We only live in the moment. Often this sounds like an accusation. You shouldn't just live in the moment; think about the future, be aware of your responsibilities. Living in the moment is considered dreamy, unproductive, and escapist in many modern societies.

For those who have time — beyond mere survival in a capitalist, socialist, or otherwise organized economy — to still set aside some time for themselves, the great driving force seems to be the desire to leave something behind: documents of success, entries in libraries, engravings on public surfaces. But if we are honest, even of the Seven Wonders of the World, not much has remained. This desire to leave a trace in history does not serve the unfolding of one’s own life, but the productivity of a system we may understand as political or cultural. It serves a notion of progress that reduces the individual Self, its soul, its life energy and spiritual depth, to its labor power or creativity.

Life in the moment, in the Now, opens spaces of existence that resist productivity, and is therefore radical. Many experience this radicality in moments of happiness, when time stands still, when the other person becomes the center of attention, or when sublime nature brings our own existence into resonance. This radicality, which often has the potential for transformation and moves us to change something, releases an energy that the systems of our societies either understand as a threat or try to capitalize on.

I am sitting in a meditation center and ask myself several times a day what I am doing here. I am not productive … I help a little with daily life, as everyone here does, and in my free time I work little, which means: I do things for other people. In the time I take for myself, however, I am with myself, with that stillness and emptiness in which Nothingness and Being are in constant play. That play which determines our existence, whose enjoyment is reserved for the soul, and which as a whole is experienced as creation.

And yet it is precisely this creation that exists only in the moment. Only through my experiencing it does it exist at all. I do not want to fall here into the trap of solipsism. Much of what exists outside my perception in this moment is coherent. Yet the world of the macrocosm only mirrors the microcosm. The deep insight of great teachings is that both cosmoses, the microcosm and the macrocosm, the outside and the inside, are identical.

We've forgotten this. We think there's so much out there that I don't know, and that so much of what I experience isn't real. This dissonance, this disharmony defines our global situation as humanity, and little is being done to harmonize it. Leibniz spoke of a pre-established harmony, Spinoza of immanence. Meditation sometimes also involves experiencing this: not as a philosophical insight, but as genuine being in the moment.

For only in the experience of the moment, the experience of one’s own existence as inner experience and as existence in the Now, are these deep contradictions of being harmonized. Life in the moment becomes the experience of existence; an entry in the history books is not necessary for that.

„The nonexistent did not exist, nor did the existent exist at that time. There existed neither the airy space nor heaven beyond.

What moved back and forth? From where and under whose protection? Did water exist, a deep abyss?

Death did not exist, nor deathlessness then. There existed no sign of night, nor of day.

That One breathed without wind by its independent will. Nothing else existed beyond that.“

Rigveda X.129, Creation

Der Beitrag Die Radikalität des Jetzt erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

Sometimes I react strangely. Someone does something unexpected, an uncertainty is awakened in me. How do I categorize this and how do I react to it, and what does react mean here? So it's about expectation, a way of being in the world that anticipates. The future is considered predictable and is also seen as such. If I do this or that, then someone may react in one way or another. However, it sometimes happens that the reaction of the other person is different. I have been wrong in my expectations, or the other person has played something, or the interaction has been shaped by something that preceded it and is not transparent. Energies and dynamics may have crept in that my expectation did not perceive, that were unconscious or repressed. And so we find ourselves in a pool of different conscious and unconscious memories, feelings, influences, anticipations and assessments.

The little ego

The ego reacts, it feels misunderstood and becomes impulsive. It may try to evade and cover up, or it may withdraw, somewhat offended, and feel misunderstood, or it may become active, try to change the situation, become manipulative or aggressive. In severe cases, it may even adapt its image of the world and its self-image, it may deform, reshape and distort itself, moving away from the normative.

All of this can be understood as a defense. My little ego tries to defend the supposed attack on its anticipation. It becomes reactive, reacts in a compensatory, restorative, manipulative, constructive way. It is actually an attempt to put the world back in order. But the other person doesn't see it that way, my own actions become incomprehensible to others and a conflict arises.

One way

I want to resist the normative impulses and avoid the corrective. Because what is revealed here is first of all something incredibly strong, creative, expressive, which touches our humanity at its deepest. Behind my little ego is a heart, a soul, a spirit, a nature, all of which together try to experience and synthesize being in my body and in this time and place. We often describe the first step on this path as a search for meaning, but it is much more than that. The search precedes the finding and then manifests itself in self-realization and self-expression through to the merging and dissolution of the ego. You are allowed to react a little and defend yourself. However, it is not very helpful as it usually only exacerbates situations. It quickly requires a very good ability to introduce conflict strategies in order to avoid entering into a more serious conflict.

Inner work

The inner work takes place in a different place: observing and letting go of all impulses that unite in my consciousness, including the unconscious ones that are only allowed to find their way into consciousness. This works quite well in meditation. But what does this mean for interpersonal interaction? Pauses, empathy, but above all openness and authenticity, radical self-perception and objective perception of others. The latter two are impossible in their purest form on their own and only succeed in interaction with another person. This other can either be a teacher or a loved one. In the tantric experience this is the same.

Love

I can just see two butterflies dancing around each other in the garden, and I can see two worms intertwining while making contact. The forms of expression are almost infinite and we as humans can unite on many different levels. But that really isn't possible with everyone. Such deep encounters are rare. For some, this will only be realized in another life.

Der Beitrag Verteidigen – Reagieren – Vereinigen erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

An apple, a strawberry, a melon or a passion fruit, a banana or a plum, a tomato or a cucumber, a bean or a grain, a coconut and a pomegranate. Fruit wants to be eaten, it wants to give pleasure, nourish and sometimes intoxicate. They shimmer and ferment, decompose and exude fragrances, they catch the eye, beguile the senses, create pleasure and enjoyment.

They are not like that by chance. Fruits reflect a desire of those who eat them: Humans, horses, monkeys, ants, beetles, birds, fish, hedgehogs, dogs and cats, snails, spiders, snakes, flies, giraffes and parrots. They all react to different fruits. Some fruits have a hard shell, some are very soft. Some are heavy and large, others small and light. Some are sweet or sour, bitter or salty, smell intense or very delicate, stink or beguile.

