Sometimes I react strangely. Someone does something unexpected, an uncertainty is awakened in me. How do I categorize this and how do I react to it, and what does react mean here? So it's about expectation, a way of being in the world that anticipates. The future is considered predictable and is also seen as such. If I do this or that, then someone may react in one way or another. However, it sometimes happens that the reaction of the other person is different. I have been wrong in my expectations, or the other person has played something, or the interaction has been shaped by something that preceded it and is not transparent. Energies and dynamics may have crept in that my expectation did not perceive, that were unconscious or repressed. And so we find ourselves in a pool of different conscious and unconscious memories, feelings, influences, anticipations and assessments.

The little ego

The ego reacts, it feels misunderstood and becomes impulsive. It may try to evade and cover up, or it may withdraw, somewhat offended, and feel misunderstood, or it may become active, try to change the situation, become manipulative or aggressive. In severe cases, it may even adapt its image of the world and its self-image, it may deform, reshape and distort itself, moving away from the normative.

All of this can be understood as a defense. My little ego tries to defend the supposed attack on its anticipation. It becomes reactive, reacts in a compensatory, restorative, manipulative, constructive way. It is actually an attempt to put the world back in order. But the other person doesn't see it that way, my own actions become incomprehensible to others and a conflict arises.

One way

I want to resist the normative impulses and avoid the corrective. Because what is revealed here is first of all something incredibly strong, creative, expressive, which touches our humanity at its deepest. Behind my little ego is a heart, a soul, a spirit, a nature, all of which together try to experience and synthesize being in my body and in this time and place. We often describe the first step on this path as a search for meaning, but it is much more than that. The search precedes the finding and then manifests itself in self-realization and self-expression through to the merging and dissolution of the ego. You are allowed to react a little and defend yourself. However, it is not very helpful as it usually only exacerbates situations. It quickly requires a very good ability to introduce conflict strategies in order to avoid entering into a more serious conflict.

Inner work

The inner work takes place in a different place: observing and letting go of all impulses that unite in my consciousness, including the unconscious ones that are only allowed to find their way into consciousness. This works quite well in meditation. But what does this mean for interpersonal interaction? Pauses, empathy, but above all openness and authenticity, radical self-perception and objective perception of others. The latter two are impossible in their purest form on their own and only succeed in interaction with another person. This other can either be a teacher or a loved one. In the tantric experience this is the same.

Love

I can just see two butterflies dancing around each other in the garden, and I can see two worms intertwining while making contact. The forms of expression are almost infinite and we as humans can unite on many different levels. But that really isn't possible with everyone. Such deep encounters are rare. For some, this will only be realized in another life.

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.

Zen is about finding the true self. But there is no such thing, and that is the mystery of our existence. In a world of representations, cognitive dissonance and alternative facts, it is good to sink into the essence of existence, into a non-dual being. Thinking only helps to a very limited extent, because thinking is actually always a Thinking about somethinga Thinking about something. Thinking is an activity that relates to something that deals with representations of the world. What I think, whatever it may be, is not real in the material sense. It can represent something material. Thinking, or more generally mind and matter, we think differently. This is the basic problem of thinking: thinking cannot be non-dual. It is trapped in duality, but cannot dissolve it.

The self is quite different, but similar in its paradoxes. The self is what drives us, what makes us conscious, what identifies and differentiates us; it is unique and individual. But it does not exist, neither materially nor logically-transcendentally. It may be connected to the soul, to the heart-mind, but that doesn't help at this point because it becomes dangerously tautological. We cannot understand something that we do not understand by equating it with something that we also do not understand. That only distracts us.

The true self emerges when it ceases to exist - and I mean that very seriously. When I go into meditation, become calm and concentrate on emptiness, i.e. when the pauses between the events of the head cinema become longer, a window opens that initially fills with a kind of trance state. This is beautiful and allows for completely different experiences. I've already written about this a few times: Thinking becomes fast, it understands intuitively, it can penetrate areas that remain blocked to everyday thinking; it is blissful and intense. But it has only detached itself from the self to a certain extent. It has to detach itself a little from the self, otherwise it cannot gain this lightness, but it remains anchored in the self. It is still me who is doing something that is difficult to understand and that gets caught up in similar problems as normal thinking. What is real, what is just imagination?

