Yesterday I saw two millipedes mating. It was pretty much the most fascinating thing I've seen in a very long time. The creatures intertwined, rubbed and entwined, there was rhythm, devotion, engulfment. The two met by chance and after a few minutes moved on in different directions. An encounter. They were two life forms that united to give birth to more life.

A Life - One life

I then reread Deleuze's last essay today: "Immanence: A Life", Deleuze wrote this shortly before he threw himself out of the window, he was seriously ill. I read this essay many years ago, around the time my father died, if I remember correctly. Now, reading it again, I realize why I was so moved at the time, and I also realize that I really didn't understand almost anything back then, as the 'wrong' underlining alone shows.

I've had a bit of a crisis over the last few days, wondering whether Sri Aurobindo's ideas aren't perhaps a little too crazy after all. And at the same time I also wondered whether Deleuze's thinking in its monistic, empirical orientation might not be the opposite of what I am discovering here in India on my journey into spiritual philosophy. And then this essay begins like this:

"What is a transcendental field? It can be distinguished from experience in that it doesn't refer to an object or belong to a subject (empirical representation). It therefore appears as a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without a self."

The rest reads like a commentary on the Upanishads.

Brahman

I keep coming back to it because these writings are simply incredibly profound. Deleuze describes the self here as subjectless consciousness, as a pure flow that forms the transcendent field. This field is the ground of everything - Brahman (?) - everything is formed out of it. Subject and object together, the subject never without an object to which it relates. Experiences, experiences, memories, moments and episodes are formed here. They are born in immanence. Deleuze writes one page further:

"Were it not for consciousness, the transcendental field would be defined as a pure plane of immanence, because it eludes all transcendence of the subject and of the object."

I know that this all sounds very complicated, these are terms that often seem suspect because they stand for a way of thinking that many do not understand and those who move within it argue a lot about it. It's just that in the context here, these make a lot of sense to me. I was at Matrimandir this morning, I didn't know I was going to open this book today. A friend here came along, he found the whole thing quite elitist and unnecessary, he was referring to the architecture. I found it exciting, in my practice I focused on the chakras.

Immanence

Meditation is ultimately about sharing the very consciousness that Deleuze describes as pure immanence. Whether this is really possible remains to be seen. Mediation is, however, an attempt at approximation. If it succeeds, according to the Upanishads, then we experience immortality at least for that moment. And that is the only way to jump out of the window. I'm serious, it's really not the most obvious conclusion, and not recommended for imitation. But it's amazing how close Deleuze comes to the Upanishads here, it's as if his entire philosophy is based on them.

"This indefinite life does not itself have moments, close as they may be one to another, but only between-times, between-moments; it doesn't just come about or come after but offers the immensity of an empty time where one sees the event yet to come and already happened, in the absolute of an immediate consciousness."

Further reading:

I am currently undergoing a metamorphosis. At a meeting the other day, someone said that this was a wonderful group of caterpillars. I was taken aback. He said, yes ... soon these will be butterflies.

A friend once said that metamorphosis is proof of God. How else could it be explained that a butterfly emerges from a caterpillar in purely evolutionary steps? Is such a leap in complexity even comprehensible in evolutionary terms? I am not a biologist and I was only interested in this as a thought experiment. I don't believe in a Christian God anyway.

However, the idea of metamorphosis has been with me ever since. Something very complex is transformed into something else extremely complex. I am interested in how this works with ideas. How can one idea give rise to another? Does this have anything to do with creativity? Does the 'old' idea have to die to make way for a new idea? Does the caterpillar die when it becomes a butterfly?

In the West we have the idea of the subject, thoughts arise from it, ideas are in it, its energy is the driving force... That seems unlikely to me. Is it not perhaps rather the case that it is a greater consciousness, a divine consciousness or absolute spirit, an immanence that acts cosmically? Isn't it perhaps more likely that everything has always existed simultaneously? All possibilities are real and we can only experience a small part of them?

Can we immerse ourselves in this great consciousness and become aware of our participation?

I've been asking myself a lot lately what I should do with 'my' old ideas. Should I write them down, preserve them, transform them, allow them to metamorphose and document them? It seems to leave its mark here on this blog.

Some time ago, I was talking to a friend about the fact that I was saying goodbye to many ideas. I told her that I - quite unscientifically - visit my memories and think about why I no longer find certain ideas interesting, that these are often ideas that I dealt with in my studies. Great ideas! From Kant and Hegel etc. She was quite taken with my story and asked if I was writing this down. I said: Why? I'm saying goodbye. She was disappointed. Did she want to check whether I was right to leave these ideas behind me? Did she want me to share myself so that others could follow, or did she just want me to become a fellow writer? SHE advised me to start a blog.

The idea I said goodbye to when I talked about it was no small idea. It was Kant's idea of the transcendental ego. The idea that there must be an ego that can accompany all my thoughts. This ego not only makes me aware of these thoughts, but also integrates them into an identity. At the same time, however, this ego is not merely part of my conscious world of experience, in which case it would be fleeting, lost in sleep. I realized on a long train journey to France that there must be something similar. An anchor point, so to speak. From here to Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit. However, I realized that I was no longer interested in idealism. Especially German idealism. Consciousness in Germany is romantic and dangerous. It is subjective.

That's why I now read books from India. I find cemeteries fascinating and suspicious. Strange anchorages.