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.

I am currently in Tiruvannamalai. I have attended a few satsangs. I had a question in my mind: how does the true self relate to another true self, especially when it comes to romantic love? I am sitting in an apartment overlooking the mountain. Yesterday, after a little argument, I was sitting on the terrace in the morning when a monkey came and touched me very gently and looked into my eyes as if to tell me that everything was going to be okay. Then he sat down next to me and looked at the mountain. He folded his hands on his knees in a deep, contemplative posture and it felt like an old friend had come to give me comfort.

What we call the self is not what we normally understand it to be. It is not our ego, our personality, our identity or even our soul. The self is the focus of our attention, it is a point in the infinite consciousness of the universe that enables self-realization. It is nothing more than that, and that is precisely why it is everything. The self is the point in the vastness that offers perspective; in deep meditation it can dissolve with universal consciousness, return to its source and cease to exist in full self-awareness.

Being in love

I realized this for the first time as a teenager on the hill in Rome. I was in love, I had an unfulfilled longing. A friendship that was deep, tender and intimate, but never physical, we were not a couple. And while I sat on the mountain and thought about the world, I saw it from within myself. I got to that deepest level of our existence, and even now, 40 years later, I can instantly return to that awareness whenever I remember it. I was both blissful and shocked at the same time. Do I really have the whole world inside me? Do I really not exist? How can it be that everyone talks about themselves without realizing that the self as they see it does not exist? I have carried this realization with me ever since. I've deepened the understanding, put it into context, thought about it. But in the end, not much has changed. It was just there, pure and simple.

I believe that an unfulfilled longing is a good teacher. I become aware of my desire and the impossibility of satisfying it. Desire creates suffering. Why am I not seen the way I want to be seen? Why is the love I feel not reciprocated? Why don't I share what I really feel? This last question is perhaps the most important. Other desires are about attachment, about wanting or being, but unfulfilled love is about being seen.

How can a self see another self? And do they have to see each other to love each other? Is there a deeper unity within cosmic consciousness where two can unite to become something else? What is this transformation?

The self, as a point of consciousness within universal consciousness, becomes aware of its soul when it awakens. The soul, however, is even more difficult to understand. It is that which is born and reborn. The soul comes with biological birth, it enters my body and stays there. It leaves my body when it breaks up. It was there before I was born and will still be there after I die. It is a manifestation of the universal soul, Purusha. The soul is what we really are, not the physical body, not the self. The soul is the core of our existence. Finding our soul is the most difficult path we can take. Only when we find our soul can we truly love; we can find our soulmate.

Soul

Every soul is different. That is the beauty of it. The soul is not my ego, not my personality and identity. The soul holds life in my body, it flows through every nerve, every fiber, every bloodstream, every nerve cell, every hair and every taste bud. The soul holds my experiences together, plays with my memory, delights in my existence. As a by-product, it creates the ego, my personality and identity. But all this can change, I can change. The soul does not change. It flows through time as part of the universal consciousness, it could be related to the concept of time itself. Self-consciousness is not bound to time and space. In a deep state of being, I can live 1000 years, I can connect with my soul and realize that it is immortal. And when the self and the soul join hands and fly, we can experience something that cannot be described by science. It is Shiva and Shakti, the universal interplay between self and manifestation. The only problem is our ego and our mind. We need them to find nourishment and to live with others, but they stand in the way of true self-realization.

Because we have a soul, we can love. The yogis, sadhus and siddhars may focus on self-realization. But to love, we go through the self into the soul and find another soul. These two souls are not the same, they fight and unite, they enjoy and suffer, they dance.

While the self has little to do with my biography, the soul shows itself through my biography. It is always there, whether I am aware of it or not. Seeing this core of my own biography is the path to realization. For me, this path was the search. I am a wandering soul. My path has always been a spiritual search, my strength a deep healing.

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.

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?