So I have managed to free myself a little. I have calmed these thoughts that relate to the world, and I have activated a way of seeing that is fed by memory, knowledge, vision, imagination, but only moves in that world of pure consciousness. It is an intuitive knowledge, an omnipresence, it is almost outside of space and time; it is the place where it is identical with itself, i.e. the self ceases to exist and connects with the deepest ground of our existence. The deepest ground of our existence is mysterious and based on something we cannot grasp. It is beyond our self.

Zen brings me closer to this mystery. It anchors me in my physical existence and at the same time shows me that this existence is non-dualistically one with everything. I am Buddha, you are Buddha, we are all Buddha. There is only Buddha - kill Buddha when you see him.

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.

Ever since I first heard about shadow work decades ago, I wondered what exactly it was. I always thought of deep abysses in the soul, traumas, taboos, secrets that you didn't share with anyone because it was too shameful to talk about them. I thought that shadows are what we hide from ourselves and from others. And there is probably something to this idea.
Now I've realized that the shadows first appear somewhere else. They are actually more the behavioral patterns that we flee into when we don't want to deal with something. For me, for example, it's the escape into academic reflection instead of dealing with something directly on an emotional level. This probably opens up the whole spectrum of what can be the subject of therapy in the Western tradition: Addiction, violence, distorted perception, unhealthy behavior patterns, anxiety, inability to bond, etc.... It is important to recognize these shadows that unconsciously guide our behaviour. It is important to see which patterns determine our thinking, our feelings and our actions. Perhaps a knot will then be untied.
But I am interested in how these shadows manifest in our subtle bodies. We have these different levels of our existence: body, life (breath), sexuality, emotion (heart), spirit (mind), spiritual consciousness, comprehensive consciousness. We can become more aware of these levels through meditation and various yogas. Detaching from the ego allows us to understand these levels as forms of our existence, each of which is part of a larger consciousness: Matter, Biology, Psyche, Soul, Spirit, Consciousness, Transcendence. These realities are not just my personal constitution, they are levels of reality in which I participate, which manifest themselves in me. This only becomes visible when we detach ourselves from our ego. And it is precisely in this entanglement with the ego that the shadows appear. We all have a biography and this is inscribed in our complex being. Our experiences leave traces in our body, our heart, in our memory, in our thinking.
I have the idea that there is a light in us that shines through the levels of our being, and our experiences, our biography, leave these traces in us. And when something builds up or becomes knotted, hardened or hidden, when something breaks or grows, when something is suppressed or takes on a life of its own, when something becomes self-perpetuating and unconscious patterns form, then it casts a shadow.

But I would like to take a closer look. So there is an inner light, there is something that casts a shadow, there is also an observer, an actor and a being. Our individual being manifests itself in this temple of the body. The path of spirituality leads to a point where this temple is fully illuminated and holds the entire cosmos within it. It is not so much about fixing or correcting things, about therapy (unless there is real suffering or conflict that needs to be resolved). It is much more about seeing clearly what is casting shadows so that it becomes permeable (transparent).

Art Before Theory (short summary)

Christoph Kluetsch

This lecture is the final one in my winter series. I have given six lectures so far, and I have been challenging myself throughout. Today, I am taking on my biggest challenge yet. I have been exploring topics that interest me-topics that represent a collision between Western art history, Indian spirituality, and postmodern thinking. I find this intersection to be a fascinating space to operate in. In my previous lectures, I have examined temple architecture, problems of representation, and stylistic comparisons between seemingly unrelated artistic traditions. Today, I will delve into the most challenging topic for me: the idea of art before theory.

This lecture will be somewhat experimental. I will attempt to go before theory while still using theoretical concepts to explore this idea. My perspective on art shifted dramatically after leaving the Western Hemisphere. When I first traveled to India and later to China, I realized that the timeline I had been operating on-along with the concepts I had been learning and teaching-did not align with reality.

To start, I want to discuss a controversial artifact: the Makapansgat Pebble, found in South Africa. This small pebble, only five centimeters in size, was likely transported approximately 50-60 kilometers from its original location around three million years ago. This suggests that it was intentionally moved. At that time, the beings responsible for this action were not what we would call humans. They were conscious beings of some kind, existing long before any conventional human timeline.

