I'm back in Europe for a short time, and I see a busyness, an energy of constant doing. Working, discussing, cleaning up, running errands, fulfilling obligations, organizing, optimizing, presenting, questioning, exchanging. Something is constantly being done. Having something to do seems important; having nothing to do seems unproductive and requires justification. However, not being productive has many important qualities. For instance, non-action can sometimes be a form of resistance, or quiet contemplation can be understood as inner work, work that doesn't show up in the gross national product but is by no means less powerful and moving because of it.

And then there is the connoisseur, as described in the Upanishads. Two birds on a tree: one eats the fruit, the other watches and enjoys. Certainly, the fruit-eater also enjoys the fruit, but perhaps more as a sensual pleasure, a satisfaction of desire, than out of necessity. The connoisseur, who watches, on the other hand, does nothing; he sits and watches, and yet this sight, that enjoyment, is a deep, sublime one—a disinterested pleasure, as Kant says. It is an art, without being "art for art's sake." The enjoyment of observation, of contemplation, of reflection and deep thought, the lack of ego and the absence of desire, presence in the now and stillness in immobility—in short: meditation—is that part of our existence that is fundamental to our being in the world. It has nothing to do with the function we occupy, our performance, and our productivity.

Meditation, however, is viewed negatively in many so-called modern, meaning performance-oriented, societies: laziness, refusal to work or consume, esotericism, meaning inability to connect with dominant discourses, or creepiness, meaning alien and distant from home, are common reactions to that state of meditation and contemplation which expands beyond the moment of sitting. In India, people who embark on this path are called yogis. It is by no means necessary for yogis to withdraw from the world. They perceive the world as a form of reality in which we move. This reality has demands for survival, for a practice of living, and for responsibility towards oneself and others. However, material reality is embedded in a further reality of our being: our consciousness, our self, a connection with a deeper, spiritual reality. We have the spark of life within us; it is connected to and identical with the divine principle. We wander in the worlds of waking, dream, sleep, and knowing.

„Two birds, deeply connected, companions, sit on the same tree.
One eats the sweet fruit; the other watches without eating.“
The 3.1.1 verse of the Mundaka Upanishad states: "Om, all this is indeed Brahman. This luminous, immortal essence is all around us, within us, and without us."

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

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.

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

First encounters with ragas

As a teenager, I listened to ragas for hours. I didn't know anything about them. I looked them up a little: Microtonality, meditation, tone sequence. That was all I understood. But it was the most profound musical experience - a meditation on music. To this day, ragas lead me into my inner self or into deep states of insight, but they are not rational. Rather, it is a way of being in the world.

Music as a shared space and pure energy

Listening to music draws us all into the realms of emotional landscapes, daydreaming, aesthetic experience. It is emotional, abstract, temporal; it allows the other senses to fade in or out, to recall memories or forget something. We can dream up a future, yearn or express emotions - let them out.

When we make music together, practise, dance, listen together or even just recommend music, we enter a shared space. This space is a different dimension. It has no material reference as the other senses have (e.g. in the performing arts or in cooking). Music corresponds to the ether, to space itself. Vibration requires a physical carrier, but is itself pure energy.

Music, consciousness and the fourth reality

When my senses mix - smell, touch, sound, taste and sight - the messengers of my nervous system unite somewhere inside me, perhaps in my head or my heart, and form a basis for consciousness there. This ocean of consciousness, which is fed by the senses, can access a reality through them: This is what we call the waking state.

In the dream state, we access another reality, a reality made up of memories, feelings and fantasies. Or we go into deep sleep, where the senses do not reach consciousness. However, since I continue to exist, as I experience every morning, my self was apparently somewhere else entirely. It was probably where the material world as we understand it is irrelevant. We were in the dark ocean of pure existence.