Form is empty. It has a shape, but no substance; it is neither matter nor energy. Form is consciousness - seeing something as something produces form. However, form is also functional: substance, matter and energy interact according to laws. As part of consciousness, they interact in form. Form is emptiness. Form is consciousness. Consciousness interacts with consciousness. Form gives rise to matter - not the other way around. Matter does not produce form.

The flow of energy and matter - from individual atoms to geological currents, biological growth and cosmic noise - flows through the cosmos. Sometimes this flow is concentrated, as on our blue planet. Life energy, chi, lives itself out here. Chi shapes.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. The Dao, Chi - they give being a consciousness. That being, however, is not what we understand as matter; it precedes everything. Being (Sat) eludes our understanding. When it takes on form, it begins to act, to form - it enters into the process of the universe. It begins to act. But action requires a guiding force - on a large and small scale, in the cosmos and in me and in everything that exists. Stones are less controlled than cats. People steer themselves - and others.

However, there is a primordial soul (Purusha).
I look up at the sunny mountains in Bodhi Zendo. The clouds touch the mountain tops, the birds migrate through the blue sky. Avocados hover over the horizon. A bamboo bends into the open space with inner emptiness.

That is tantra. That is divine.

The crucial question is whether such a sacred encounter is only possible in romantic love, as tradition and romanticism suggest - or whether it can arise when we open our being completely, beyond reason and rationality, beyond ego, desire or obligation. I believe it can. But it has nothing to do with climax as a goal. It's about intimacy. It can be as simple as a touch, a smile, a heartbeat - sparks that can sometimes lead to something much more powerful. Certain energies only reveal themselves in the union of love. But this too is a spiritual path - one that sees the body as a temple, the self as multi-layered and reality as far more than matter.

It is the sacred union with the divine consciousness. And this union is not the same as the union of the awakened. With an awakened consciousness rooted in spirituality, it feels natural to connect with the world and with others, to experience everything as one and to recognize the unity of consciousness as the root of the material world. But the real secret lies not in connection alone, but in what we choose to share with others - and what we choose not to share. I am not talking about wealth, possessions, recognition or resources. I'm talking about something much more intimate: who we allow to witness our innermost being, our soul - who we allow to see us, and how. I'm talking about love and sexuality, about liberation from expectations, performance, posturing and egotism.

When I meet another on an intimate level - a touch, a smile, a heartbeat - a connection is created through presence and awareness. I feel, I sense, I allow myself to be seen, felt and touched on the level of the soul. This can happen with a loved one, a stranger or the person I am in love with. But sometimes something doesn't feel right. Someone expects too much, sees differently, feels something I don't share, or shares something I don't feel. In these subtle negotiations, I find myself figuring out who I'm allowing to see me, what connections I'm engaging in, and how deep I'm willing to go. When things are not in alignment, I shut down. I stop talking, smiling, performing. My body, my mind, my soul - everything withdraws.

My soul is too precious. It is sacred. I refuse to jeopardize it or allow it to be deformed. I can bend my ego - that's easy. The roles I play, the expectations I fulfill as a member of society, the community, the culture - they can be bent. Sometimes it can be amusing or painful to bend them. It can bring growth or trauma, success or suffering. We can share that. We can heal or exploit, empower or wound. These are the exercises of the ego. But that's not what I'm talking about.

I am talking about the soul - that which we must discover, that which is given to us, that which is greater than us, that which is eternally connected to the divine. This connection is sacred. It can take spiritual form as practice, as devotion, as the pursuit of enlightenment or the embrace of deep love. This is the secret of Tantra - of Shiva and Shakti, the union of the fundamental principles of existence. They are connected by eroticism, but not by eroticism as it is commonly understood. It is an eroticism of truly being seen. It is much more about being seen than actively seeing.

We cannot see the divine. But we can feel that we are seen by it - anchored in it, a part of it - by making our senses available so that the divine can experience itself through us. I am a vessel. My soul is the bridge. I can be seen by the Divine through the senses that another person provides for this sacred perception. This sacred union of Shiva and Shakti is the core of Tantra.