Fruits want to be eaten, so they move on. An apple says: take me with you, a strawberry wants to melt in your mouth, a passion fruit offers itself in its voluptuousness, tenderness and intensity, a coconut wants to be cracked, thrown and crushed in order to offer its flesh and juice as refreshment to feast on. The bean hangs and waits, the grain gets caught in the fur, the tomato bursts cheekily in its redness, scarred, and nestles into the hand that grasps it.

The fruit and the animal unite in pleasure, in devotion and in the search. The reward takes place in the ecstasy of consumption, the fruit reaches its goal, the animal is satisfied, the ecstasy and intoxication flare up in consumption. At the end there is the shitting, the mushrooms break apart, which did not surrender to the senses as a stimulus in the fire of pleasure.

These berries, drupes, legumes, pseudo-fruits and caryopses are preceded by the flower. That fragrant, attractive organ of the plant that can be desired and inseminated. Its face speaks, it laughs and opens up, it joins the ranks of the wreath. Here nature achieves pure form, art and beauty, construction, dwelling and resting place. Nature sends a signal, it communicates, it acts in abundance and intoxication.

I read Georges Bataille (1897-1962) many years ago and it came to mind when I wrote this. It could be said that these fruits are not merely food, but manifestations of abundance itself, in which beauty, pleasure, decay and excrement are inextricably intertwined. As Bataille saw it, nature wants to be wasted in intoxication, it finds its truth in waste, in ecstasy and transgression. Every fruit that we enjoy thus already carries within it the movement of life, death and transgression.

Der Beitrag Die Begierde der Frucht erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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."

Der Beitrag Dakshinamurti erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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Der Beitrag Protected: Meditationsnotizen – 12.7.24 4.30am erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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.

Der Beitrag Die erträgliche Leichtigkeit des Seins erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

Many people have the idea that we live in a world that consists of matter and follows the laws of physics and various theories, such as the theory of evolution. This is strange, because matter as such does not really exist, E=mc² stands for it. I don't really understand this formula, but it symbolizes that in the end everything is energy, possibly even simply vibration, as string theory claims. Then there is the physics of the macrocosm and the microcosm. They contradict each other, but that doesn't seem to matter. Space and time bend, black holes eat them up. We pretend that there are different levels of material reality on which different laws apply, and that this in turn is logical and determines the course of the world. Something emanates from the Big Bang, but we cannot begin to explain the first fractions of a second. The complex arises from the simple, they say. Life arises from carbon, a species through reproduction, evolution through selection according to a principle they call survival. Where do such strange theories come from and why are they so dominant?

They are dominant because they have an extremely high explanatory power and even predictive power. According to the laws of causality, they can say what must follow in the future as a reaction to an action. Schopenhauer already described that there are at least four different levels of causality (large effect small reaction or small effect large reaction, for example). What we have produced with the science of matter is a technical world, and that cannot be denied. With the theory of evolution, we have opened the way to genetics and found the code of biological life. That is of course impressive. It shows what the intellectual, rational mind is capable of. However, there is also a lot that we do not understand with this mind. The humanities and social sciences, for example, have a very entertaining argument about who is right with which theory. Nobody has a real explanation, and those who are honest know this very well. It's a contest of ideas that may eventually produce a winner. But it looks as if this competition is becoming more and more colorful; there are more theories, not fewer. The great unifying theory is still missing.

Theories are images of segments of reality. A segment is chosen, a description is given that remains within the parameters of our perception and our mind. Within this description, explanations are then sought and predictions are ventured. If the predictions come true, the theory is valid; if they do not come true, the theory is considered disproved - in other words, it is only valid until it is disproved. This is called the falsification principle. Now, although or precisely because this approach has worked very well since early modernity and has produced a lot of good and bad, we see the parameters of this approach as reality. That is what I find remarkable. Because these parameters are not reality, that is a categorical misunderstanding, coupled with a self-deception and a collective hallucination.

This collective hallucination is juxtaposed with other hallucinations - irrational, spiritual and religious, meditative and delusional. A kind of schizophrenia describes the human condition in the modern age. We are firmly convinced of things that we know to be false. How can this be explained and overcome?

What would happen if we left the ideal of non-contradiction behind us? What would a world look like in which contradictions were not declassified as such, but celebrated as a realization of complexity? That was somewhat the project of postmodernism. Within individual disciplines, the ideal of freedom from contradiction is inspiring, but even on the fringes or between sub-topics of a discipline, freedom from contradiction is no longer tenable. It leads to confusion. Things that do not belong together are supposed to be merged. It is this authoritarian trait of rationality that feeds fascism.

I gave this text to Chatgpt for spelling correction, the tool does a very good job. But now it has continued to write without being asked. This is the unsolicited continuation of my text. I largely agree, but why did the AI continue to hallucinate here?

"Instead, we could strive for a world in which contradictions are recognized as valuable indications of the complexity and multi-layered nature of reality. Such a world would not seek to harmonize or level out all differences, but would recognize and value them in their own right. This would mean that we see different ways of knowing - be it rational, spiritual, intuitive or artistic - as complementary rather than competing.

In practice, this could lead to a much richer and more diverse dialog in which different perspectives are not only tolerated, but actively sought and integrated. This could not only enrich our sciences and arts, but also lead to a more inclusive and understanding society, where different perspectives and lifestyles are seen as part of a larger, multi-layered whole."

https://chatgpt.com/share/084c63f0-d483-4ff5-a351-c051840d4292

Personally, it's a bit too short for me, I actually wanted to delve a little deeper, but I'm taking this as an opportunity to take a break.

Der Beitrag Theorie und Praxis – Teil 1 erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

Slowly and at long intervals, I read Sri Aurobindo again and again. Why not absorb everything much and quickly and finally bring order to my world of thoughts, which wants to break free from the consequences of rational monotheism? Why don't I give my intellect the freedom, concentration, calm and strength to embark on one of life's greatest adventures?