In the Māṇḍūkya Upanishad, however, a fourth state is mentioned - the state that can perhaps be described as "enlightened". In this state, we are awake but not bound to our senses. We do not perceive, but we also do not dream, we do not sleep and yet we grasp a higher reality. We know about the world in a deeper sense. I see my inner self and the world as such, I understand that my everyday consciousness is functional but limited. I become aware of my ignorance. I know that I know nothing. I am one with the world, even though I seem to be outside of it. One could speculate here about the ideas of the transcendental, advaita or immanence. But I prefer not to do that, as it gets lost in intellectual gimmicks.

Music, and for me personally ragas, have something of this fourth reality. I expressly do not want to say here that listening to music is like an enlightened state, and yet I am suggesting this parallel. I am not asleep and I am not aware, I am not dreaming and I am wide awake. I feel myself in a world that is often more intense than reality. Sometimes I escape into it. But when I listen with great concentration, when I become one with the music, then something shines within me - with a purity and clarity that I otherwise only know from meditation.

In music, we identify with something. Music is a carrier of something that I can become. In meditation, I can also become something; if it goes well, I become one.

Der Beitrag Musik – Nāda-Brahman erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

Contemporary art is obsessed with the "next step". The avant-garde, the unprecedented, the new and unique. But in the hunt for the new, we lose sight of something essential: artistic practice itself.

Artistic practice is not just about crossing boundaries. It belongs to those who use art for self-exploration, spiritual practice, healing, therapy or craft. But in today's culture, especially in the West, we act as if progress is the only thing that matters.

At its core, however, art is about practice. It is about being in the world, seeing clearly, understanding yourself and others. Art can represent the outer world or explore the inner. It can be meditation, beauty, communication, love, fear, vision or simply self-expression. Somehow we have forgotten that.

This oblivion has deep roots. In the past, the wealthy used art to show off their exclusivity, make others envious and prove their power. Over time, progress became associated with intellect, reason and building "brave new worlds". But is this true progress? Or should we instead pay attention to the development of our whole being - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - and the integration of all these dimensions?

Art is one of the tools for such integration. It should not be reduced to a spectacle of who can go furthest to the edge. Exploration is valuable, yes, but it does not define art. Unfortunately, the art market has put it front and center, while discrediting art that connects us to our humanity.

This reflects a broader trend: alienation. We are disconnected from our feelings, our souls and our social selves. In this state, we are more easily molded into consumers - isolated, disoriented, and we buy into narratives that seem more complex, educated or sophisticated. And we accept them as superior.

And why? Because of the false promise of progress. Academic research, technology, inventions - all of these have brought us amazing conveniences: smartphones, airplanes, modern kitchens, air conditioning. They are comfortable and luxurious, so we assume they are good.

But like fries and cheeseburgers, what feels good isn't always what nourishes us.

Perhaps it is time to return to what really nourishes us. To art as a practice of wholeness, connection and presence. Creating and experiencing not for the sake of progress, but for the sake of being human.

And this is what the AI says:

A stroke, a pause.

Not progress, not achievement -
just presence on paper.

The brush moves as the body breathes,
crossing, curving, breaking,
revealing strength and imperfection alike.

No need for meaning,
for novelty,
for the "next step."

This mark is enough.
A reminder that art is practice -
a way of being human, here and now.

Der Beitrag Kunst jenseits des Fortschritts 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.

Bodhi Zendo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Der Beitrag Bodhi ZendoBodhi Zendo — Zen-Meditation, Stille und Übung in SüdindienBodhi Zendo erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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.

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

Retinal Art and the Ruins of Representation: Revisiting Plato's Cave and the Notion of Rasa in the Natyashastra​

Christoph Kluetsch

"Something in the world forces us to think. This something is not an object of recognition, but a fundamental encounter." Gilles Deleuze - Difference and repetition p. 139

"Minds exist only in relation to other minds." (Mihai Nadin)

"even those elements designated as "basic" or "proto-elements" are not primitive but are, on the contrary, of a complex nature." (Kandinsky, point... p.31)

"Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible" (Paul Klee)

"the objective is that which has no virtuality" (Deluze, Bergsionism p.41)

