Immanence

Yesterday, I saw two millipedes mating. It was pretty much the most fascinating thing I've seen in a very long time. The creatures entwined, rubbed, and courted each other; there was rhythm, devotion, engulfment. The two met by chance and, after a few minutes, went their separate ways. An encounter. They were two life forms that united to create more life.

A Life - One life

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

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

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

The rest reads like a commentary on the Upanishads.

Brahman

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

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

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

Immanence

Ultimately, meditation is about sharing precisely that consciousness that Deleuze describes as pure immanence. Whether that's really possible is another question. However, meditation is an attempt at approximation. If it succeeds, according to the Upanishads, then at least for that moment we experience immortality. And that's the only way you can jump out the window. I'm serious, it's really not the most obvious conclusion, and not recommended for imitation. But it's truly astonishing how closely Deleuze approaches the Upanishads here, it's as if his entire philosophy leads to this.

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

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