As a student, I once very naively went swimming in the Rhine, somewhere off Basel, where the water was clear and cold, flowing fast and wide through green mountain landscapes. As soon as we jumped into the river, we found ourselves in the middle of the stream. The bank passed by at breakneck speed and we knew we had to get out again quickly, because we had simply gone into the river somewhere and had to find our way back to our clothes somehow. We were excited, alive, reborn. It felt like diving into the river of life. The senses sharpened, the world as a process showed its power in a loving way, the self asserted itself against the five elements. The intellect was quiet, the experience of the sublime great, the breath active. This is one of the images in my memory that helps me to follow the Upanishads.

This experience, like every experience, consists of images. In contact with the outside world, the outer senses convey an inner sense, a perception that can become an experience. This inner sense, mediated by the nerve endings of the outer senses, is fed by the vibration of light, sound, touch, taste and smell. And this inner sense can in turn express itself through sound, gestures and representation. This inner sense is consciousness.

In spiritual philosophy, the world of the inner sense is the world of the subtle in contrast to the world of gross matter. The images that manifest themselves in the subtle reality are real (Schopenhauer and Bergson also recognized this). And just as images of trees and butterflies, people and art, pain and joy manifest themselves in this world, we also find traits of character, personality structures, power constellations, larger contexts that we recognize as images. We ask ourselves why someone does something or why I perceive something in a way that is not good, right or true. We can confide in images that appear to us as illusions; we can perceive the illusion as reality and we can have the feeling of being trapped in something that exceeds our own possibilities of control. So we perceive things that do not correspond to any external object that could have touched my external senses. We can formulate the logic of these images in hypotheses and 'test' them against reality. Consciousness precedes reality. In the past, this world was structured by the gods of the pantheon. Today we pretend that it is science.

Subtle and crude reality

We try to understand the world of gross matter with the help of the natural sciences, although this is actually a euphemism, because the natural sciences are not really concerned with investigating nature, because what constitutes nature is the connection to that subtle reality. So would it be more honest to stick to the narrower concept of empirical science? The science that concentrates on what can be repeatedly experienced? This also seems to be misleading, because many things in the subtle world can indeed be experienced and described empirically. What about the individual sciences such as physics, medicine and sociology? They impose a self-restriction on themselves by concentrating on the material world and deriving general laws from it. These laws of nature in turn describe a deeper reality, a metaphysics. As long as metaphysics excludes consciousness, it is allowed to assume very complex theories and elementary particles, as long as it does not become entangled in contradictions (although this is also often permitted).

What is it that prevents modern science from dealing with consciousness? What has discredited the inner world of experience to such an extent that we do everything we can to deny it? The answer is double-edged. Rationality, which opposes the phenomenology of consciousness, accelerates the applied sciences through its basic research; and in the form of enlightenment, it attempts to critically scrutinize abuses of power. On the other hand, it leaves behind an emptiness that is concealed by consumption and a culture industry of whatever kind, creating a kind of Disneyland (Adorno). The confrontation with spirituality is marginalized and relegated to the realm of the obscure. Are there perhaps good reasons for this? After all, the success of the Enlightenment in the 20th century could not even be halted by the catastrophe of the Holocaust. The exploitation of our environment allowed a feudal lifestyle for the masses in the West. I am not an opponent of progress, but it has its price.

India

How do the fact that 16% of the population in India are malnourished and 97% say they are spiritual fit together? Does one have nothing to do with the other? Is the question a classic category mistake? Is an inwardly enlightened society that owes its prosperity to the exploitation of the global South more successful than a colonized spiritual society whose tolerance of suffering ensured its survival? Can any conclusions be drawn from such polarizing statements? I mention this here to suggest that a question about spirituality and consciousness need not or cannot necessarily be discussed in connection with progress, as this quickly becomes very confusing.

I live here in the south of India, partly in a pre-modern world. The suffering of many is difficult to bear from a modern perspective, religious practice sometimes appears naive, social structures are patriarchal and archaic on the surface, culture is traditionally oriented, knowledge is conservative. I am very aware of my privileged position here and try to avoid romanticizing. Nevertheless, there is something in this world that has been lost in modernity: the integrity of being. Being is not merely the suffering of the individual self and its urge for self-realization, but being is part of cosmic reality, within which the self is part. That this notion can be richer, freer and more self-realized at the end of the day is the power of spiritual thinking that delves into the subtleties of subtle reality.

Der Beitrag Strom des Lebens erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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

Der Beitrag Zwischentöne: Nada Yoga und die Welt des Dhrupad erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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Der Beitrag Protected: Meditationsnotizen – 9.7.23 Matrimadir erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

But Hitler built the autobahn! I've been hearing that more and more often lately. It's difficult to continue here because a certain argument, which I find very important, is quite complex and is rejected by people who want to relativize fascism and the Holocaust. The argument, which was suggested by Adorno, is: No more poems can be written after Ausschwitzt. It goes roughly like this:

1. The scale of the horror of the Holocaust is so great that we as individuals and as a society must ask ourselves what made it possible.
2. Unfortunately, atrocities have occurred again and again in history and almost everywhere. Is there anything that makes the Holocaust seem unique in its horror?
3. One thesis is that the technical precision of the extermination camps was born out of a spirit of rationality. It is not mass murder out of anger, revenge, lust for power, hatred etc... but a 'technical operation' in which responsibilities were shared and most wanted to believe that they were simply doing their job.
4. The question that arises from this is whether rationality itself is morally blind and cruel.
5. If rationality can turn against humanity, then it must be fundamentally and thoroughly questioned, and until this questioning is complete, we cannot continue as the project of modernity suggests.
6. We have to question everything, including poetry (and the highways).

One project proposed by the Frankfurt School in the 1960s was critical theory and, within it, negative dialectics. In reaction to Kant's strict category tables, Hegel had proposed a dialectical philosophy that did not see the spirit as bound to a fixed framework of principles and categories of pure thought, but as a force that was constantly developing out of itself. It is the human being who can manifest and express this movement of the spirit. The transition from Kant to Hegel is an important break in the history of Western philosophy. Questioning this step with new methods is the project of negative dialectics. Instead of synthesizing knowledge and enriching its complexity, negative dialectics attempts to preserve the complexity, but to reverse the synthesizing into a constant questioning: a critical theory. In this respect, critical theory is not so far removed from deconstructivism, even if the methods are very different: Critical theory takes a systematic approach, while deconstructivism is often associative, traces the unconscious, searches for structural parallels - similar to post-structuralism.