"the eye thinks even more than it listens" (D+G Philosophy p. 195)

"This is the dark thought I have had about representation for so long: we are immersed in it and it has become inseparable from our condition. It has created a world, a cosmos even, of false problems such that we have lost our true freedom: that of invention." (Dorothea Olkowski, p.91)

Worldmaking

- Birds

Our animal instincts and our habitudes dominate a large part of our daily life. Our body calls with its needs, society has its expectations, we have our routines. Sometimes we follow an impulse to do something different, we want to escape, look for a change, or surprise, some excitement and fun, or we are just bored or overwhelmed. Then these little impulses bring change, allow us to become different, enable encounters, and create connectivity with the not-so-ordinary. We become being.

But there are other modes of being in the world. Some which are more directed: contemplation, experimentation, creativity, practice, curiosity, passion, and a desire for knowledge and to overcome ignorance. It is an act of 'worldmaking', in the sense that we combine different planes of knowledge, being, and activities - like intersecting walls so that they form a house, that we inhabit, that defines an inside and an outside, that allows us to leave (de-territorialize) and come back (re-territorialize). We explore the world from here, our home - standing between earth and heaven - that is not physical but spiritual. We design it and put up kind. And that art which we invite into our home is a mirror of the world inside and outside. We can access it through action, meditation, or melancholy.

- Melancholy

...

To art

-Artifacts

But I want to stay focused on worldmaking and its essence of doing artof what it means to create. Because that act of creation, in a deep sense of worldmaking, is something we seem to have lost. So when we go back into Greek antiquity or the time of Vedanta. We enter a world of magical and mystical thinking that has been touched by the rational mind and deep contemplation.

When we go back in time, to the beginnings of civilization and before, we find artifacts that seem to serve a different purpose. Figurines and drawings on cave walls let us believe that humans 40,000 years ago became aware of themselves, their place in the cosmos, and tried to make sense of it. Entering a cave and painting on the walls the life of animals, with the flickering light of a torch, only from memory and an ecstatic state of mind, shows the desire to deeply connect with a deeper reality. There seems to be the idea that life itself can be captured inside a house that does not serve as a home but as a temple. The figurines worn around the neck or carried as totems or talismans may have served as a physical manifestation of some spiritual energies to which the carrier connects.

What I am trying to get at is that they don't represent what they resemble. It is not an act of mimesis or copying the outer appearance. The contemplative mind uses the memory of the visual form as a vessel for the underlying forces, energies, principles, gods, life, consciousness... To art is to become and encounter beyond oneself.

- Damian Hirst Skull

Today, when we are drawn instead to technical perfection, when we wonder how the artist achieved a certain effect through light, composition, form, style, genre we are in a textual, a contextual world of cross-references, so-called progress and development. We enter the history of ideas, power, ideology, taste and connoisseurship. We deal with artist egos and art markets, surplus values, fetishes and accumulation.

Today we sometimes see artists who create a spectacle of otherness, a deep wonderland that is fascinating and intriguing for the most different reasons. But that society of the spectacle uses these world simulations as mental tourist destinations for the so-called cultivated mind. And if we feel fancy, we become critical, develop an attitude, and reflect on the state of the world we collectively build. We zoom in and out of politics and ideology, explore sensations of beauty, simulate other ways of being, experiment with identity, and celebrate and dive into the most complex emotions which we can evoke through poetry, performance, and visual and plastic arts.

Interlude with La Monte Yung

- Daniel Spoeri table

There is this deep discomfort with representation I have had since I can remember. As a child, I used to repeat words until they lost their meaning. Butter butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter... Until I lost the reference point, stopped thinking about butter, but then focused on the word, the letters, the sound. They became arbitrary. I focused on what is "represented" in the mind-the image, taste, smell of butter-but there was no butter. So, what is happening here?

- semiotics

Later, I learned there is a sign (symbol), a signified (object, referent), and thought or reference. I was baffled. How is that supposed to work? What else do I have in my mind? And how is that connected to the outside world, and how can I talk about it?

