Ean 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.

In India, the books of the Vedas have been kept in memory for 3000 years. The Rigveda (10,552 verses), Samaveda (1549 verses), Yajurveda (4001 verses) and Atharvaveda (5977 verses) as well as the Upanishads (approx. 1800 verses) have been passed down from generation to generation. The grammar of Sanskrit has not changed significantly and the pronunciation has been handed down precisely through exact phonetic descriptions. So these texts sound exactly the same today as they did 3000 years ago. They are written in the form of mantras, i.e. in verse form and dedicated to the truth. The recitation, even the mere listening, is ascribed powers, because according to legend, the language of Sanskrit originates from Shiva: his drums produce vowels, from them the consonants arise, from them the grammar and finally the language.

The counterpart to the language of the Vedas in music are the ragas. Yoga is also related to the Vedas, as are Ayurveda and Tantra. This treasure of wisdom was perceived by the rishis through deep meditation and recorded in mantras. The strict coding in verse form ensured error-free transmission over thousands of years. Even today, thousands of people in India know the Vedas by heart and recite them regularly.

Passing on knowledge

There are two ways of passing on this knowledge. The conventional form of learning through practice and repetition. It is necessary to start at an early age and it requires the dedication of a lifetime to develop this skill and keep it alive. The second form is the passing on of a seer to his pupil. This form is difficult for the rational mind to comprehend. The knowledge is transferred within weeks. The relationship between guru and disciple is of course a very special one. It is rare. There are also reports of even more mystical transfers.

As this is knowledge that has been experienced in meditation, it is knowledge that is different from empirical knowledge that we have gained through our external senses or rational knowledge that we have gained through deduction. The Western idea that - extremely abbreviated - external sensory stimuli can be inscribed in the memory and recalled through recollection does not apply here. The approaches of transcendental philosophy also fall short here, as they do not take deep structures into account. within of our thinking.

The knowledge of the Vedas testifies to a much more differentiated description of our consciousness. In the Vedas, the generally accepted three states of matter, life and mind correspond to Sat-Chit-Ananda (existence, consciousness, bliss) on a higher level of consciousness. A seventh level - Vijnana - is the link. Through this form of higher realization, Sat-Chit-Ananda is opened up. The whole is wonderfully complex, rich and beautiful and does much more justice to our human existence than the dominant reductionist view of so-called enlightenment and is described by the 7 rivers or deep waters. Of course, there are also the gods, but that's another story for now. I am concerned here with memory.

The Vedas have opened up these higher levels. They are passed on orally from generation to generation. This is why they are also recognized as intangible world cultural heritage. This knowledge comes from a vision and is passed on immaterially, like the Olympic flame. It bears witness to an origin in the oldest coherent texts of mankind.

Memory and consciousness

Just as art bears witness to an inner experience, or invention is often based on inspiration, our spiritual existence is linked to a vision. The question of the meaning of our lives is not answered in causal chains or deductions. This question points to a different context. How is such a vision possible and what kind of memory is necessary for it? I am not referring to the memory capacity to memorize c. 25,000 verses, but to the question of the kind of consciousness that is revealed here.

The mind can move freely within the levels of consciousness, it can roam from one place to another at almost infinite speed, jump through time and open up new worlds - all this at least in the memory, the activated memory. But it is more than just getting lost in memories. The states of Sat-Chit-Ananda are real. India is of people who have given up everything to open themselves to this gift, to achieve bliss and immortality in the here and now. Bergson distinguishes between a pure memory and a habitual memory. Pure memory captures the memories that shape us, that are unique, that stand out from everyday consciousness. That goes in the right direction....

Our mind, our consciousness can participate in a greater consciousness, can actualize it. It seems to me that we misunderstand this as memory, and perhaps it is also the case that we first have to grow beyond our memory in order to attain real consciousness. Memory is then not the search in one's own individual memory of habit, but spiritual experience. Because everything is always already there everywhere. It is only a matter of access relations.

Reference:

Joshi, Kireet. The Portals of Vedic Knowledge

Bergson, Henri. 1990. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books.

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

Yesterday I followed something in my mind that I find difficult to describe. In everyday language, I would perhaps say that I followed my intuition. But it's a bit more complex than that. I went back to Tiruvannamalai drove. It was the last day of the Karthigai Deepam Brahmotsavam festivals.

So on December 6, 2022, a fire was started on this mountain, as it has been for 2500 years. There is, of course, a story about this from ancient times. Brahman, the universal self, has divided itself into Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver) and Shiva (destroyer) were divided. Vishnu and Brahma argued about who was the greatest. Shiva appeared as fire and asked Vishnu and Brahma where the end and the beginning of the lingam was. Vishnu transformed himself into a wild boar and dug, but did not find the beginning, Brahma transformed himself into a swan, flew up and did not find the end. However, Brahma took a flower that had been in free fall for 40,000 years when it fell from the top of the lingam as proof that he was at the end. Shiva saw through this and made sure that Brahma was no longer worshipped and that the flower must not be used for praying.