It becomes clear that this project is important when we look at other 'achievements', such as the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb, or the development of AI. The argument can be applied to the core question of the philosophy of science, namely the question of the ethical responsibility of science. Karl Popper continued to pursue this project.

Beyond rationality

Modernist thought, from Kant to the Frankfurt School, is characterized by a scepticism towards speculative, intuitive, spiritual and mystical forms of knowledge. Rationality is the sword with which everything that does not submit to its logic is decapitated. But like a hydra, this only creates new faces, other 'irrationalities'. For example, there is a difference between credulity and spiritual thinking. There is a difference between intuition and gut feeling.

The Western way of thinking has relied too much on the rational mind. The dimensions of life, consciousness and spirituality are subordinated to it as projects 'yet to be enlightened'. It is now clear to me that the project of negative dialectics must go much further. It must open the doors to our other ways of being. However, I question whether negative dialectics is the appropriate means here, because in Adorno's work it withdraws into an aesthetic theory. It can accompany thinking a little way on the journey, but the path will quickly branch out.

But it is one of the paths that led me to the wisdom of ancient writings. This 'pre-modern' thinking is richer and more complex. It draws different boundaries. The focus is not on logic, but on consciousness, God, soul, nature, community, etc... These are concepts that are anchored on other levels of our existence. They are often intertwined. In the Vedas there are 7: matter, breath, spirit, ideal knowledge, bliss, consciousness and pure existence. When will we learn again that our humanity cannot be reduced to algorithms, do we really have to enter into a battle with AI first?

Sometimes I wonder if there is a parallel between the idea of the Big Bang and the appearance of the human spirit. For just as the Big Bang did not appear out of matter, but out of vibration, i.e. consciousness, the human spirit appeared as embedded in cosmic thinking, worlds of gods, honoring life. The cave paintings of Chauvet bear witness to this. And just as the material cosmos is moving towards cold death, the human spirit is differentiating itself into individual disciplines that forget about being human.

One possible answer to this fundamental crisis of the mind is Sri Aurobindo's integral philosophy: the synthesis of the yogas.

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Der Beitrag Poesie und die Unmöglichkeit über Autobahnen zu reden erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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.

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Der Beitrag Kulturschock und die Wohnorte der Götter: Meine Erfahrungen in Indien erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

In Western analytical-modern theories of consciousness, i.e. those that see themselves as empirical-scientific, a correlation between matter and consciousness is always assumed. This in itself is relatively uncontroversial, as the vast majority of theories are based on this assumption. Birth and death mark the cornerstones of this correlation.

Now the question arises: What does this correlation look like? Does consciousness determine matter, or does matter determine consciousness, or is it an interaction?

3 Variants of the relationship between consciousness and matter

The first variantthat consciousness determines matter is a position that we find in most spiritual schools of thought, but also in an analytical transcendental philosophy or in idealism. Here, consciousness is a force in its own right that acts on its own and may be anchored in a higher consciousness. What these schools of thought have in common is that they are based on a self in the sense of an autonomous ego or soul.

The second variant We find this in materialistic thought constructs, i.e. strictly empirical theories, or analytical reductionist thought constructs. Biological beings are determined solely by materialistic processes. Consciousness is a luxury and runs after materialistic processes. There is no free will, it is an illusion that may bring an evolutionary advantage, but nothing more.

The third variantThe second, that of interaction, is what is closest to our everyday sensation. We sometimes feel driven by our material existence, i.e. by our body or the constraints of our environment. We have the feeling that we function automatically. At the same time, however, we also have experiences of free will. For example, when we are unable to make a decision or leave familiar paths, we think that these are free decisions.

What does that mean?

In empirical science, it is often noted that there are many studies that support the second variant. In essence, the experiments look like this: A person is connected to an EEG, i.e. their brain waves are measured. This can also be done in a more differentiated way using computer tomography. The test subjects are then asked to make a decision. If a deflection can be seen on the measuring devices, which indicates that the decision has been made in the brain, and this measurement precedes the consciously communicated decision of the test subject. Then, according to the claim, free will is an illusion. What is important here is that there is a time difference at all, not how long the time difference is. This is in the millisecond range anyway.

Wie sähe das Gegenmodell aus, also die erste Variante? Die Versuchsperson würde eine Entscheidung treffen, sie äußern, und dann würde das Gehirn den Befehl ausführen. Und wie sähe das empirisch aus? Das Bewusstsein verändert den Sinnesapparat, den Körper, um einen Gedanken, d. h. eine Entscheidung, auszudrücken, die einerseits schon gefallen ist, andererseits noch nicht physisch materialisiert ist. Während des Ausdrückens des Gedankens wird die Entscheidung auf neuronaler Ebene erst umgesetzt.

The third variant, that of interaction, is the most difficult. Two very different systems are assumed to interact here. One is the physical, biochemical world, the other the world of human consciousness. An important question here is that of the link. What does the bridge look like? One assumption is that both systems are ultimately logical, i.e. both empirically scientific on the one hand and rational on the other.

Does God roll the dice?

Einstein said that God does not play dice. That actually sums up the paradox quite nicely. God, who created the universe and with it the dice and the laws of chance, is not subject to them.

In the Vedas this is expressed by the relation of Brahman (universal self, not in the sense of a personal God), Purusha (consciousness) and Prakriti (the material world in motion, nature). Atman, the individualized self (though not in a personalized sense), appears in this three-way relationship¹.

It is amazing how differentiated the rishis, i.e. the seers, saw the relationship between consciousness and matter in deep meditation over 3000 years ago. Their view that evolution is preceded by involution sounds strange today, but actually only describes the reciprocal relationship, the interaction between consciousness and matter in a temporal extension.

Levels of consciousness

The beginning does not lie in the Big Bang, but in the common ground of matter and consciousness. We can call this logic, law, rationality, Brahman, creator, nirvana, it doesn't really matter at this point, we are dealing with a priori. Not in the epistemological sense, but in the ontological sense.

Natural laws are not created by matter, but matter follows them. What if the universe follows a law that precedes it? This is somehow the basic assumption of the reductionist scientific world view. However, this world view does not explain where the laws came from. Were they already there before the Big Bang? Or did they arise together during the Big Bang? They certainly did not come into being after the Big Bang...

