New Spirits – Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness exists only in connection with other consciousness
The contrast could hardly be greater: Auroville is flat, hot, on the coast; it wants to be a city, based on the teachings of Mirra Alfassa and Sri Aurobindo. At the core of their visions is the idea of bringing a divine consciousness down to earth, a “download” of the Supramental. Some seem to claim access to it. And sometimes I feel I understand what they are speaking of. The experience of a deep spirituality in meditation, in work, in…
Weiterlesen
I am in a sesshin, a two-and-a-half-day short form of intensive Zen meditation. Thoughts and images keep coming to me about the artificial general intelligence (AGI) we are currently creating. More and more people from the humanities, psychology, or team organization are expressing admiration, surprise, and fear at the capabilities of AGI. It seems that the Turing test was passed some time ago, and that we are now watching an intelligence develop that appears to be superior to us. This…
Weiterlesen
Form is empty. It has a shape, but no substance; it is neither matter nor energy. Form is consciousness — to see something as something brings form forth. Yet form is also functional: substance, matter, and energy interact according to laws. As part of consciousness, they interact in form. Form is emptiness. Form is consciousness. Consciousness interacts with consciousness. From form arises matter — not the other way around. Matter does not bring form forth. The flow of energy and…
Weiterlesen
When I began reading the Upanishads, I realized that the inner path I had embarked upon was leading me into an extraordinarily beautiful inner landscape. Discovering that this inner landscape is connected to cosmic consciousness made me aware of the important work I must undertake—what people often call “inner work.” As I committed myself to this inner work, I focused on how I was feeling, who I am, and what I must face. What are my shadows? My insecurities? My…
Weiterlesen
During the Chola Empire, the layout of Shiva temples was formalized to a great degree. Based on the Agamas and Shastras, the temple was fully developed into a place in space, time, and consciousness where the microcosm and macrocosm mirror each other. When a temple is built, a site will be chosen, and it has to be indicated as auspicious. Often an unusually friendly encounter with the animal realm is such a good sign. The site then has to be…
Weiterlesen
The snake in paradise seduced Eve to eat a fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge that holds the distinction between good and evil. Why was the tree of knowledge a forbidden tree? Why did the snake seduce Eve? What did the fruit taste like? When I asked myself why I want to talk about this, I felt like Eve standing in front of the tree, talking to a snake who attempts to seduce me to eat the fruit. Do…
Weiterlesen
It is full moon in India. Time for self-reflection, meditation, and a turning inward. I have never really thought about death. For me, it was always a boundary, that which defines our existence negatively. Finitude throws us back upon ourselves, or so I thought. Here I agreed a little with Heidegger. To think of something beyond death always seemed arbitrary, naive, romantic, escapist, and credulous to me … Only in existential reflection did death seem meaningful to me. The dead…
Weiterlesen
In the western analytic-modern theories of consciousness, i.e. those which understand themselves as empirical-scientific, a correlation between matter and consciousness is always assumed. This is relatively undisputed in itself, since actually the very most thought buildings assume it. Birth and death mark the corner points of this correlation. Now the question arises, how does this correlation look like? Does the consciousness determine the matter, or the matter the consciousness, or is it an interaction? 3 variants of the relation between…
Weiterlesen