Yesterday I saw two millipedes mating. It was pretty much the most fascinating thing I have seen in a very long time. The creatures entwined themselves in one another, rubbed and courted one another; there was rhythm, devotion, engulfing. The two had met by chance, and after a few minutes moved on in different directions. An encounter. They were two forms of life that had united to beget further life.
A Life – A Life
Today I then reread Deleuze’s final essay: “Immanence: A Life”. Deleuze wrote this shortly before throwing himself out of the window; he was gravely ill. I read this essay many years ago, around the time my father died, if I remember correctly. Now, rereading it, I notice why I was so moved back then, and I also notice that I really understood almost nothing at the time, as the ‘wrong’ underlinings alone show.
Over the past few days I had a small crisis. I wondered whether Sri Aurobindo’s ideas might, after all, be a little too far out. And at the same time I also wondered whether Deleuze’s thinking, in its monist, empirical orientation, might not, after all, be the opposite of what I am discovering here in India on my journey into spiritual philosophy. And then this essay begins like this:
„What is a transcendental field? It can be distinguished from experience in that it doesn’t refer to an object or belong to a subject (empirical representation). It appears therefore as a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without a self.“
The rest reads like a commentary on the Upanishads.
Brahman
I keep coming back to them because these scriptures are simply incredibly deep. Here Deleuze describes the Self as subjectless consciousness, as a pure flow that forms the transcendent field. This field is the ground of everything—Brahman (?)—out of it everything takes shape. Subject and object together, the subject never without an object to which it relates. The experiences, lived experiences, memories, moments and episodes take shape here. They are born in immanence. Deleuze writes a page further on:
„Were it not for consciousness, the transcendental field would be defined as a pure plane of immanence, because it eludes all transcendence of the subject and of the object.“
I know that all this sounds very complicated. These are concepts that often seem suspect because they stand for a kind of thinking that many do not understand, and those who move within it argue about it a great deal. It is simply that, in the context here, this makes a great deal of sense to me. This morning I was in the Matrimandir; at the time I did not yet know that I would open this book today. A friend here came along; he found the whole thing rather elitist and unnecessary—he was referring to the architecture. I found it exciting; in my practice I directed myself toward the chakras.
Immanence
In meditation, ultimately, the point is surely to share precisely that consciousness which Deleuze describes as pure immanence. Whether this is really possible is an open question. Meditation is, however, an attempt at approximation. If it succeeds, according to the Upanishads, then we experience immortality, at least for this moment. And surely only in this way can one jump out of the window. I mean this seriously; it really is not the most obvious conclusion, and is not recommended for imitation. But it is astonishing how closely Deleuze approaches the Upanishads here; it is as though his entire philosophy runs toward this.
“This indefinite life does not itself have moments, close as they may be one to an other, but only between-times, between-moments; it doesn’t just come about or come after but offers the immensity of an empty time where one sees the event yet to come and already happened, in the absolute of an immediate consciousness.”
Further reading:
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