It seems much more plausible to me to assume that there is consciousness that can act on its own - different forms of consciousness, at different levels of consciousness.

Free will does not lie in the question of whether the choice between an apple and a pear has already been made in the brain before it appears in consciousness. Freedom lies in thinking. The adventure of thinking is open and expanding. Let us not allow ourselves to be blinded by regression.

On the ladder of knowledge, thinking is followed by Vijnana and Satchitananda. A higher consciousness that goes beyond the purely rational or emotional way of thinking. Vijnana is a way of thinking that includes a world view. A real view of the world, in its complexity and implications. An understanding of the world that involves a high degree of insight, reflection and wisdom. Satchitananda are the higher levels of spiritual consciousness. It is possible to experience them, but it is difficult to argue about it. I have spent decades trying to convince myself and others that this does not exist - unsuccessfully.

hiraṇmáyena pā́treṇa satyásyā́pihitaṃ múkham |
tát-tváṁ pūṣann-ápā́vṛṇu satyádharmāya dṛśtáye |15|

(15) The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight. (Isha Upanishad)

There is a beautiful word in Sanskrit: Dvaitadvaita - dualism-non-dualism, i.e. the duality of duality and non-duality.

Der Beitrag Freier Wille erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

As I follow the wisdom of the Upanishads and the power of the Rigveda, many things become clearer and clearer to me. The spiritual power of the ancient scriptures in India lies in their unfiltered access to experience and intuition.

The systems of thought that I have come to know in the Western tradition basically always try to find a starting point:

• Philosophy always searches for the beginning. However, it usually does so through the mind. This leads to the question of axiomatics and ontology, i.e. the question of basic assumptions and irreducible forms of being.
• Other, more religious and mystical attempts look for an anchor in the transcendental, metaphysical or supernatural. Ultimately, in an authority that can be experienced.
• Science, with its materialistic approach to the world, looks for patterns and tries to generalize them in order to verify or falsify the theories derived from them.

Was ich hier in Indien kennenlerne, ist die Wesensschau in der Meditation. Die Spiritualität nimmt ihren Ausgang von der Sicht nach innen. Diese Sicht nach innen ist rein und ungetrübt. Sie ist wie geklärtes Butterfett – Ghee.

Meditation on the self

In the Meditation ist der Körper in einer Ruheposition und der Geist lässt die Reize der Außenwelt verklingen. Als Hilfestellung zu Beginn einer Meditation wird oft die Konzentration auf den Atem genommen. Das Zählen der eigenen Atemzüge lenkt das Bewusstsein auf den eigenen Körper, auf die Lebenskraft des Atems, auf das Verhältnis der Außenwelt zur Innenwelt. Wenn der Geist und der Körper so zur Ruhe gekommen sind, fängt die eigentliche Meditation erst an. Die Sinne, die nun weitestgehend aus dem Reiz-Reaktionsschema befreit sind, liegen offen. Und genau hier setzten die Upanischaden an.

The next step is not about experiencing the transcendental, the mystical, some other kind of reality, as so many meditators think. The Upanishads are about bringing the senses into a pure form. Seeing becomes seeing, hearing becomes hearing, thinking becomes thinking etc... No more and no less. Those who succeed in remaining at this level of consciousness perceive the basic structure of consciousness. It becomes clear that the sensory impressions, stimulated by the external sensory organs, appear within consciousness, but transformed. In philosophy, many thinkers now jump far too quickly to the conclusion that we are dealing here with mental representations. However, a lot still has to happen before we arrive at mental images.

The Kena Upanishad asks: Who sees when seeing, who hears when hearing, who thinks when thinking etc.... This is the question of all questions. The answer is clear and pure - Simplicity is complexity resolved - the absolute self. What does that mean?

When my consciousness concentrates on one of the senses in meditation, it becomes - detached from its object of perception and equally detached from the subject of perception - a pure content of consciousness, a form that springs from a vibration. Vibration is the concept of the Upanishads; for the scientific mind we could speak of consciousness contents that accompany neuronal currents. This vibration, which is triggered by the sense organs, constitutes consciousness. Even reductionist materialists would still agree here. It is what Hegel calls sensual certainty.

But who is it that has this sensual certainty? It is not the subject that synthesizes the mental images, the representations, but it is a mixture of vibrations. Consciousness does not exist in isolation. Consciousness is a mixture of different contents of consciousness. The vibration of the senses mixes with our breath and heartbeat, with nature. In short: consciousness is bound to the life force (prakriti), to a soul (purusha) and identity (atman).

Atman and Brahman

During meditation, the blending of the senses is easy to observe. The clear consciousness becomes aware of this harmony and enjoys it. It is here that ecstasy and bliss are experienced. And here, at least for me, the self awakens in a deeper sense. For here consciousness is detached from the stimulus-response scheme. The synthesized consciousness (Atman) develops its own power of action, it becomes an agent, i.e. free. And in this very consciousness of the free self (which is a much stronger concept than the rather technical self-consciousness with its self-referential structure), the self recognizes its unity with the absolute self. Free consciousness recognizes itself as part of consciousness in general. Atman is Brahman and Brahman is Atman.

Pictures of the Rigveda

From here, images of Rigveda also become clear to me. The sacred cows that appear as rays of the sun and in other strange constellations, the horses that are harnessed and come from the cities or drive the gods, the fire that is omnipresent in various forms, sometimes smoking, sometimes clear.

Sometimes, after a meditation, I would transport myself to a prehistoric time, a time with few tools, without writing, under the starry sky, where horses grazed in the meadow and milk was boiled over the fire and churned butter was clarified. The mystery of life and consciousness, the experience of being part of the cosmos, sitting around the campfire, or lighting the oil lamps with clarified butter for the gods, is a deep spiritual experience that can still be felt to some extent in the temples and at the festivals in India.

The clarified butter of the majestic, free-range cows that gives strength and light, the breath of the puffing horses at dawn, the fire that warms and is reflected in the sun and the moon. These are very concrete experiences that are central to spiritual mediation. The rishis start from what is in front of them, and they reflect inwards and describe the mystery of our existence here and now. It is not a spirituality based on authority or a priori categories. This spirituality is developed from the most general world of experience, it explains who and what we are. It merely gives names to things and forces and describes them.