So when I close myself off, when my body withdraws, it is not a childish reaction, a question of performance or an immature defense. It is the soul protecting its sacredness and saving itself for a meaningful encounter. This kind of encounter is rare - especially in intimacy, where the energy field is most immediate, powerful and fragile. It is easily corrupted and often buried under external desire. Saying no, withdrawing, shutting down is an act of self-preservation. It reveals that something sacred is present - something worth protecting. It is the whisper of realization. I have had moments when I was truly seen.

Ever since I first heard about shadow work decades ago, I wondered what exactly it was. I always thought of deep abysses in the soul, traumas, taboos, secrets that you didn't share with anyone because it was too shameful to talk about them. I thought that shadows are what we hide from ourselves and from others. And there is probably something to this idea.
Now I've realized that the shadows first appear somewhere else. They are actually more the behavioral patterns that we flee into when we don't want to deal with something. For me, for example, it's the escape into academic reflection instead of dealing with something directly on an emotional level. This probably opens up the whole spectrum of what can be the subject of therapy in the Western tradition: Addiction, violence, distorted perception, unhealthy behavior patterns, anxiety, inability to bond, etc.... It is important to recognize these shadows that unconsciously guide our behaviour. It is important to see which patterns determine our thinking, our feelings and our actions. Perhaps a knot will then be untied.
But I am interested in how these shadows manifest in our subtle bodies. We have these different levels of our existence: body, life (breath), sexuality, emotion (heart), spirit (mind), spiritual consciousness, comprehensive consciousness. We can become more aware of these levels through meditation and various yogas. Detaching from the ego allows us to understand these levels as forms of our existence, each of which is part of a larger consciousness: Matter, Biology, Psyche, Soul, Spirit, Consciousness, Transcendence. These realities are not just my personal constitution, they are levels of reality in which I participate, which manifest themselves in me. This only becomes visible when we detach ourselves from our ego. And it is precisely in this entanglement with the ego that the shadows appear. We all have a biography and this is inscribed in our complex being. Our experiences leave traces in our body, our heart, in our memory, in our thinking.
I have the idea that there is a light in us that shines through the levels of our being, and our experiences, our biography, leave these traces in us. And when something builds up or becomes knotted, hardened or hidden, when something breaks or grows, when something is suppressed or takes on a life of its own, when something becomes self-perpetuating and unconscious patterns form, then it casts a shadow.

But I would like to take a closer look. So there is an inner light, there is something that casts a shadow, there is also an observer, an actor and a being. Our individual being manifests itself in this temple of the body. The path of spirituality leads to a point where this temple is fully illuminated and holds the entire cosmos within it. It is not so much about fixing or correcting things, about therapy (unless there is real suffering or conflict that needs to be resolved). It is much more about seeing clearly what is casting shadows so that it becomes permeable (transparent).

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.

What does it mean to understand another person? It is easy to understand another person when you agree with them, because then you simply agree with yourself and perhaps even enjoy seeing your own thinking reflected in the other person, enriched by a slightly different perspective, more colorful, more lively, more energetic, because both are happy to have found someone who is on the same wavelength. This mirroring, the mirror neurons, give us a feeling of appreciation, of being seen, a sense of harmony and the idea that we have a common basis on which we can build and develop further.

Is that the case? What if I want to understand someone who thinks completely differently? What if I fundamentally disagree with the other person's basic assumptions? What does understanding mean then? When every sentence and every thought of the other person calls my own thinking into question and I have the feeling that I can dismiss everything as nonsense, perhaps even have to, because it undermines my existence. But if, at the same time, I see in the other person a lovable person whom I want to understand - what does that mean? When an atheist talks to a believer, a rationalist to a conspiracy theorist, a scientist to a mystic... how does understanding work here?

It is possible to meet on other levels, on the level of the heart, for example, or on the level of intersubjectivity, to perceive that there really is another, someone who is decidedly different from me and does not feign the illusion of understanding. This challenge of the other - Hegel describes it as a life-and-death struggle, Lévinas as an ethical encounter - is a much deeper encounter that demands a different understanding.