So I focused my studies on two areas: Art and consciousness. Why do we "art"? And how do we "art"? And what is art? When I want to think, I don't mean that rambling on of more or less clear rational thoughts and images, emotions, and memories, but a clear thinking that is holding world, that you might call vijnanaa thinking that is empty yet apprehensive, that is clear yet stays with the larger picture, a thinking that penetrates the surface without losing sight of it. In short, a thinking that is holding world. That thinking happens; it's not something that I do. It is within meditation now, and it was for a long time in my life in listening to music.

- La Monte Yung

Listening to music - a deep listening - where the now is constituted by the present hearing of sound, but also by the memory of what has been heard and the anticipation of what is to come-a now that extends into the near past and near future, that synthesizes time and transcends space and self. A moment of deep contemplation, filled with structure, consciousness, presence.

In that space, I like to let my mind and body, my self and my unconscious, enter a deep state of wake-dreaming. That world is a pure and abstract world, it is Consciousness sitting on a well-defined structure. If it is a recording, it can be repeated over and over again, yet the experience will never be the same. It is something of the plane of immanence, i.e., on the vastest level of cosmic being that is structured, that becomes consciousness when it runs through my senses.

A musician performs something that has come to them through either a score, an improvisation, intuition, or some practice-whatever it might have been. The artist expresses something through their performance, whether live or recorded. The information, i.e., the sequence of vibrations, reaches someone else, i.e., me. I hear, and my mind and body, my self and my unconscious, my emotions and memories are brought to the surface of consciousness. They flow. And if I let myself be just there, as focused and clear as the moment allows - I become that music.

- play music

The well tuned piano by La Mont Yung is a masterpiece in improvisation. He retuned Bach's well tempered piano back to its natural harmony and thus brings us closer to the harmonics of Indian Raga music, where the vibration is in the center of Nada Yoga.

The well tempered piano is a compromise in harmonics that negates the pure symmetry and geometry of overtones. To me the well tempered piano is a baroque distorted lie, that illustrates the rational pragmatic mind taking over natural frequencies and subordinates the divine under the mundane. La Monte Yung's performances are liberating the ears, activating pure harmony, and allow us to retune with nature.

So, this is the deepest mystery of representation. What is shared, by whom, with whom, and how? Artists are practicing-becoming an instrument, becoming music, becoming complexity. And the listener explores the encounter, resonates, embodies, and manifests. Nowhere is in the now and here any representation.

- Kandinsky

For Kandinsky art is always spiritual. It starts with a point (bindu) when moved it becomes a line, when the line is moved it becomes a plane. The form vibrate and resonate, they have rhythm

Story telling around a fire in the cave and the moving image

- Anish Kapoor Bean

What we are really dealing with since the beginning of aesthetic theories in antiquity is the art of story telling. How do you tell a good story? And how can you evoke feelings in the listener? How do I most effectively tell a story about love and passion, jealousy and devotion, commitment and freedom? Or how do I tell a story about power and corruption, about abuse and selflessness, about manipulation and heroism? I imaging people sitting around a fire 5000 years ago telling stories and refining them. Each time they become more colorful, more emotional, more engaging. And the audience participates, improving the story, a collective memory is formed a saga is born, the beginning of mythology, religion, collective identity.

These stories will be passed on from generation to generation and distill to its essence of humanness. And there we have the core of aesthetic theories. Telling, refining, listening to stories. Building effects, using tricks and rhetoric, developing tropes and styles.

- Chauvet cave

Now I see the flickering light of the fire. The group of people sitting around the fire listening to words and firing their imagination. Their shadows are playing on the walls of the cave they are sitting in; and the analytical mind kicks in. What are they actually seeing when they listen? But before going into what the true nature is of that what is seen - sitting across from each other over a fire with a vivid imagination - I want to look at the walls with its images: The shadow play, maybe even using the hands to form animal shadows, or some forms that produce images of vegetation, animals, people, landscapes. And the shadow theater on the wall will become a performance. And while I imagine people sitting around a fire 5000 years ago, imagining a story told by someone and seen on the walls of shadows, the question arises, what is real? Am I real? Is the story I am telling real? Is the story I am hearing real? Where there people 5000 years ago doing what I describe? What is their reality?