The gods of Hinduism are so complex that they defy any brief characterization. For Shiva alone, there are Shiva Purana 1008 names, each meaning a property.

The procession

The mountain in Tiruvannamalai is a natural phenomenon of the Lingam of Lord Shiva. The lingams in Indian temples are a kind of altar. The statues of gods and lingams are real manifestations of the gods. The mountain in Tiruvannamalai is the largest lingam and the most powerful Shiva temple in India.

Some 100,000 people come to this festival, some say a million. A million people circling a mountain? That's what I wanted to see... However, I have noticed in the past few weeks that my relationship to Hindu spirituality has changed and deepened.

My studies of Upanishads and the Vedic texts has given me a new perspective on philosophy, which in turn has given me a different view of spirituality and ultimately a different way of being in the world. I see the world differently, I experience it differently, I understand it differently, I think differently and I experience differently. So to say that I simply follow my intuition is too simplistic. Intuition is there, but not only. Ultimately, I was there, that's what can be said. What brought me there cannot be said. And this unspeakability of what drives us is overwhelming. Experiencing it in collective ecstasy is obvious.

On the 16-kilometer trail, the mantras rang out through the loudspeakers during my 4-hour walk around the mountain Om Namah Shivaya resp. OM Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya - non-stop. We walked past a few other temples, I stopped at some of them and paid tribute to the gods - sometimes just with a gesture as we walked past.

What has that done to me, I ask myself? It brought me closer to the experience of what makes us human. I was in a tight crowd with a lot of people and heard them shouting and singing, always smiling and full of devotion. They were all dressed up. 'What do you think of my people', a young Indian asked me. 'I love them,' I said.

That night I dreamt of the fires in Varanasi. These fires were lit by Shiva and have been burning for 3000 years. Those who are burnt here leave the cycle of rebirth. The ashes are carried away in the Ganges.

Tiruvannamalei - SD 480p

Der Beitrag Shiva Tiruvannamalei Deepam erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

I remember always staring into the fire since I was a child. Many people do that, I think. There is something fascinating about fire. In the Vedas, Agni is the god of fire, one of the five elements alongside water, air, earth and ether. The Greeks also have these elements. I didn't understand this for a long time and found it 'unscientific'. I thought of the elements in terms of physics and chemistry, and that only makes limited sense.

Mythology

Within mythology and spiritual knowledge, however, this is actually perfectly plausible. In the Upanishads, different levels of consciousness are distinguished. The general, eternal consciousness, i.e. consciousness in itself, formless, all-encompassing, indeterminate - the Brahman. Then there are the individual forces, energy, will, love, knowledge etc.. These are conceived as forms of being, as gods, as a heaven of gods. Atman, the individual self, emerges from them. It dwells within us.

That sounds very strange, old, glorified, unscientific... but it is actually phenomenal, undeniable. We have a will, we love and hate, we know and let ourselves be deceived.... We cannot explain this scientifically. We try to do so using functional models (e.g. Darwinism) or reductionist models (neuroscience) or systematic observation (social sciences). However, these models ultimately attempt to reduce what defines us to a material, systemic or structural level. Our assumption is that once we have explained it away, we have solved the 'problem'. What kind of strange idea is that?

But there is actually no dispute about the existence of these phenomena. Only instead of visualizing them as computer models, the Rishi, the seers of the Vedas, gave them the names of gods. They saw their existence and accepted and named them.

Visualization

So perhaps we should stay with the pictures of the Rishi for a moment.

Pure existence expresses itself in order to recognize itself - through an act of creation. In science, we call this the Big Bang. In cosmology, we are making good progress in describing the formation of matter, galaxies, planets, etc., and there is certainly a lot more to come. The computer animations are inspiring, the space images based on complicated algorithms are breathtaking. The narratives about quarks and electrons, gravitational forces, strings, space-time and the curvature of time are fascinating and actually incomprehensible to non-physicists. We accept the interim results of scientific discussions as truths that are popularized on YouTube channels. Einstein, Hawking and others are our Rishi. The experts have understood something that we cannot comprehend or verify. Only the peers, the scientific colleagues or the Rishi community can really judge whether this is nonsense or real knowledge.

4000 years ago, images were gods. However, these mental images of deities are much closer to our experience than the abstract technical images. They describe our living world more precisely, their insight is deeper because it draws on experience. The Vedas accept consciousness. They understand that consciousness in isolation makes no sense in a human existence. This is the core problem in the monotheistic traditions. How can the immortality of the soul be explained?

In the Vedas, every consciousness is part of one. It's actually not that complicated, just incredibly difficult to understand, because it presupposes that we don't take ourselves so seriously, that we see ourselves as part of a whole and act as such. Immortality lies in the insight of not seeing ourselves as the center. The path to this is meditation.