What is intriguing about this stone is that it resembles a human face. Archaeologists have studied it and found that some of its markings were intentionally made. The question is: is this an artifact or simply a found object with human-like qualities? This raises a deeper question-what comes first: art or the capacity to perceive something as art? Do we suddenly decide to create art out of an empty space, or must we first be in a certain disposition to recognize something as art? If, three million years ago, there were beings who perceived and valued aesthetics, then the artistic impulse might be inherent in consciousness itself.

A common narrative suggests that prehistoric art was purely utilitarian-used for ritual, worship, or survival rather than for aesthetic appreciation. I would like to challenge this idea. The Western historical perspective often assumes a linear progression of human intellectual and artistic development, from primitive beginnings to increasing complexity. I disagree. The discovery of artifacts from 30,000-40,000 years ago, such as the Chauvet Cave paintings in France, reveals an astonishing level of artistic sophistication. Pablo Picasso, upon seeing the Lascaux cave paintings (dated to 17,000 years ago), famously remarked, "We have learned nothing." He saw no evidence of artistic progress-only continuity.

Filmmaker Werner Herzog explored this idea in his documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreamswhich examines the Chauvet Cave paintings. These paintings are nearly twice as old as those in Lascaux and exhibit an equally high level of skill and artistic expression. Herzog proposes that the human mind, with its ability for aesthetic perception, appeared all at once, rather than developing gradually. This challenges the assumption that consciousness and creativity emerged through a slow evolutionary process.

Traditional historical narratives depict human development in neat, linear timelines-first one stage, then another, leading to progressive improvement. However, these models are based on ideological assumptions about progress. They align with capitalist notions of advancement, which frame history as a constant process of moving forward. This perspective influences how we view art history as well. Alfred Barr's famous diagram of 20th-century avant-garde movements suggests a structured progression: realism leads to impressionism, which leads to cubism, and so on. This model assumes that new artistic movements render previous ones obsolete, but is this truly how art evolves?

Philosopher René Descartes contributed to this way of thinking by developing the Cartesian system-a structured, rational framework for understanding the world. This system relies on representation, where external objects are mapped onto an internal mental model. Magritte's famous painting The Treachery of Images (featuring the words "This is not a pipe" beneath a painted pipe) plays with this idea, exposing the gap between representation and reality. Language, images, and perception form a complex web of relationships that we may never fully understand.

This brings me to the concept of writing and its impact on human consciousness. Plato's Phaedrus contains a story about the Egyptian god Thoth, who presented the invention of writing to King Thamus. The king rejected it, fearing that writing would weaken memory and disrupt the direct transmission of knowledge. This prediction was remarkably prophetic. Writing enables record-keeping and challenges authority, but it also shifts us from a world of direct experience to a world of textual knowledge. In oral traditions, knowledge is preserved through memory, sound, and direct teaching rather than through written records. Even today, Vedic traditions in India rely on extensive memorization, preserving knowledge in a way that differs fundamentally from text-based learning.

In contrast to textual knowledge, prehistoric art represents a more direct and unmediated form of expression. The handprints found in ancient caves around the world, created by blowing ochre pigment over hands pressed against rock walls, are an early form of artistic expression. These images appear in various cultures across millennia, suggesting a universal human impulse. Their purpose remains speculative-perhaps they served as a mark of presence, a spiritual act, or an attempt to connect with the environment in a personal way.

Similarly, early figurines such as the Venus of Willendorf and the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel suggest complex symbolic thought. The Venus figurine, with exaggerated reproductive features, likely represents fertility and life-giving power. The Lion Man, a humanoid figure with an animal head, implies an early exploration of hybrid identities, myth, and imagination. These artifacts demonstrate that early humans were not merely copying reality but engaging with deep existential questions.

Music also played a significant role in prehistoric culture. A 40,000-year-old pentatonic flute found in Germany suggests that early humans understood musical harmony. The pentatonic scale appears in various cultures and is present in the mathematical ratios of planetary orbits, indicating a deep, perhaps even intuitive, connection between music and the cosmos.