...

- Diagram Platos cave and Deleuze

...

In 1907, Henri Bergson criticized the cinematograph in his book Creative Evolution as a device that produces illusions. The sequence of individual frames that creates the illusion of movement, he argued, was ultimately a lie. Plato had similarly argued that painting was a lie, since one cannot eat a painted apple. In 1985, Deleuze "rescued" cinema from the accusation of being a lie by arguing that, although the criticism was valid, it was short-sighted. The film strip, he claimed, contains more than just individual frames; it is not merely the illusion of movement but pure thought-material philosophy. The élan vital (Bergson's concept of vital force), which the cinematograph supposedly lacks, is extended through the power of thought. The cuts and collages enable streams of thought that are unique to film. Film, then, is not "truth 24 times per second" (as Godard claimed) but pure philosophy (collage, montage, time, story, whole, nooshock).

...

Cy Twombly School of Athens

- Mona Lisa

BUT, I was strangely never really interested in story telling. I never considered art works to tell stories. Although most of them do, I am more interested in the formal qualities: line, shape, color, composition. Abstraction, concepts, ideas. Context, subtext, structure. Usages, power, ideology. I always looked at art through my mind and intuition. I never considered that what art represents as its object, purpose or meaning.

I always lived in the ruins of representationThrough representation humans have been building cultures for millennia. Heroic stories, idol worship, representations of power, ideology, ignorance, and a distorted sense of reality that is taken as what it appears to be to the outer senses. Butter, butter, butter, butter... That what lies behind the outer appearance - consciousness and its deep connectivity - cannot be represented. If at all, it can be invoked through art, and that invocation has to go beyond the evocation of emotions through story telling. That what matters in the world to life is consciousness and is best apprehended through intuition, contemplation, mediation. And when the world is over populated with sign and symbols, with art and artifacts, than the only way to show us a deeper sense of reality through art is through deconstruction. Deconstruction guides us into the ruins of representation, it fissures, cracks, inconsistencies to let shine though them that what lies beyond.

- school of athens

Rafael painted in 1510/11 The school of Athens for the Vatican, while Micheal Angelo was painting the bible scenes in the Sistine Chapel.

- school of athens names

In the center we see Plato, the author of the allegory of the cave and by many considered to be one of the greatest philosophers. He is surrounded by other great philosophers of Greek antiquity. They all came out of the cave into the light and have been rediscovered during the renaissance in Europa.

Cy Twombly repainted the school of Athens. He shows us marks and smearing, gestures, energies, movement, color, density, center and periphery, composition and deconstruction.

- Cy Twombyl

We are looking at a painting, filled with signs, it is a broken open, semiotic mess. The signs on the wall, the ruins of representation irritate us, they make us wonder. Couldn't I do that, or my 5 year old child? But what we seeing here is a masterpiece of 20th century art. It is the hight of complexity and reflection, an endless reference point that ties together the very essence of painting itself and brings us closer to the truth of images, that fact that they don't represent, or if they do, they do it very differently from how we think they do.

So I think from here we can explore the real meaning of evoking emotions.

Absence of Truth

- Descartes

When we are freed from the shackles and leave Platos cave, we see the light, the truth, the real of ideas, the essence of existence, pure and bright, good and complex. We enter a realm where we don't let ourselves be deceived by shadows, neither by objects, but see the ideas themselves. The world of idealism. But this world always seams to be the world of the mind, of rationality. That world is accessible to us says Plato, it is truth, it is a deeper reality. It is eternal and we, with our souls, are part of that world.

This reality however is of matter, in which we sit, it is less, inferior, deception - it is bad. Art is part of the matter reality. It is bad, Plato doen/sn't like it.

