First Encounters with Ragas As a teenager, I listened to ragas for hours. I knew nothing about them. I looked things up a bit: microtonality, meditation, melodic progression. I didn't understand anything else. But they were the deepest musical experiences – a meditation through music. To this day, ragas lead me inward or into deep states of realization, which are not rational, however. It's more of a way of being in the world. Music as a Shared Space and Pure Energy Listening to music draws…
When I began reading the Upanishads, I realized that the inner path I had embarked upon was leading me into an extraordinarily beautiful inner landscape. Discovering that this inner landscape is connected to cosmic consciousness made me aware of the important work I must undertake—what people often call “inner work.” As I committed myself to this inner work, I focused on how I was feeling, who I am, and what I must face. What are my shadows? My insecurities? My…
I'm slowly approaching Sanskrit. On Thursdays, Nishtha holds a seminar on the Rigveda. The joint recitation in Sanskrit, the detailed analysis of the translation, Nishtha's philological considerations, and the explanations of the psychology of the gods open up access to these ‚sacred‘ texts. I remember my Latin studies, the Indo-European roots, the sounds that echo in the Ragas, phonetics as an expression of existence, language as sound and vibration, communication as rhythm. The breath of life, yoga, vitality, thinking in...
Yesterday I fell asleep with the expectation of waking up early to meditate. I set my alarm for 6 AM. In the evening, a French yoga instructor and mountain guide told me that the early morning hours in India are the best for meditation – I already knew they were good for *ryas*. She also spoke of the morning chants in the cities; I remembered the mantra chants in the temples. I woke up at 5:30 AM. Temple chants were...
Recently, I listened to a podcast about dreams and was once again very surprised. The head of the sleep lab in Mannheim says that anyone can train themselves to remember dreams. I can do that, so that's true. But what really surprises me is the reduction of dreams to the subconscious. Dreams, he says, merely use stronger images to alert us to something we are neglecting in our waking consciousness. A shame and sad, and at the same time telling, how pathetic this...
Today I was in a choir lesson. What happened there was a very intense shared experience. I'll try to describe it as objectively as possible. We (about 60 participants) started with breathing exercises, ‚warmed up‘ our vocal cords, sang four-part chords, and scaled the pitch. The choirmaster pointed out that we weren't here by chance. He said we were in Auroville because something had drawn us here. I think most people in the room understood what he meant, for others perhaps...
I've always resisted the word meditation. Much about it seemed suspect to me. At the same time, I've always practiced my own forms of meditation without calling them that, or without having learned them. For me, meditation includes: a.) contemplation, i.e., sinking into a thought and consciously tracing thought impulses on a topic, circling around it until the mental image becomes clearer and appears before the inner eye. b.) focusing on…
Black holes pose puzzles for us. I am not a cosmologist and approach black holes through popular science with a philosophical interest. They mark a boundary of our imagination. Gravity influences space and time, science says. Concentrated to a point, it condenses matter to its pure substance, crushing atomic nuclei and electrons together into a mass (atoms essentially consist of emptiness). This mass, with its incredible gravitational force, attracts everything and bends and distorts space and time. The black...
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