The gods are nothing other than the forces we see: the growth of trees in nature, the struggle and love of living beings, the forces of our subconscious, the ideals of our spirit. They are part of every culture, they are everywhere, they are real. In Hinduism, they are named forces and worshipped as gods. What is wrong with that?

We live in this world, this is where we are, and this is where our spirituality is. It is not in the hereafter, nor is it here.

Der Beitrag Die Kraft der Upanischaden: Klarheit und Spiritualität durch Meditation erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

Why do we need a biennial? I have often asked myself this question. I have been to many places with major international cultural events, i.e., before COVID-19, that was. During Lockdown, I co-organized an artist-in-residence program to think about what the implications, threats, and opportunities of COVID-19 are for cultural practitioners. Everything turned out quite differently than we had hoped, the great upheaval failed to materialize, and in a time marked by crises many are now simply trying to return to the status quo. Have we really used the trillions of Euros and Dollars so thoughtlessly and without reflection, only to maintain a system that urgently needs a change?

The concept of biennials or major cultural events was already discredited before COVID-19. They are dominated by the art market and influencer posing. An international chic and hipster community, old intellectual hardliners, head-shaking know-it-alls, and naive do-gooders met there to applaud a powerless self-promotion of artist-curators and gallerist-egos. Many seriously want to show that the world should become better, but with what example do they go ahead?

Kochi-Muziris Biennale

I was at the Kochi Biennale for the first time in 2016, and I already thought that something different was being done here-better-with the heart in the right place and a vision that was oriented towards making a concrete, real difference. There were children's art camps, public events where anyone could and did come, school children and their mothers came from the villages of Kerala, run-down barracks, warehouses, docks were opened so that art students from all parts of India could exhibit there, international artists were invited to see the locations before they conceived their side-specific installations. There were a large number of art educators, many projects were focused on ecology, social impact, critique of the ruling class. Little children, who use their school vacations to look at art, laughingly ask foreigners on the street where they come from, only to ask even more joyfully with great pride and enchanting charm if they like Kerala.

Fort Kochi is a melting pot of India, where spiritual, colonial, indigenous, national, political, cultural influences have converged for centuries. Kochi is an architectural jewel covered with Che Guevara graffiti and communist election posters. Goats and cows walk among the rickshaws, and everything smells of Kerala's spice garden. Fresh fish is sold on the beach, while container ships and military reconnaissance vessels pass in the background. It is a vibrant city.

The fifth edition 2022/23

The 2022 Biennale started with organizational chaos. This is not really surprising in India, but it does show the challenges that Covid left behind. Many buildings stood empty for four years, or were just used for storage, which further reduced the already fragile building technology infrastructure. An incendiary letter on e-flux from participating artists attests to the frustration. Organizing a major international event in India may not be an easy task in itself, but doing so after two years of pandemic is actually impossible. It is all the more surprising that after two weeks of catastrophically communicated delays, the miracle of the Kochi Biennale happened again. Some things are still under construction even three weeks after the official partial opening. But most of it is professionally installed-in warehouses and barracks. The power of many artworks shines through the chaos.

Some large video installations, such as commissioned work by CAMP's "Bombay Tilts Down (2021-2022)" from Mumbai at Aspinwall or Amar Kanwar's "Such a Morning (2017-19)" from Delhi at Anand Warehouse, have transformative power. CAMP uses CCTV Surveillance footage and mixes it with percussive chants about solidarity, oppression, and hope in Mumbai's poorest neighborhoods.

CAMP - SD 480p

In contrast, Kanwar's work is poetically quiet, a journey into darkness. A mathematics professor, perhaps going blind, prepares for the darkness. What a task for a visual artist - a preparation for a life without sight! This is not only about the existential questions of survival, but about the limits of art, how far does art reach beyond perception? The video installation is extended by an installation of miniprojectors, in which elements of the film are selected and captured in settings. Lined up next to each other, the film thus becomes a linear copresence that allows the visitor to walk around between the images. The visitor is in a place of reverberation, of memory, the images of the film are faded, transformed, surreal.

Amar Kanwar- SD 480p

A general trend is also intensifying here. More and more artists are using the medium of film. Projections and screens are everywhere. Magically disturbing is the installation of Jitish Kallat "Covering Letter" (2012), the work has been seen many times before, but in the south of India it unfolds a completely different power. Ghandi sent a letter to Hitler on July 23, 1939. It was addressed 'Dear friend'. Ghandi emphasized that Hitler was the only person who could prevent the brutality of this war. The letter is projected continuously by Jitish Kallat on a cloud of mist. A touch of history is felt.

Since we are dealing with time media, it is impossible to cope with all of this, and so there is a competition of screens and projection sizes. There are many works on political, ethnic and social conflicts to be seen. Every story would be worth to be retold here. But the narrative medium reaches its limits here. The visitor needs time, but she is rewarded with a variety of perspectives from the point of view of the oppressed. In the age of portable pocket screens, it is appropriate to rely on this medium because our viewing habits are changing, the static image and text without dramaturgical staging are lost in the battle for attention.

It is nice to see that the curator shows great diversity in hanging. Large rooms with picture areas completely without text panels are beneficial - these hang in the hallway of the administrative wing of Aspinwall. The biennial gives the works space, the walls never seem crowded. This invites one to linger.

Art for the mind

Yohei Imamura "tsurugi" (2022) is a highlight in technical mastery. Over two years, Imamura used a silkscreen technique to create a 3D model of a mountain by layering. A video explains the process. The reflective layers are almost as varied as the more than 1000 layers of paint that create the 3D model of the mountain. It starts with the topographic maps, which are themselves a layer of abstraction from reality. I think of Baudriallard's simulacrum, of postmodern concepts of mapping. Imamura traces each elevation plane in order to transfer it individually to a silkscreen plane. This meditative tracing is also a preparation for mountain climbing; knowledge of the terrain is essential for survival.