- Rasa

I want to try to look at the shastra and how they are embedded in a larger framework. The Rishis, who are considered to be some special beings, had seen truth and passed it onto the world through the Vedas. An early systematic summary of their teachings is found in the Vedanta, where the Upanishads give the foundation for how to understand the body, the outer and inner senses, the different layers of consciousness, realms of truth, knowledge and ignorance. They talk about rituals, language, gods, teachings, paths, the structure of consciousness, meditation, OM. They talk little about art, rather are their focused on how Atman, Brahman, Purusha and Praktri are intertwined, how they are the same, and how we can be everything, and everything is me. From that point of view it is understandable that to see truth doesn't need to go through a medium like art. It all happens in pure consciousness already.

Evoking Emotions

What I find intriguing about aesthetic theories that are based on the notion of rasa is there intersubjectivity. Artforms are tools of communication between the artist, the audience and the divine. The goal is to evoke aesthetic emotions through forms. But of course under these forms are experiences of the divine. These experiences of Śṛṅgāra (Love, Delight), Hāsya (Laughter, Mirth), Karuṇa (Compassion, Pathos), Raudra (Anger, Fury), Vīra (Heroism, Courage), Bhayānaka (Fear, Terror), Bībhatsa (Disgust, Aversion), Adbhuta (Wonder, Amazement), Śānta (Peace, Tranquility).

We are back to story telling, yet the stories are not deceptive representations of an idealistic realm, they are rather a manifestation of direct divine experience. The story itself is just a vehicle to evoke those emotions. Truth may be reached through collective divine experience.

Rasa and cinematography

Rasa is only existing as an aesthetic emotion, I don't love while watching a performance, but can experience love through a performance, I am not disgusted through a performance, but feel disgust through a performance. I am wondering if this can be compared to film theories, where we talk about suspension of disbelieve. When watching a movie I pretend that what I see is real, although I know that I am sitting watching moving images.

The viewer of a performance understands a double negativitythat the performer is not the person he/she performs, and also that the performer is not the person he/she is in real life. The performer is an embodiment of something that is not representing anyone in particular. The performer evokes an emotion, a character, that is not bound to anything physical, or referential. It is the pure emotion, a pure character to which the viewer connects.

Walter Benjamin, in the Artwork in the time of mechanical reproduction, focuses on exactly that point. Loosing its aura that traditional art form is not deprived of its glory but set free in the technical image of film, where the act of acting is even freed from the actor.

We see these technical images in a cinema that resemble almost exactly Plato's cave, and the circle closes.

-Rousseau

I would like to propose a provocative and maybe even extreme hypothesis: Maybe the Western creative mind is guided by melancholia and its black bile - though sad self-reflection and reasoning. While the Indian mind is guided by bliss and the search for inner light. And maybe that explains why the Western mind, 2,000 years later during the time of Enlightenment, thinks of enlightenment as the torch of light of the rational mind, as it is shown in the Pantheon in Paris at Rousseau's grave, and why the Indian mind seeks enlightenment only within oneself. Finding the light within means connecting to the source and opening a realm of knowledge that does not deny rationality but also does not restrict itself to it.

- Bwo

So to close, I want to introduce the concept of the BwO. The BwO is not a literal body but a conceptual space or state of being. It refers to a body or system stripped of its predetermined roles, functions, and hierarchies-an undifferentiated field of potential. It's a way of thinking about becoming, flux, and creativity beyond fixed identities or functions.an undifferentiated field of potential.

Der Beitrag Retinal Art and the Ruins of Representation erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

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.

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

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.

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

Enlightenment - enlightenment: the paradox of enlightenment

Enlightenment is one of those things. Someone asked me the other day if I was looking for enlightenment. I was a little puzzled. But because I really appreciated this person, I tried to be honest - yes, no, um, I don't really know, actually I do, if I'm being completely honest... Why all this beating around the bush? Why not just say straight out, yes I do, like she did when she replied that she thought most people were looking for it. I'm not so sure about that.

