of thought, there is of course an image and a primordial form, that is OM, the primordial sound and it is described in the Mandukia Upanishad. Nada Yoga is also about exploring this connection. The oldest tradition of doing this is Dhrupad.

Dhrupad

After these brief considerations, it is not surprising that the ragas are not notated. There is no notation system for Dhrupad. A raga is actually just a tone scale that serves as the basis for a practice. There are morning, noon and evening ragas and of course early morning and late evening and sunrise ragas, monsoon ragas and festival ragas etc. The over 3000 year old tradition of Dhrupad, the original form of classical Indian music, has been heard a lot over the millennia. Who listens while listening? What is Dhrupad? It becomes clear that it quickly becomes philosophical here.

Dhrupad is a living tradition that is passed on from teacher to student. A central element of Dhrupad is the exploration of tones, intermediate tones and the path from one tone to the next. When a monsoon raga, Rag Megh for example, forms a scale of 6 tones: Sa, Re, Ma, Pa, ni, Sa' this is the basic framework. There are countless phrasings between the notes. And instead of Sa', Re, Ma, Pa, ni, Sa, syllables can be used that are derived from the Bījamantra, for example. So it quickly becomes very complex. Learning Dhrupad is learning these countless techniques. A performance of a raga - I am reluctant to say performance, because of course we are not talking about a concert form, but about nada yoga - a performance is therefore a very structured meditation that only superficially resembles a jazz improvisation. No raga is the same.

If you now open yourself up to the world of Dhrupad, it is a completely different way of hearing. There are no right or wrong sounds. Creating a sound means producing it. Where does it come from? In singing, it starts with the breath, with the body, the sitting posture, a calm mind. Our voice is not a technical device. Making a sound is the vibration of the vocal cords. Finding the 'right' tone is a search on these vocal cords. Professionals are so fast and precise that a listener cannot hear them. But that's exactly what Dhrupad is all about. How do I produce a sound, do I approach it from below or above or from above to below? Do I circle it or hold it, do I emphasize it, draw it in or project it? So before I produce the first sound, I am actually already the mystery of the world. It's always about vibration - OM. Now that the first vibration is there, what happens next? How do I get to the next sound? What is sound? So it's not so much about the concept of music. It's nada yoga.

Language

I am naturally fascinated by the connection to language. Language is sound, mantras are knowledge in its most compact form, OM in its shortest form includes the breath, the speech apparatus, the chakras. Dhrupad traces this knowledge in the form of Nada Yoga, but is aware of its tool character. Just as pointing to something points to something and is not an end in itself (the pointing stick is not what it points to), knowledge in Dhrupad is beyond language and sound. The syllables of the Bījamantra are reduced in such a way that their linguistic reference is dissolved. What it is about cannot be expressed in language or music. The search for truth is a path, Nada Yoga one of its paths, Dhrupad its form. Dhrupad contains everything that is important, says Niloy.

You could also say it is pure deconstruction in the sense of postmodern philosophy.

Lists: https://archive.org/details/audio?query=dhrupad

After my first love of Plato (especially the Phaidon dialog) and the great Greek poets such as Sophocles etc., when I fell into the abyss of skepticism as a teenager, the path from Descartes' meditation to Hume, Kant and Husserl was rocky. I lost sight of the soul and followed the ideology of purely empirical science. Only what could be perceived with the five senses was considered 'material' for philosophy, and embedded in this was the doubt as to whether these senses could be trusted. Whether everything is not just an illusion. The arc from Plato to David Hume could hardly be greater.

Pictures

The idea that the world shows itself only in perceptual images led me to aesthetics, but I have never seen this as clearly as the other day when I was browsing through Aurobindo's text on the Upanishads. I am reminded of Willard Van Orman Quine's legendary and absurd example of unseparated rabbit parts: when a rabbit passes behind a tree and so two rabbit parts present themselves in my perception - a front and a back rabbit part - and yet I seem to have a certainty that it is a rabbit. So we could learn something here about the principles of our perception and language. Hume took this to an extreme when he said that we cannot be certain that the sun will rise again tomorrow (his point was to question causality). Here is Aurobindo's statement on this kind of philosophy:

"The sun rises up in the morning, mounts into the cusp of the blue Heavens and descends at evening trailing behind it clouds of glory as it disappears. Who could doubt this irrefragable, overwhelmingly evidenced fact? Every day, through myriads of years, the eyes of millions of men all over the world have borne concurrent and unvarying testimony to the truth of these splendid voyagings. Than such universal ocular testimony, what evidence can be more conclusive? Yet it all turns out to be an image created by Nescience in the field of vision. Science comes & undeterred by prison & the stake tells us that the sun never voyages through our heavens, is indeed millions of miles from our heavens, and it is we who move round the Sun, not the Sun round us. Nay those Heavens themselves, the blue firmament into which poetry and religion have read so much beauty and wonder, is itself only an imagein which Nescience represents our atmosphere to us in the field of vision. The light too which streams upon us from our Sun and seems to us to fill Space turns out to be no more than an image. Science now freely permitted to multiply her amazing paradoxes, forces us at last to believe that it is only motion of matter affecting us at a certain pitch of vibration with that particular impression on the brain. And so she goes on resolving all things into mere images of the great cosmic ether which alone is. Of such unsubstantialities is this marvelous fabric of visible things created! Nay, it would even appear that the more unsubstantial a thing seems, the nearer it is to ultimate reality. This, which Science proves, says the Vedantist, is precisely what is meant by Maya." (Aurobindo CVSA 18, p.379)

It is not only Aurobindo's poetic power that fascinates me here, the way he evokes this image of the rising sun and rolls it back and forth, weaving in the different positions in order to then reposition the problem itself. It is the power of being guided by one's own intuition and insight, by experience in the richest sense.

I learn from this:

• If we want to analyze the world as a mere phenomenon, please let the initial images be rich and powerful and not silly reduced like severed rabbit parts.
• If we then follow the method of the natural sciences and the rational mind, then please go to the end, where we see that it is actually this science that creates the very images it doubts.
• And finally the reversal of the problem, in a kind of dialectical twist. The world is undeniably real, but it is not as science describes it. Science itself shows this.

Every experimental setup is a simulation, a construction. Every theory is a description of the world whose hypothesis is subject to constant testing. In the Vedas we learn about the core of the world as we experience it: It is pure consciousness. My consciousness knows nothing other than consciousness. It is a crazy assumption that everything that contains my consciousness should be its opposite. It is not the case that our consciousness contains an image of a completely different reality. Rather, the world consists of consciousness, in the interaction of consciousness with other consciousness, in the differentiation of the one in its multiplicity, perceptions and images arise. They are connected by vibration. The Kena Upanishads describe that, the basic principle is OM in the Mandukya Upanishad, everything is connected by a rhizome on a level of immanence, as Deleuze describes it in his last essay.

Maya, the question of reality, reveals a paradox; it is the question itself that creates the problem. The mentalhe images that serve as the basis for rational analysis are maya - illusion. Our consciousness, on the other hand, is real, the only reality. This is the core of the problem of dualism dvaita-advaita

Om shanti, shanti, shanti

I was expecting a culture shock. And it's happening now. My mind doesn't really want to settle in. The time difference is almost 12 hours, so upside-down, my consciousness is on fire, there's no other way to describe it. I'm awake, but somehow not here. I'm in Chicago and I know it, I'm fully present, but my mind doesn't feel at home yet.

It is like the Aitereya Upanishad. "These were the Gods that He created; they fell into this great Ocean, and Hunger and Thirst leaped upon them. Then they said to Him, "Command unto us an habitation that we may dwell secure and eat of food."" But what is a good habitat for the gods, those beings that Brahman created in order to experience himself. Brahman drew Purusha from the deep waters, from him, the counterpart of Prakriti (nature), Purusha manifests as soul, as consciousness, as a universal individual: "The eyes brake forth and from the eyes Sight and of Sight the Sun was born. The ears brake forth and from the ears Hearing and of Hearing the regions were born. The skin brake forth and from the skin hairs and from the hairs herbs of healing and all trees and plants were born..."

When Pursha manifested itself in this way - as differentiated universal forces, as gods - the question arose as to where the forces could live. The oceans were not suitable, nor were the cows. But when the gods saw the humans, they said: ""O well fashoned truly! Man indeed is well and beautifully made." Then the Spirit said unto them, "Enter ye in each according to his habitation." No sooner said than done, but one question remained: "The Spirit thought, "Without Me how should all this be?" and He thought, "By what way shall I enter in?" He thought also, "If utterance is by Speech, if breathing is by the Breath, if sight is by the Eye, if hearing is by the Ear, if thought is by the Mind, if the lower workings are by Apana, if emission is by the organ, who then am I?""