Understanding here is not mirroring, not assimilation, but the experience of otherness, which makes a genuine encounter possible in the first place. Understanding then means understanding the other as the other, and what the other says and does is then secondary. The thinking of the other is thus classified and contextualized differently. It is not about consistency, i.e. freedom from contradiction, but about the possibility of seeing the other person. Seeing then means seeing with different eyes; a difference does not demand a resolution or conciliation, but rather a going deeper to the ground of being. Difference makes perception and identity possible in the first place; unity, on the other hand, does not exist in dialog, but only in spiritual experience, which then includes the other.

Talking to someone who thinks radically differently can therefore lead to depth rather than confrontation. However, this is only possible on the basis of genuine appreciation. But what does understanding mean? Is it the joint search for the reason? Does understanding mean understanding how the other person is searching? Which paths does one's own thinking and the thinking of the other take? Do these paths intersect? Are they crossroads or forks in the road, convergences or parallels? Are the encounters respectful and loving?

This experience of the other, which is not part of my consciousness, which is not an illusion but fundamentally eludes my thinking, is a reconciliation of thinking with the world. For the experience of this otherness overcomes any doubt about reality. Reality is not an illusion; it may be radically different from what I think, but it is real. This experience is only made possible through the encounter with the other.

It's a full moon in India. Time for self-reflection, meditation and inner contemplation. I've never really thought about death before. It has always been a boundary for me, the thing that defines our existence in a negative way. Finitude throws us back on ourselves, or so I thought. I somewhat agreed with Heidegger here. Thinking something beyond death always seemed arbitrary, naive, romantic, escapist and gullible to me... Only in existential reflection did it seem meaningful to me. The dead were therefore simply dead, the idea that they somehow continued to exist after death or had already existed before birth seemed to me to be an important question, the answer to which was nonsensical, since this boundary is defined as absolute. I could easily dismiss those who reported that they had crossed it and returned as esoteric. That was not difficult for me and it seemed right.

In meditation, however, things look quite different. In meditation, consciousness clears itself, it detaches itself from the outside world and the body by bringing everything into consciousness. The senses become sensory impressions, the outside world becomes pure being, consciousness becomes consciousness in itself, it recognizes that it is not a reaction to the world, but its origin. It is its origin because it is identical with consciousness itself, the consciousness that is everything. There is no partial consciousness, there is only consciousness that lives in ignorance. When it steps out of this ignorance, Atman recognizes itself as Brahman, which is itself one with the consciousness that created the universe. It cannot be otherwise. How could a few kilos of matter give rise to a small part of consciousness that is unconnected with other consciousness that is not embedded in a larger consciousness? How could these few kilos of matter, when they disintegrate, bury consciousness with them? What kind of strange idea is that? A few kilos of brain in a biological body would produce consciousness just like that, in subjective form, imperfect and isolated, incapable of merging with other consciousness, only to disappear into nothingness?

Instead, the question is now posed to me in a completely different way. If my consciousness is the ground of all existence and always already contains everything in itself, then the path of individual life is a way of experiencing precisely this. Realizing this is perhaps the core of enlightenment. But what does this mean in relation to other lives? Those with whom I share the now, but also those who were before my time, those who left during my life, and those who will come when my time here is over? There is no beginning or end of a consciousness in the true sense, even though that consciousness is bound to lives in this existence.

Consciousness exists detached from life, even from life in a rich sense, that life which does not mean the mere biological form of life, but life as a path of consciousness in a biological body: Life energy (Élan vital, Prana), the world of feelings and the heart, the level of thinking that is directed towards the world (Manas), and the thinking that reflects, analyzes and understands it (Buddhi), as well as the thinking that contemplates the world and classifies it in the larger context (Vijnana), and that experience that connects us with the higher consciousness (Satchitananda, those three levels that largely elude language and manifest only in experience). That life which extends even further into the worlds of yoga, the body, the arts, architecture, real life - I can explore and illuminate that. But what about the lives of others and those who are not in my time?