Art, music, and spiritual experience in prehistoric times were not separate disciplines but integrated aspects of human existence. Early cave paintings, sculptures, and musical instruments were not simply tools for survival or representation but ways of engaging with the world on a profound level. They allowed humans to connect with nature, with each other, and with something beyond the material world.

In the modern era, art has become increasingly intellectualized, often reduced to conceptual games and textual discourse. Yet, at its core, art originates from an urge to connect-to align our inner experience with the outer world. This is what I mean by "art before theory." Prehistoric art embodies a direct, unmediated encounter with existence. It speaks to something fundamental in us, something we may have lost in the distractions of contemporary life.

Perhaps the real challenge is to rediscover this connection-to step outside the text, outside the structures of theoretical discourse, and into a more immediate engagement with being. The question remains: how do we move beyond the text while still embracing the knowledge it provides? This is something I continue to explore in my own practice and in my engagement with art history.

Art before Theory

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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.

Art begins not with flesh but with the house. (Deleuze)

I now practise meditation. It took me a long time to admit this to myself. I've somehow always done it, I just didn't know it. Like most people, I have phases in which I look inside myself or concentrate on something contemplatively, phases in which I try to calm my mind or find out what this me inside me actually is, phases in which I try to understand what my rational mind cannot understand (e.g. infinity, or the beginning of time, etc.).

I have done this when I have had a crisis (be it intellectual, emotional, biographical...) or I do this when I am clearing my consciousness (like clarified butter) or looking at what forces are at work in me, as if large animals are pushing forward and upwards in me, as if horses and cows are restlessly trying to free themselves and strive towards the light.

Light

In the face of light, then, when the mind has come to rest, the rational mind has made peace with the fact that it cannot understand everything and yet is able to grasp the world intuitively, a moment of unity with the world on a level of consciousness that transcends everyday life, there is that for which there are no unencumbered words in German: Wonne, Seeligkeit, in English Bliss, in Sanskrit Ananda.

But this state was always somehow uncanny to me. Because there I saw phenomena that I knew from kitschy New Age postcards, or from a roommate from my student days in London, who always painted on LSD... I think I did well to be critical of these visions, because it is a somewhat gimmicky distraction of meditative consciousness. Color, geometries, light, cosmic vastness... all these are beautiful experiences and images, but they don't take you very far. They make the small ego think it is something special. These images arise during a longer meditation, especially in the lotus position after half an hour or so, when the legs start to fall asleep. When the pain of the sitting posture subsides and the endorphins no longer have to control the body's stimuli, but can let off steam freely and wildly in consciousness, it's nice, but, as I said, it doesn't lead anywhere. So I was always suspicious of that.

Room

I find it more exciting when a space opens up in this consciousness and the mind's eye begins to see clearly. When the eyes are closed, the consciousness meditates on itself. It detaches itself from the stimulus-response pattern, as there are actually not many stimuli left (provided the meditation takes place in a really quiet room with few stimuli). Consciousness is now alone with itself. Where does it want to go? Into memory? Into reflection and problem-solving thinking? Into contemplative vision? Into imagination and creativity? Into the feelings, the heart?

To help and systematize this a little, there is the image of the 7 chakras (Sahasrara, Ajna, Vishuddha, Anahata, ManipuraSvadhisthana, Muladhara). I can visit these chakras in meditation and see if one or the other chakra needs a little attention. This can create a kind of inner balance. Again, I try to avoid the cheesy color circles. I don't find this helpful, but it may be different for others. But I digress, there are many such 'techniques'.

Concept, percept, affect

Where does consciousness want to go? Who or what is behind consciousness, where does it come from? Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Is it part of something bigger? Can I think of the universe, existence itself, with all its complexity and its many facets, as a unity?

This is where I quickly reach the limits of what is conceivable with my concepts (Kant's antinomies). My little brain, how should it approach this? As long as I hold on to the idea that my consciousness consists solely of sensory impressions - perceptions - generated by my body's sensory organs, I cannot leave this subjective perspective. However, my intuition and my creativity help here. There are affects in my consciousness, it is affected, it acts. For me, it is precisely this action guided by intuition and creativity that is the key to deep meditation. Concept and percept have their role and task, but they are limited in their range and capacity for understanding. Affects, however, are different. What is an affect?