In any case, the question made me feel uneasy. Should I admit that I am looking for enlightenment, perhaps even that I have found a piece of it? Is it possible to find a piece of enlightenment, or is it a completely or not at all thing? What shadows are there, what paths, what aberrations, 1000? In the evening I was talking to a friend: How many people do you know who claim to be enlightened? He laughed. "None - fortunately," he said. And so we talked briefly about what the question was actually about. During the conversation, I mixed up enlightenment and enlightenment. Aha! Here's the crux of the matter.

When I answered my friend, I used the image of a light that I found somewhere many years ago when I was thinking about the cosmos, and that I now carry this light with me and try to illuminate something here and there. In its essence, this experience was the realization that the world as it presents itself to me through my sensory perception and the mental representations of an external world derived from it cannot be like this, that the basic assumptions of space, time, matter and consciousness are radically different. The experience of this radical otherness motivated me to study philosophy.

So I learned something about the Enlightenment and German idealism. I learned to use my intellect, reason and aesthetics. Sometimes what emerges is good and beautiful and exciting, sometimes off-putting, false and dishonest. This, I think, describes the process of enlightenment. The light of rationality makes everything shine in its brilliance and exposes it for what it really is. Kant's idea of enlightenment was to use one's own intellect in order to emerge from one's own immaturity. To become aware of one's own understanding is an act of transcendental reflection, pure thinking, in categories and on the basis of a priori given space and time. And my discomfort came from the fact that I didn't actually mean that at all. I thought about it for years, discussed it with my students for decades. Always with the feeling that it is not entirely wrong in essence, but that it misses the point.

Because what enlightenment also means is enlightenment. And that is quite the opposite. It is much more similar to the experience that first moved me to study philosophy. In Eastern philosophy and spirituality, it is the central experience. There are, of course, countless paths.

I would like to take a brief look at the Advaita philosophy. A philosophy of immanence, at least that is how I would like to understand it. What is essential here is that it is an experience and not a realization, or if a realization, then in the sense of an experience. It is about experiencing unity, that there is no difference between me and the Creator, between Atman and Brahman. This is an experience that cannot be explained by argument, it cannot be deduced, explained or falsified. It goes beyond the boundaries of the mind, although it can encompass them. It is not irrational, but neither is it rational. It is structured and open, it endures contradictions, it is inclusive, embracing, understanding, forgiving, undogmatic. It is filled with light. Is this what the medieval mystics saw?

Paths that I can experience here in India are, for example, Jnana Yoga: knowledge and wisdom, Bhakti Yoga: devotion and love for a personal God, Karma Yoga: selfless action, Raja Yoga: meditation and control of the mind, Tantra Yoga: unity of opposites, Kundalini Yoga: awakening of Kundalini energy. All these paths do not lead to anything, but have their starting point in Brahman. This form of enlightenment shows itself, reveals itself, can be experienced, manifests itself through practice. I would like this to be understood with all due caution and modesty, because the pitfalls, illusions and aberrations are immense. Once something has manifested itself, it disappears at the same time, because nothing is permanent. If I hold a thought, it disappears when I think about it; if I trace my own existence, I lose myself in memory and desire; if I think, see something in the sense of a vision, it can quickly reveal itself to be an illusion, an illusionary image. I try to stay on the path of the Upanishads, this seems to be a good companion. Enlightenment comes from within, on all its levels, it does not come through enlightened rationality - understanding and reason.

In Heidelberg we had this virtual poison cabinet with philosophers who turn your head, who see the world so differently that all conventional thinking is called into question. We often laughed at them and were fascinated by the sheer possibility of their existence. Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Whitehead were in there. This "poison cabinet" was actually the cabinet of opposites to the excesses of the Enlightenment.

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

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.

Der Beitrag Psychic Being 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.

Vconnection

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

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

The basic structureüis indeed something

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cosmos

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

Tattvas

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

Elements

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

Vibration

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

Temple

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

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

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

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

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

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

Der Beitrag Chola Tempel 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.