They are real, they have always existed and do not cease to exist. They merely leave this world of self-awareness, they absorb the experiences they have gathered, and when they leave this world, they go to the moon, say the Upanishads. There they can enjoy the wealth of good deeds before they are reborn, that is, before they enter the world of experience again. That intermediate state in the moon, deep sleep, which is only superficially similar to sleep at night, is a connection with the gods, say the Upanishads. It is ultimately the connection with Brahman, and that connection is deeper than being identical with Brahman, which now sounds a little contradictory only to the rational mind.

The traditional music of India, the raga, is melodic in relation to a keynote. Occidental music is harmonic, i.e. simultaneous and complex.

In the West, a lot is thought in terms of structures, and for a while there was a lot of talk of structuralist and post-structuralist thinking. Complex systems can be found everywhere: in philosophy, in canonical texts and pictorial systems, in technology and models for explaining the world. An essential basic idea is atomistic thinking. The idea is that the world consists of elementary parts and can be broken down into these in order to be reassembled in a different, more complex or functional way. The living world is dissected in order to understand it. The functioning of these dissected, lifeless parts is understood as a complex, interdependent system in order to explain life.

On the other hand, there is a processual understanding. The world is constantly changing, never standing still, in flux - panta rhei. You can never step into the same river twice. Its counterpart is fire, it is the cause. It draws its energy from the decomposition of organic or the synthesis of inorganic compounds. In doing so, it radiates light. Matter is transformed in fire. It is created in the great fire: e=mc².

Birth and rebirth. Death is the existential human experience par excellence, but at the same time it is not what it appears to be. Like birth, it is a transition, a transformation.

I broke off my night meditation a little earlier to switch to writing meditation. A few things suddenly seemed clear to me. The need to align my own body in meditation, to find the right position, which for me means following the movements, the tensions and relaxations of the muscles, the skeleton, the spine. Then observing the breath, inhaling and exhaling, the turning point of the breath, pausing to observe how the thoughts begin to loosen up, following them attentively to see where they go. Establish a connection with the outside world and the inner world. How far do my thoughts wander? Where am I now? Is this real? What part of reality is this? The world of fellow human beings, the world of work or interest, the interpersonal world, nature or daydreaming, fantasy, vision, the world of fear and missed opportunities, the world of regret and hope, the world of art and philosophy, music and architecture. These are a few of my worlds, others may go into completely different worlds, worlds in which I do not live, all those worlds that are explored in crime series, for example.

There is then a correlation between one's own body in meditation and the world of thoughts that roams in memory, and the world of thoughts that is relatively freely associated and jumps around unguided and unconsciously. Seeing this interplay and realizing that there is a connection is a first step towards deeper meditation.

This process of inner alignment serves to position one's own self in a larger context. I can now meditate on my different levels of existence: my material body, my living body, my emotional world, my thought world, my intellectual world and the world of spirituality. I can meditate on my individual senses, the outer and inner ones and how they interact and what kind of experiences they have brought and how I can recall these experiences in my memory. I can meditate on how these experiences combined with desires and fears, with expectations, goals and conventions, develop them into a plan - a LIFE. After all, this life that I live is embedded in a context, the context of my own body, my own soul, the world in which I live and my environment.

This level of life is pure immanence. Everything flows together here, it is fed by consciousness, consciousness is its original source, it cannot be anything else, only here can life be experienced. But consciousness must now be understood broadly. It is not my reactive, unreflected, thoughtless associating and being caught up in patterns, compulsions, habits, desires and suffering, but it is consciousness as that which underlies all my experiences, an experience of consciousness as consciousness in itself. I have consciousness that fills with content, I can focus and direct, align and clarify, I can empty my consciousness and invite the new. Consciousness is the level of my existence, where my existence, my life, is constituted. Consciousness in itself, when it individualizes, makes life possible. This is the secret of the soul, the relation of Brahman, Purusha, Atman, Prakriti.