"By whom missioned falls the mind shot to its mark? By whom yoked moves the first life-breath forward on its paths? By whom impelled is this word that men speak? What god set eye and ear to their workings?

That which is hearing of our hearing, mind of our mind, speech of our speech, that too is life of our life-breath and sight of our sight. The wise are released beyond and they pass from this world and become immortal." (Kena Upanishad)

Who hears when hearing, who sees when seeing, who thinks when thinking? A life force, an élan vital, a becoming, a change? When the vibrations of the senses mix (intermiscence), a percept arises. If this percept wants to express itself, it does so in language, another form of vibration. A concept emerges. These concepts are sometimes abstract, they may be ideas. But these ideas are part of a different reality. As early as Plato, this leads to an idealism which, however, withers away in Western rationalism to a transcendental phlosophy.

For Deleuze, however, concept, percept and affect remain agile; they arise when the body enters into an encounter with the outside world. Concept, percept and affect change, but are recognizable, they form patterns. They are the basic forms of vibrations, i.e. energetic patterns. They can also be communicated to a certain extent. Above all, however, they form an inner space that can be experienced in meditation.

Space is only to be understood literally to a limited extent. In meditation, the mind is free to move. Space and time are no longer limitations. Just as when associating thoughts, the objects of the thoughts are not moved along with them, in the space of meditation the mind can rush freely from one vision to the next. I think this is what is meant by the vision of the inner eye, which for some is heightened to the point of visions.

Visions

These visions, as I like to call them in the old-fashioned way, give access to more than just an inner world of experience. A house is built there, a city in which forces are simply forces, detached from causal chains. There may be neurochemical processes that take place when the mind is so active, and if you like, you can make a reduction here. But this is a very daring theory, not supported by anything, is pure science fiction - because we are dealing with correlations at best, a causal relationship cannot be proven. We don't even know what it is that we want to put into a causal relationship.

Let's just take consciousness for what it is: consciousness. Why this reductionism? I don't reduce my life to biochemistry either.

A space, i.e. an architecture, is created in this consciousness. Deleuze makes it sound like this:

"Interlocking these frames or joining up all these planes wall section, window section, floor section, slope section- is a composite system rich in points and counterpoints. The frames and their joins hold the compounds of sensations, hold up figures, and intermingle with their upholding, with their own appearance. These are the faces of a dice of sensation. Frames or sections are not coordinates; they belong to compounds of sensations whose faces, whose interfaces, they constitute. But however extendable this system may be, it still needs a vast plane of composition that carries out a kind of deframing following lines of flight that pass through the territory only in order to open it onto the universe, that go from house-territory to town-cosmos, and that now dissolve the identity of the place through variation of the earth, a town having not so much a place as vectors folding the abstract line of relief. On this plane of composition, as on "an abstract vectorial space," geometrical figures are laid out cone, prism, dihe-dron, simple plane-which are no more than cosmic forces capable of merging, being transformed, confronting each other, and alternating; world before man yet produced by man. The planes must now be taken apart in order to relate them to their intervals rather than to one another and in order to create new affects. We have seen that painting pursued the same movement." (Deleuze: What is Philosophy? p.187)

The Solitude Farm in Auroville, is a 'food forest'. This is one of the few English terms that is difficult to express in German with a compound noun (Esswald?). We don't have anything like that, and it's hard to think about. A fruit meadow that we would let run wild with other edible annuals and short-lived plants until we have a dense jungle of nothing but edible plants ... I'm looking for a word for that. It's the opposite of a 'food dessert', we don't have a compound word for that in German either, it means a part of town where there are no stores selling fresh food. The only things that exist in urban 'food desserts' are gas stations and kiosks that sell chip bags and candy, stale toast and chemical cheese.

Tamil

Krishna gave a short talk. His enthusiasm for the project, which he has been pursuing for over 20 years, was unmistakable, passionately palpable. Krishna is from England, speaks fluent Tamil and often had to find English words for Tamil words. The Tamil culture has not only grown close to his heart, but he seems to be deeply rooted in it. And that is exactly what his core message is. We have thousands of years of knowledge about what grows in the environment in which we live, what we can eat, how we can prepare it, the nutritional and energetic value of plants and the healing effects they can have.