By reproducing the mountains in 3D through layering, we are reminded of geological processes. It would be interesting to know what are the geological stratifications of the mountain itself, is there any correlation? Probably not. The whole could be created on a 3D printer, but here the inner design principles would be radically different, algorithmic, vector-based, tech-scanned. Criticism of a wide variety of technical media is clearly implied here. And so we find ourselves confronted with an object that combines different levels of representation and abstraction, created through an innovative form of masterful screen printing. Technical reproduction, imagination, construction, the intertwining of space and plane, of creativity and precision meet here.

A radical increase of the conceptual can be found in the works of Iman Issa "Lexicon (2012-19)" questions the relation of language, image, and imagination. The starting point are art-historical descriptions of images that are not shown. Instead, from these textual descriptions, Issa isolates formal elements that can be seen as sculptures next to the descriptions. It is an intellectual game that seems a bit out of place. However, this kind of textual, Western, critical, perhaps based on postcolonialist discourse does not really resonate.

Biennale of the people

This Biennale of the people has a different accent: political, participatory, inviting. This becomes very clear and evident in the works of Marcos Avila-Ferero "Theory of the wild gees, notes on the workers gestures (2019)". Avila-Ferero asked retired Japanese workers to repeat their movements of the work processes in their professional life. We see workers moving air in human chains. The whole thing seems so absurd and senseless, so exposing and inhuman, that the whole exploitation of labor becomes immediately tangible. The technical tracing of the physical motion sequences illustrates how the rationalization of labor uses the human body as a tool. We see how, after decades of routine, the body adapts and deforms to the work processes. Over the duration of the exhibition, dancers will be invited to respond to these work processes. This is exciting to imagine.

The curatorial statement reads, "even the most solitary of journeys is not one of isolation, but drinks deeply from that common wellspring of collective knowledge and ideas." Nowhere is this more evident than in the works of the Student Biennial. You can feel the verve of young artists, the poetry that unfolds in the warehouses from the colonial era. The works of young artists "drink deeply from that common wellspring of collective knowledge and ideas," - they take a big gulp.

This again is not unusual, in fact not that remarkable, because art students all over the world do this. Except in Kochi they are represented at the Biennale, they are visible to an international audience, they are heard, their voice is amplified and sounds in a chorus, they are not alone, they represent a whole generation, the generation to which the future belongs and which is taken away from them by the egoism of the ideals of old white men.

The work of Nilofar Shaikh of VNSGU "Healing Map, Bench" is such an example. A bench, with murals in the background, invites the viewer to confront the issue of violations and to enter into dialogue with the environment.

Dheeraj Jadhav shares his way of seeing with his installation "Planting Conversation", which is strong and compelling.

Nabam Hem, Taba Yaniya and Ejum Riba invite us into the world of the Tani clan with their large installation "Tani Nyia Nyji Muj". It is moving and thought-provoking.

The community art project Bhumi has worked in lockdown with a community in Bangladesh. Local materials and traditions result in a round of figures that exemplify the heart of this biennial. It can be seen on the sidelines of the biennial at the TKM Warehouse.

I always try to spend a few days at a biennial, I find it important to interact with the environment. In Kochi, I drink my chai on the boardwalk and laugh heartily with the people from Kerala, even though we don't have a common linguistic language. The south of India is incredibly hospitable, warm, carried by a spirituality that perceives life in every counterpart. These encounters are the real energy of the Kochi Biennale, without them none of this would be possible here. And I am beginning to understand what it means to truly live differently. It is the nature and the culture, the people and the spirituality, the harmony of the world that can be heard here. It is a radical counter design to the over saturated affluent societies. In the curatorial statement we find: "The human need to think freely without proscription, in spite of, and sometimes because of repression, all point to the way we react to conflict. The only enemy is apathy. That has no name or face, and it lies entwined with its bedfellow-self-censorship."

It is the Biennale of the people.

Further reading:

Der Beitrag Art beyond darkness – Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022/23 erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

Manchmal frage ich mich, was ich eigentlich während meines Philosophiestudiums in Heidelberg gelernt habe (und ja, vielleicht hätte ich mehr von den Spinoza- und Bergson-Seminaren besuchen sollen).

In all the discussions about perception and consciousness, we have always focused on the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. These, we learn in enlightened philosophy, are all the senses we have. When I learned in a seminar that proprioception, i.e. the inwardly directed perception of the body, could be a sixth sense, it was considered a revolution.

In theory, these senses are designed to extend from consciousness to the point where the outer limits of the body interact with the world:
- Sound waves hit the eardrum
- Odorous substances on the nasal mucous membranes
- Flavors on the tongue
- The sense of touch on objects
- Light on the retina

We cannot say anything about what lies behind the body interfaces in the outside world, i.e. the world itself, other than what is made available to us by means of the senses (Descartes). It is constructed (Kant), excluded in an epoch (Husserl), beyond language (Wittgenstein), falsifiable (Popper), structure (Saussure) etc....

Language

We have supposedly expanded these banalized five senses in cultural evolution: with glasses and microscopes or telescopes, with robotic exoskeletons or microphones or loudspeakers (I'm thinking of Marshall McLuhan).

Within consciousness there is therefore a supplier of data (the senses), which are united by consciousness and result in an inner image, an image of the outside world. These images of the outside world are given to an ego of whatever kind. This is at least a self-referential structure ("The: I thinkmust be able to accompany all my ideas", Kant)

We can then differentiate more finely within consciousness itself: How are the contents of consciousness composed, what is memory and expectation, dream and cognition. How are the contents of consciousness assigned to language and which sentences correlate with which consciousness, and when can we speak of true sentences and when of false ones? You can then delve deep into language or phenomenology, or neuroscience, etc...

Back to the beginning

I would like to start again with the five senses, because something has gone wrong here, and thinking is going in the wrong direction.

The Upanishads are much clearer. Here they speak of 11 Senses spoken: 5 senses of knowledge - nose, tongue, eyes, ears, skin - and 5 senses of action - hands, feet, anus, sex, speech - and the eleventh sense, knowledge, which then brings everything together.

The senses are not already conceived here as a skeptical super-GAU (as a brain in an aquarium that is deceptively fed five types of sensory information, I am thinking here of Descartes), but as the real points of contact between our body and the world.