Many people around me talk about a psychic being and how it relates to the divine, to the soul, to one's own person and identity. As a philosophical concept, Aurobindo is not entirely clear to me, but I develop an intuition in meditation as to what it could be. It is that being which, for example, reflects on its own conditions in meditation and holds them together in an individualized way, that which underlies my ego, that which recognizes that the world of experience of the outer senses is an illusion, that which recognizes that a universal principle of individuation in the form of a soul or Atman or Purusha is the condition of my existence. That being which glides through the different planes of being, moves in the worlds of yoga, transcends time and space and understands the barriers of life and death as permeable. This seems to me to be the psychic being.

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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.

It is so wonderful and also so sad to live in a world that sees the West as foreign. I am adopting this perspective more and more and no longer understand many things. The obsession with career, comfort, security, prosperity, accuracy, correctness, know-it-all attitude and arrogance, ignorance and intolerance. All of this is becoming clearer, it is almost evident.

I was sick for a few days and, as many people do, I watched movies, nothing inspiring. Series garbage. I hadn't done that for a year and I felt sick afterwards. My brain was overloaded, my synapses were firing, and the ideology of a perfect world that needs to be protected from the bad guys in order to strengthen the community and help the individual to be 'right' is actually unbearable.

But then I wanted a few nice memories of the culture that I left so far behind. That's always the music for me. And that's how I came across Purcell. It's not particularly original, but it's still beautiful.

A friend told me about her idea of love. It's so different from anything I know that I don't even want to outline it here. Chastity would be one word, but that's a complete misnomer. So I listened to Purcell Solitude... and I was again overcome by that feeling of self-pity that is expressed in such music. The pain of loneliness, the longing for death, comfort and fear, the search for stability that only finds peace in melancholy. This great feeling of Europe, melancholy, what would Europe be without melancholy? A joke?

Now that I was already listening to Purcell, I gave in and found Jessie Norman. I was tired of seeing beautiful young white women. And there she appeared majestically, in a universe of mirrors, begging to be remembered. And so this image became a symbol of the beautiful sadness of the subject exploring herself, largely without regard for others or anything else. A narcissistic disorder. Self-pity, melancholy and self-righteousness, and so beautiful. The head of Medusa. This whole culture is built on misunderstanding.

And before the music algorithm switches to French pop, I'll end this here.

Om

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.

-

A few years ago, I had a guest artist in my seminar. A young, successful, socially committed artist who wanted to make a difference. He came to our seminar, we all sat in a circle, and he asked each student why he/she was here. It was a seminar on a campus of an art university for a semester abroad, and so the students told us they were here for the culture, or the experience, to get to know France etc... but he, the guest artist, didn't accept these answers, kept asking: Be honest, why are YOU here? or: Don't kid yourself why are you HERE? or: go a little deeper: WHY are you here? Everyone had to ask themselves this question. Above all, I learned how difficult it is to ask this question seriously. It's clear that it's not easy to answer the question anyway.

We should all ask ourselves this question from time to time. Why are we actually here? Depending on the context, the question naturally takes on different dimensions: political, social, economic, personal, perspective, collective, etc.... At the end of all contextual questions, however, the bare question remains. It is a question about the meaning of life.

Now many people - trapped in everyday constraints from which it seems very difficult to escape - are running after a life that is determined by conventions or consumer worlds mediated by the media. I don't want to judge that in itself, it's not up to anyone. Ultimately, everyone has to decide for themselves as long as ... and here comes the question I want to get to, as long as the community doesn't suffer. Community is a bit of a loose term, it can mean many things, and that's a good thing. But there is one structure that has been used as a model time and again since antiquity, and that is the City.

City

What should a city look like, how should it be organized, who takes on which tasks, are there rules, if so, how are they made, by whom, for whom and why? Because people live together in a city, in a division of labor that is not alienated should be. Everyone should find a place there that does justice to their abilities and expectations of a good life.

The reading of A. K. Coomaraswamy confronted me with this idea again today, he asks about civilization in an essay. Plato came to the conclusion that ultimately only a philosopher-king would know what was good for the community and the city, because only he or she, the philosopher-queen, would be able to look after the inhabitants, detached from power interests and personal advantage. Only she could ensure that everyone's inner values could develop freely. That sounds very cerebral, and also quite authoritarian, even if the Philosopher King would forbid authority.