Experience

For me, it is important to stay at the level of experience. That doesn't limit science, on the contrary, it gives it new material. I was interested in fire, energy, the sun and the power that moves everything. The energy that destroys and at the same time transforms and moves everything. An energy that is fed by sacrifice, because wood, for example, burns in a fire, generates energy and leaves ashes behind. The ashes are smeared on the forehead in temples in India, over the third eye, the seat of knowledge.

When I sit in front of a fire, I see this energy, I feel it in my face, on my forehead. A wood fire is so bright that it doesn't blind me, but it casts a spell over me. It is danger and a sign, energy, power and destruction. I see in fire the elemental force of the universe, the image of the sun, the symbol of purity and clarity.

Om Namah Shivaya

Der Beitrag Elemente – Feuer erschien zuerst auf New Spirits - Reading Deleuze in India.

On a boulevard in Paris, café and bad music, sun and lots of people. So many people want to be seen. They are busy, sexy, cool, knowing, adventurous, sporty, educated, cultured or indifferent. Many want others to take notice. They see themselves as what they want to be. Perhaps they live their lives in a certain way, happy and content, or alienated and bored, outcast or privileged. That's the beauty of Paris and other big cities, that people show themselves how they want to be, how they want to be seen.

Open spaces

Of course, this also somehow reveals an alienation, a dissonance. The free spaces that we take for ourselves contrast with the - usually larger - spaces in which we are not what we want to be. This gives rise to a whole industry. You want to be different? Try it, for a price. Express your individuality by buying something very special that others haven't bought. This is capitalism and consumerism. It's common knowledge, and we all think we're above it, and of course we're not.

I find the urge to want to show off, to be noticed, to get attention, much more exciting. Why do we do that? We are probably looking for Encounterswant to greet the other - Namaste. We probably want to overcome loneliness, or at least interrupt it. We don't actually want to participate in capitalism, we want to take part in the adventure of consciousness, celebrate it with others, share it. And we want to dissolve into it - in intoxication and ecstasy, Dionysian. We want to put the logic of the system, its functioning and efficiency up for discussion. Nietzsche sends his regards, but also Bataille.

So I'm sitting in a café in Paris, my backpack packed, tonight I'm flying to Auroville. And of course I ask myself why I have to write this in a blog now. And why I have to fly to the other side of the world. Check your privilege. And why am I writing so much in the first person?

Goodbye

I seem to be serious about this. Many years ago, I told anyone who would listen that I was done with capitalism. Just as I have been saying goodbye to Christianity for even longer. But for me that meant living in the wrong place, because I didn't manage to develop a real alternative for myself. There are not many places on our planet where this is attempted. It's not enough for me (anymore) to have a critical attitude, and I also don't find it acceptable for me to collect resources within the system in order to redistribute them individually. Giving comfort is not my style either.

We have to act, it can't go on like this. It's bad for the environment, but it's also bad for us. This is so often glossed over in today's debate. It's not just about saving the planet, it's about saving ourselves. We don't just need new ideas from engineers, but also from philosophers and spiritual thinkers and seers. Perhaps we don't need new ideas at all, but could remember old ideas and think about how we can adapt them in an increasingly complex civilization. What would a world without capitalism and without colonialism and crusades look like? Why do so few people think seriously about this?

I have no idea what to expect on the next stage. On verra, we will see. Aurobindo sang about fire, it is essential for seeing. I hope that I don't emerge as a phoenix from the ashes, as the same as before. That would really be a tragedy. Rather, I want to become fire myself, to remember that we are made of molten stars.

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

I took part in a Zen meditation circle last year. Not so much because I see myself as a Zen Buddhist, but because I was looking for a quiet community to pursue my practice. During the Dokusan, I got involved in actively exploring my questions. I gave up a lot and left a lot behind. It was surprisingly easy. The 'teacher' drew my attention to the fact that the homelessness that I was actively initiating was also a spiritual state. That was liberating.

Instead of tying one's self to an identity that is bound up in social structures, my philosophical and spiritual journey leads me to a consciousness that tries to free itself from this illusion. Home has no meaning in this context, or if it does, it has a completely different meaning - living in harmony. This harmony is arbitrarily complex and co-present. A physical reference point for the body is not a home - the social, cultural, political, spiritual is perhaps more so. But here too, the point of reference in Buddhism or Hinduism is different. The core is to understand oneself as part of a diversity and immanent unity, which contradicts the concept of a home.

Being homeless is a spiritual state. It is not negative, but a goal. I have always felt homeless, I have always had difficulties with the concept of self. I have always been searching for an answer that is not based on a location, but on a realization. This realization is beyond the mind, it is intuitive and in its overcoming. Sri Aurobindo wrote a lot about fire. Its flame is light, it transforms. Its energy: destructive, giving, universal, mystical and spiritual.

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