Culture shock

I feel so alive in India, the world of the Vedas is still active there. But I am not interested in representing the teachings of the Vedas, I understand them far too little for that, the language of the gods is so complicated, so multifaceted, the wisdom so deep. But something shines through these ancient writings, something that can be felt everywhere in India. Consciousness there is not determined by matter. Because matter is not accessible to our consciousness. Consciousness seeks a material abode. In somewhat old-fashioned terms, we would say that the soul looks for a body.

This consciousness that seeks out a place, e.g. my body, is not completely bound to it. That is the great mystery of rebirth. The connection is not arbitrary, but it is loose. We see this in the Sleepwhen our consciousness moves away from the material world, the causal world, and enters the dream world.

So the gods chose humans to live in them. But this means, somewhat trivialized, that consciousness, emotions, intellect, sensory perception and memory need a place where they can work. In our experience, this place is the human body. "It was this bound that He cleft, it was by this door that He entered in. 'Tis this that is called the gate of the cleaving; this is the door of His coming and here is the place of His delight. He hath three mansions in His city, three dreams wherein He dwelleth, and of each in turn He saith, "Lo, this is my habitation" and "This is my habitation" and "This is my habitation."""

Chicago

So now I have also flown from India to Chicago and I feel a bit like a ghost (spirit) who has discovered a new House is looking for. The culture shock is maximum. I feel like the Truman Show, that 1998 movie where a perfect world is staged in which a person who doesn't know that this world is a production is filmed 24/7 and broadcast live on television. It is, of course, a variation of Plato's allegory of the cavejust like the Matrix (1999) or other dystopian sci-fi classics.

Here in the USA, many things are taken to extremes. The values of modernity are negotiated here: Freedom, capital, science, war, democracy, art, materialism, individuality... This is where the boundaries are tested and the limits are set. But this modernity has lost its roots and that is the tragedy of the USA, because the fact that progress is necessary lies in the structure of the world. Everything is in flux, everything is in the process of becoming, stagnation and conservatism are only justified as forces, not as absolute values. And so, for me, this is where the oldest coherent scriptures - the Indian Vedas - meet the force of modern progress, and I ask myself, where are the gods here? What game are they playing?

When I see the people here, the traffic, the supermarkets, the air-conditioned houses, it really is a different world. Brahman is also experienced here. But the question is how awake people are here, they work a lot and hard, but consciousness is anchored on the surface in the consumer world. Something is being tried out here, the experiment threatens the planet, but it will continue somehow.

I will find my way around here. The gods don't live in temples here, there are no cows in the streets, but there is a will to build a beautiful new world. This modern world is being built here like a small child who doesn't think much of anything bad. Sometimes the child is surprised that the house collapses, then there is crying and screaming and a new attempt until the learning goal is achieved.

-

As far back as my memory goes, I remember that I always enjoyed listening to music. It is a matter of concentration, of enjoyment, of devotion, of self-dissolution. It was always a mystery to me what this power of music is, because it is very fleeting, ephemeral, it usually comes out of a loudspeaker. A technical device produces sound waves and the listener sinks into inner landscapes. What happens there? It is the Vibration. In the Kenaupani pity it became clear that the mixture of different vibrations constitutes consciousness.

I would like to try to differentiate this a little today. Starting from a meditative state, the question arises as to the qualitative constitution of this consciousness. In a state of high concentration, the sensory impressions from outside are reduced. It is not really possible to mute the outside world, but it is possible to concentrate in such a way that the sensory impressions are perceived as such in a first stage and are 'released' from consciousness in a second stage. It is not so much a phenomenological epoch in which the existence of the outside world is placed in an epistemic bracket, i.e. the question of its existence is kept open, but rather a withdrawal of attention. It is a dispassionate observation: Ah this impression is now present, or this thought comes, or that memory appears... Letting all these pass by as what they are is a first stage of meditation. In an inner vision, it then becomes clear how consciousness is constituted.

Inner rooms

A space filled with consciousness opens up. However, this does not react to sensory stimuli, but is pure and clear. This is where the forces of consciousness manifest: my body (matter), my breath (the life energy/prana), my mind (which analyses and visualizes), the experience of existence (rapture/ananda), pure consciousness (chit). In this consciousness, which is aware of its various levels, the self moves freely. Here the Self (Atman) meets the soul (Purusha) and realizes that consciousness itself, which encompasses everything (Brahman), is the Creator (Sat). This is where the forces of our world become visible as such: love, war, compassion, pleasure, beauty, suffering in all their forms. They are real in our consciousness and it makes little sense to deny them. We experience them, and we name them, and we communicate and share them, we live them out and realize them, they become very real forces in the world, working in them. All of this is undeniable. It is a little difficult to explain and that is why science often pretends that they are epiphenomenal, that they are merely insignificant side effects of physical processes. But this is not very wise, as it robs us of our own essence.