This is a completely different starting point for describing the world. The body is taken seriously here, it is in the world, interacts with it via at least 11 points of contact. The knowledge is a knowledge of being in the world, of one's own body and the possibility of acting and knowing, but also a knowledge of a greater consciousness. The problem of the dualism of Western philosophy in the wake of Descartes is stretched here, pulled apart, clarified. It dissolves, not dissolves, but is transformed, fluid, intermingling (intermiscence).

Between the extremities and sensory organs and the mind itself is the body. The body is not only conceived materially, but biologically, as a living body that has a life force (I'm thinking of Bergson here). We can't really deny this either, we experience it all the time. It has its origin in Purusha - the world soul, the pure consciousness (Chit) Purusha is the starting point of everything.

Purusha is opposite Prakriti. Nature in its primordial matter, endowed with three qualities: inertia (matter?), energy, and harmony. And it would really be too simple to open up such a scheme, Purusha and Prakriti are two sides of Shiva....

In the Upanishads there is an incredibly complex system of 7 levels:

1. Matter
2. Life
3. Spirit
4. Knowledge (Vijnana)
5. Bliss (Ananda)
6. pure consciousness (Chit)
7. pure existence (Sat)

And that is just the beginning. Why do we in the West think so banal, purely in terms of the duality of spirit and matter?

Who thinks while thinking?

It gets really interesting in Aurobindo's commentaries on the Kena Upanishad (Vol 18 Upanishads-II : Kena and Other Upanishads) and the commentaries in the Hymns to the Mystic Fire (Vol 16).

More on this later behind the concept of Intermiscence (flowing into one another).

p.s. Can it really be that the sexual organs have not been included as senses in Western philosophy for centuries or even millennia?

Der Beitrag Wieviele Sinne haben wir? erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

Ich habe mich immer gegen das Wort Meditation gewehrt. Vieles daran war mir suspekt. Ich habe aber zugleich seit jeher meine Formen der Meditation praktiziert, ohne diese so genannt zu haben, oder ohne sie gelernt zu haben.

Für mich gehören in den Bereich der Meditation: a.) die Kontemplation, d. h. das Versinken in einen Gedanken und das gezielte Nachspüren von Gedankenimpulsen zu einem Thema, ein Umkreisen, bis das mentale Bild klarer wird und vor dem inneren Auge erscheint. b.) auf den eigenen Atem zu achten. Dabei wird der eigene Körper bewusst. D. h., durch das bewusste Ein- und Ausatmen richtet sich auch der Körper auf, die Wirbelsäule wird entlastet und die eigene physische Existenz wird bewusst. Mit diesem Existenzbewusstsein lassen sich dann neue Bewusstseinsebenen erschließen. c.) in der transzendentalen Meditation verbindet sich das Selbst mit dem allgemeinen Bewusstsein und kann nun nahezu beliebige Formen annehmen. Spannend ist in dem Zusammenhang der Begriff des Werdens. Das Selbst kann nun ganz in einem anderen aufgehen. Z. B. kann sich das Selbst öffnen oder es kann sich gedanklich in einen anderen Raum oder in eine andere Zeit versetzen. Die Gedanken sind frei. Dies sind Meditationsformen, die ich in der Regel eine halbe Stunde praktiziere.

During longer meditations in the lotus position of up to 1.5 hours, completely different things happen. This also has something to do with the pain that the sitting posture brings with it. I sit through the pain, so to speak. This leads to a kind of trance. This borderline experience transcends the separation of self and world, in it I find a reality where everything is in harmony.

India

In India, I feel like I can write this down without sounding like a dreamer. It feels natural to do this and also to talk about it. Perhaps my longing for India also has something to do with this. I have the feeling that I can give my consciousness space here without having to justify myself. These experiences are simply allowed to be and do not have to prove themselves against the reductionist constraints of a materialistic philosophy. Rather, being here allows me to explore consciousness in the first place and, from these experiences, to understand the constraints of the Trinity, capital and neurobiology as such.

I am not a machine and I don't want to be seen as one.

A beautiful description of what meditation can be can be found in the Shvetashvatara Upanishads Chapter 2. in: "The Upanishads. Introduced and translated by Eknath Easwaran" ISBN-10: 3-442-21826-8 p.294f.

Der Beitrag Meditation erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

An intense month comes to an end. Moving, spatial separation, friends parting, the love of godchildren, new friendships, longings, waiting... I could write a screenplay about the last few weeks in Provence. Every day filled with pain, compassion and love - collectively in different constellations. But I don't want to tell these little stories, even though Marcel Pagnol might have enjoyed them.

What concerns me is the question of pain. Life is suffering, say Buddhists - very abbreviated. Wanting and desire are the causes of frustration and suffering. But life itself, thirst and hunger, the body's desire, also causes suffering. I have never fully understood this. I understand that desire that does not come to rest creates more and more desire. Bringing this craving to rest is part of meditative and spiritual practice. And the moments of happiness? Do they only create more craving, or can't we simply let them be as such? I.e. be able to enjoy them by letting go.

Heute traf ich einen Nachbarn. Bei all den Veränderungen im Moment weiß ich immer nicht, wie ich Nachfragen beantworten soll. Meistens sage ich: Ich weiß es nicht. Er hatte das sofort verstanden, er verteidigte mich in der Runde und sagte, er weiß das einfach nicht, das ist es, was es heißt, loslassen zu können. Ich habe mich darüber sehr gefreut.

When we are very attached to something, we find it difficult to let it go. Sometimes these are practical constraints. We had gotten used to it. Now we have to say goodbye. That causes suffering. So is it better not to enter into a relationship at all, for example? And if a connection breaks up, should we just stay calm? Is that even possible? Isn't that what our life is all about, these intense experiences?

A phase, perhaps. Our mental and spiritual growth goes through these phases. Siddhartha was not enlightened at the age of 5, but as an adult who had already experienced a lot, had seen a lot... growing pains. What doesn't knock us down makes us strong? That's nonsense, of course, but in essence it's interesting, because borderline experiences allow us to grow. Discovering new things, living through them and then being able to let go. This is the only way we can really develop. It would be nice if we didn't ruin the planet in the process. Stay mindful!

Der Beitrag Wachstumsschmerzen erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.