In capitalism, everything is controlled by income. Supply and demand determine who gets how much and who finds a place where. But is that also the right place when it comes to the question of why you are here? Is the question of space even that important? In the world of advertising, it's all about how you can improve your place by consuming more. It's annoying a lot of people now and it's also clear that the planet won't be able to cope with this for much longer, and AI probably won't be able to solve it either.

Democracy, the lesser of two evils, doesn't really have an answer either, it's an eternal negotiation process based on majorities. That is good for the majority, and that is no small thing. Modern democracies are also guided by principles. They are written in the constitution and can only be changed by super majorities, or not at all. There may be good reasons for this from the lessons of history. But that is not a real answer to why you are here.

Auroville

Now the objection could be raised that this is actually a very personal question that does not need to be clarified politically or socially. That the city only has to provide the framework conditions so that everyone there can face up to this question privately, create their own House build or search. That is pragmatic, but not an answer. It is clear that the question is anything but trivial. And as the person writing these lines, i.e. me, the author, I don't really want anyone to answer this question for me. But I would like to live in a city where this question is at the center. Where everyone can, can and should ask themselves this question. This city is called Auroville, and it is anything but perfect, especially now in 2023.

This city is there for everyone, has no laws or capital as an ideal and also manages without advertising. The only condition imposed by this city is that every inhabitant sees herself as a servant of divine consciousness. For beginners, you can read Mirra Alfassa or Sri Aurobindo to find out what this could mean. But you don't have to. Everyone can decide for themselves, as long as it is not an organized religion. This restriction is important and refers back to the initial question: why are you here? Why are you in this life? The whole city actually only exists to answer this question. It is a huge laboratory, a living university without administrative structures. Everything is motivated by this question. One's own life is organized in an act of dedication as a voluntary service to a great idea. Because the question: Why are you here? contains very important concepts. 1) A you or implied I, which 2) exists, 3) has a physical location, 4) demands an answer as a question and thus an act of reflection, 5) is finally formulated in language. All of this points to a consciousness that outgrows itself. A self-awareness that questions its own existence, and if it does so authentically, sincerely and with perseverance, then this leads to a spiritual path. That is the meaning behind the restriction that everyone should see themselves as yours of divine consciousness. And that is why there is no room for religion. There is a space for meditation, which is open and free, and everyone can do what he/she wants. Meditation, or concentration, is possible anytime and anywhere, but it also has a special space in Auroville, namely the center. This space is largely empty, as far as emptiness exists at all. The space is simple and is in the Matrimandir.

I sometimes hear the idea of exporting Auroville, of founding many small Aurovilles, i.e. communities, all over the world and thus contributing something to the world that tries to create such important free spaces. Is that possible? How does it differ from artists' villages, self-managed farms, kibbutzes or revolutionary communes? Auroville is one of the very few experiments that has made it beyond the first generation. However, Auroville is currently facing its greatest challenge and threat. Old, encrusted structures are being brutally broken up by new external structures. This is incredibly painful. Diversity in unity, Auroville's motto, seems to be subject to centrifugal forces. May no more misguided interests take advantage of the moment.

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.

Exhibition "Roots From the Sky" by Cedric Bregnard at Centre d'Art, Auroville March 2023

Cedric Bregnard is Artist in Residence at the Centre d'Art in Auroville. He will be taking a photo of the Banyan tree in the Matrimandir garden over the next 2 months. This photo will then be scaled to the size of a wall (approx. 3x7m) in the gallery. Residents of Auroville are invited to trace light and shadow on the bark, leaves, roots, with ink on the wall. What lies behind this process is complex and touches on the essence of photography, the materiality of trees and the power of life. The tree itself is the geographical center of Auroville and represents a very special place for many people, a place of contemplation, concentration and meditation. For many, this tree is more than just a symbol of nature, man and the cosmos. It manifests something.