Music

I have expanded a little here because I think that this inner space has several antechambers, and art occupies many of these antechambers. In music, for example, I enter an inner space that is created by vibrations. I can move freely in it, because music helps me to let everything that is not music pass by. In this space, I can then go on inner journeys, which is why we always go into musical spaces when we are happy or sad. We relive past experiences and process them. These are fundamental psychological principles. But here too we can climb the ladder of consciousness. Our body and breath can be explored in dance, our mind can visualize the music, clarify its structure, bring its composition, execution, interpretation before the inner eye. But when I really concentrate and contemplate the music, as I now do best with Dhrupa of Bahauddin Dagar, then the music becomes pure sensuality (Rasa). And suddenly the question is no longer how a technical device can produce sound waves that can generate such a consciousness. This question belongs to the world of the rational mind. The music itself, the vibration with which my consciousness merges, opens up a different space, a space of simulation, contemplation, insight and light. Active listening to music is very close to deep meditation.

My aim is to give the experience its own space and not to grind it into reductionist contradictions. Music takes place in the antechambers of the meditative space. And this is almost identical for painting, sculpture, dance, architecture, literature and poetry etc... if I engage with their core qualities. It has its meaning here. The question of what music is has not been fully answered, but its function, its meaning, its effect is now a little clearer to me. It is no longer a mysterious secret, but a beautiful tool. It belongs to Saraswati.

Art, it now seems to me, is understood from here in India. And it is from here that Ananda Coomaraswamy's criticism of Western art is understood as 'retinal' clear.

Karl Marx said that matter determines consciousness, i.e. the material conditions of existence determine who we are, how we are, what we are. Right down to the platitude that you are what you eat. This material basis follows the rules of the economy. As long as the economy is based on capital, its accumulation creates a superstructure that ideologically dominates the base.

Marx lived in Soho London from 1849 to 1883. Charles Darwin also lived in London, or rather just outside London about 20 kilometers away, at almost the same time from 1842 to 1882. Darwin thought less economically or philosophically, he thought more biologically and proposed a theory of evolution. Variations in reproduction (the concept of DNA did not yet exist) are subject to the competition of nature and those that form a survival advantage prevail. He called this selection, of course.

In the 20th century, these two thinkers significantly shaped the world view of the capitalist Western bloc and the communist Eastern bloc. Their ideas were born in the center of the British Empire, which owed its power and wealth to the exploitation of India. There, in India, the wisdom of Indian philosophy had been suppressed for centuries, especially by the British (the French and Portuguese were probably a little more tolerant)

Teatime

So while Marx and Darwin probably drank Darjeeling from India, the 'Indian Renaissance' was born there, primarily in Bengali. A movement that sought to free itself from the shackles of colonialism and revive India's own ideas. Here, the wisdom of the Rishis, the spirituality of the Vedas became part of modern discussions again. What the British very ignorantly called Hinduism reduced the complexity of Indian philosophy, culture and spirituality to a geographical 'religion'.

Before Darwin died in London in 1882 and Marx in 1883, a little 7-year-old boy named Sri Aurobindo from Bengali arrived in Cambridge in 1879, a good 80 kilometers north of London. Arthur Schopenhauer, who found solace in the Upanishads, had died in Frankfurt in 1860, Friedrich Nietzsche had to give up his professorship in Basel for health reasons in the year of Aurobindo's arrival in England and fell into madness 10 years later. Sigmund Freud studied medicine, Carl Jung was of kindergarten age and Albert Einstein was born that year. In the USA Charles S. Peirce straight "How to make our ideas clear" published. Pierce writes there:

„It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will sometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty. „

And finally, Gottlob Frege published his first book "Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens" in Jena in 1879. Pierce and Frege laid the foundations for the analytical philosophy of language. However, it is doubtful whether they really helped to clarify ideas. For here, too, there is a reductionist approach. It could be argued that although consciousness clearly benefits from language, it cannot be reduced to it.

In 1893, the year Mahatma Gandhi went to South Africa as a lawyer for 21 years, Aurobindo returned to India at the age of 21 and taught in Baroda. His philosophy, his yoga, became the antithesis to the materialistic, reductionist philosophy of the West.