In front of my door is a soft red sandy soil. It is swept several times a week with a bundle of palm leaves and looks beautiful. I am still thinking about the same temple in Irumbai. Its history is becoming more and more complex, and so I am now immersing myself in tantra philosophy. I attended a workshop on this a few months ago. We learned a little meditation exercise, which I tried out again today: Choose two objects and look at them alternately, thinking the name of the object. Then look at each object in turn and think the name of the other object. And then look between the objects. I have varied this a little, rules are not my strong point.

So I was walking back and forth between my motorcycle and a bush in front of my door. There are 35 steps between them, and when I walked towards the motorcycle I thought "bush", and when I turned around, walking towards the bush, I thought "motorcycle". What happened? At first it seemed silly. Okay. Then I realized I can't think like that. Also okay. Then I realized that I can't see analytically like that. It slowly became interesting. Walking towards the bike and thinking "bush", I couldn't analyze what the bike was like, e.g. that it had two wheels or was blue. If I did that, I had to let go of the bush. So back to bush thinking and motorcycle vision. The motorcycle was clearly visible, but only as an object, the way it presented itself to me.

Of course, I now ask myself to what extent language determines thinking and perception. If the concept doesn't match the perception, we can't think any further. If I look at the space in between, there is no limit to my imagination. I can think about where I have been driving around and which bushes I have seen or about something completely different that my mind finds exciting.

But if I then approach the motorcycle again and think "motorcycle", I can let my analytical eye run free. I can identify, classify and compare wheels, frame, color, steering wheel, etc. at breakneck speed. What does all this tell me? First of all, I learn something about language, thinking, perception and how they are interlinked. Then I learn about movement in space, walking, physicality; I feel my feet and count the steps. I realize that I'm thirsty, I hear the birds... and then I realize that the world is probably a bit more complex than my little brain thinks.

I become more conscious (5 tattvas): my consciousness, my ego, my mind, my nature, my sensual thinking and then the outer (5) and inner (5) senses, my actions (5) the elements (5)... All this is systematized in the 25 tattvas. If I now add the 11 Tantra Tattvas (5 Shiva, 5 Shakti, and the world of illusion (1) to the 25 basic Tattvas, i.e. 36 Tattvas, then nature, Shiva, time and space etc. are added. So I'm getting a little deeper into Tantra. I will probably continue to walk up and down in front of my door and make my neighbor shake his head.

OM

Here is the Link to the Tantra Tattvas

Here to the Basic tatvas

Der Beitrag Tattvas 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the rational mind wanders through the worlds of knowledge, rummages through the library or searches for the causal laws of the universe, it is a meticulous task of building up systems of knowledge. These systems initially have little in common with the world of experience or even the inner world. It is only through contemplation that the mind pauses and considers the systematized, abstract representation as a picture of the world, as a world view. It is intuition that anchors this image in a deeper reality. When can we say that we really understand something, beyond the rational? When is the point reached where something makes sense?

The creation of meaning takes place through contemplation and the anchoring of knowledge through intuition in the deep reality of our consciousness. The butterfly, whose flight paths we can describe and which we can assign to a species, whose habitat we can examine, its mating behavior and its search for food, all this we can explore through rational knowledge. But the contemplation of beauty, the elegance of dreamy flight, the gentle landing on a flower - all this lends itself to contemplative observation. And when we then ask about the deeper meaning of this reality, about the meaning of life itself, it is intuition that helps us to build this bridge.

Intuition, which Henri Bergson once again placed at the center of philosophy, is also a key to meditation. The vision of intuition, which does not follow the strict rules of science and easily penetrates the core of our being, allows a world view to make sense.

The beauty of intuition is that it is quite unbound in relation to the external world. It is free and not afraid to engage in thoughts that are not rational. This is why it is condemned by the enlightened, who misunderstand it and fear that it will lead to wild speculation. When driven by fanaticism, it becomes destructive and allows itself to be blinded by power.

Der Beitrag Kontemplation und Intuition erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.