So what is it all about? Let's start with photography, because Cedric Bregnard is a photographer. In 1998, as the final project of his studies at the Ecole de Photographie de Vevey, Bregnard photographed the deceased. He took several months to accompany four people in a palliative clinic in Switzerland on their final journey. They consented to Cedric Bregnard taking a photo of them. After life had left the body, he took three hours alone with the deceased, a kind of wake, to then take exactly one photo, the only photo, of the body - a portrait. The arc that is drawn here is existential: What is the transition from life to death? What is a portrait? What can photography represent? What exactly happens when a photograph captures a moment - technically, temporally, metaphysically?

Photographs are technical images. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph in 1826. Louis Daguerre further developed the photochemical process to patent maturity in 1839, and it was the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière who invented the cinematograph in 1895. This device made it possible to both shoot and project films. The life-size moving image projections replaced the magic lantern and phantasmagoria.

In 1907, Henri Bergson criticized the cinematograph in his book Creative Evolution as an apparatus that produces illusory images. The sequence of individual images that create the illusion of movement is ultimately a lie. Plato argued similarly: painting is a lie, because you can't eat a painted apple. In 1985, Deleuze 'rescued' cinema from the accusation of lying by arguing that although the criticism was correct, it was short-sighted. The film strip contained more than just individual images, it was not the illusion of movement, but pure thought, was material philosophy. The cuts and collages allow for streams of thought that only film is capable of. Film is not 'truth 24 times a second' (Godard), but pure philosophy. The Elan Vital (Bergson), i.e. the life force that the cinematographer lacks, is expanded by the power of thought.

Latent images

Cedric Bregnard's performances implicitly relate to this discussion, albeit with a markedly different tone. After all, it is about how photography can transcend the technical image.

So let's go back to the beginning of photographic images. Light rays are captured using photochemical processes. A latent image is created, i.e. there is a light imprint in a chemical film on a carrier material. The latent image becomes visible when the transparent chemical compounds altered by the light are replaced by colored chemical compounds. With Daguerre, this was still silver on a glass plate. Kodak film, however, made working with negatives popular and inexpensive. The negatives could be enlarged efficiently in a large laboratory. We generally refer to these prints as photographs. So it is nature that 'paints' here, the light is captured with the help of an apparatus and made visible through chemistry. The photographer merely chooses the place, the time and the detail.

In Bregnard's process and his achievements, there is a very significant shift within this 'painting of nature'. He too chooses a place, the time and the detail - i.e. an object - specifically a tree - which he photographs with a camera. Instead of using a photochemical process, however, he uses a very high-resolution digital process. The pixels, which function somewhat like a latent image, are made visible by printing them on paper. The mathematical description of each pixel is transformed into a graphical representation using an algorithm and a printer. Most photographers who work digitally take these printouts as their final results. They are the equivalent of analog prints, i.e. photographs.

Making visible together

Bregnard works somewhat more finely. For him, the expressions are quasi negatives. An intermediate stage to the final image. The deduction of this negative is created in the performance. And this is where it gets a little magical.

The 'negative' that Bregnard prints is black and white without gray values. This means that every light reflex captured by the camera is set to either black or white, 'light or shadow'. This negative serves as the basis for the performance. Anyone can now take part and trace the traces of light and shadow. The image of the tree is collectively traced with ink. A nice detail here is that the ink is made from charcoal, which in turn is charred wood - a dead tree.

The collective tracing with ink itself is a process that Bregnard 'lets run'. He takes himself out of it. Again, it is nature that draws here. Nature in the sense of contrast to technology. But it is a higher form of nature, it is consciousness in the collective. The fact that this process is now taking place here in Auroville in relation to the Banyon tree is wonderful. That this is happening at a time when Auroville's driving force 'Diversity in Unity' is undergoing a test of strength may not be merely symbolic for some.

-

Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1911.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. 9th print. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

---. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

"Cedric Bregnard | Cedric Bregnard". Accessed February 10, 2023. https://www.cedricbregnard.ch/.