Grandmother's knowledge

Our grandmothers had this knowledge, we still have it somewhere inside us, but we have forgotten it. Nature has more to offer us than our chemical inventions, if we let it do its work and only guide it a little here and there. His core message: activate the old knowledge, let nature do its thing, handle the fruits responsibly, collectively and ecologically....

Krishna draws inspiration from Masanobu Fukuokaa pioneer of permaculture. He met him many years ago in Japan and saw his "do-nothing agriculture" with his own eyes; he carries on his spirit. You can only enter his edible forest barefoot - any child would have known that in the past. As he talks - wandering through the small forest of 1 to 2 hectares - he picks leaves, eats them and calls them by Tamil names. His voice is overflowing with enthusiasm about the richness of the small forest. Most of the plants came by themselves. He doesn't know the word weed. A friend in Auroville brought a piece of land that had been so degraded in the 20th century that it was nothing more than a stony desert into the state of an edible forest within five years. It was a lot of work, but rewarding and sustainable.

The food box principle enables farmers to live much better, and the community and nature are also better off.

Learning

A group of students from Pondicherry were there that day with their lecturer. They wanted textbook knowledge. 'Use your campus to grow vegetables for the canteen, encourage your students not to eat at the fast food chains just outside the campus, ask your grandmothers. The knowledge is there, you just have to use it,' was his answer. Otherwise, he would of course be happy to give various workshops on practical procedures.

The old woman, who was born here in the country and sat on the floor in the background, didn't understand English. She knows what to do.

Today I was at a place for village children with special needs (Deepam). Someone from the guest house here had invited me to accompany her. It was a kind of ceremony as part of Navarathri in honor of the goddess Saraswathi - she stands for education, prosperity and success. In India today, the objects needed for work were purified and consecrated as a form of thanksgiving. Offerings were brought to them and songs were sung. In the therapy center, in addition to figurines, books and other toys, these were also the accounting books with the donation file. In a second stage, the school bus arrived. It drove over lemons and pumpkins were smashed on the road.

I have taught for many years, sometimes lecturing, often discussing with students, occasionally criticizing. I tried to inspire, to share knowledge and skills, to give advice and to help with the search. I never taught, nor did I educate. I considered it a privilege to be allowed to teach. I rarely punished students for wanting to learn from me. That's absurd. If they didn't do what I expected, then either I wasn't clear enough or I had the wrong expectations.

Doors

Some teachers see themselves as gatekeepers, they want to determine who meets arbitrary quality standards. If you want to position yourself at a door, then my idea has always been to give the people who want to go through this door a good idea of what to expect and to think together with them about whether they want to go through this door or whether they would rather take another one.

I am not a teacher, and certainly not a special needs teacher. But what I saw today gave me a lot (to think about). I was happy to be able to share this space. I saw so much joy, laughter, consideration, attention, intuition, fun, togetherness and confidence that my heart became very light. What is happening here? What words can I use to describe it? And what does this have to do with teaching? Some young and committed people started 30 years ago to look after people with special needs under a tree. Now it has become a very solid and inspiring place - another moving story.

Who is actually learning from whom here? And what are we actually doing in all the other schools all the time?

I have been waiting for some time. Actually, I like waiting. Waiting is a space and a time in which there is nothing else to do but wait for time to pass. As a rule, you can't do much else except read or talk or think. Waiting times are therefore always free spaces for me. I prefer to wait in community centers, for example, where everyone is equal. Together with others, I am in a room where there is nothing to do but wait for time to pass. This shared waiting allows for real encounters.

There is always something amazing about an encounter. An encounter takes place when there is a counterpart who reciprocates. The most beautiful kind of encounter is one that is completely free of objectives or expectations. In this context, Deleuze also talks about encounters with art. That surprised me at first. Because an encounter, I always thought, is intersubjective. Two questions now arise: can art be intersubjective, and are art spaces such as museums perhaps also waiting rooms?

A new life

My wait at the moment is a long wait. I have been waiting for a few weeks to start a new life. The waiting is determined by applying for a visa. This visa application process - embassies and consulates as well as other government agencies - is in a different time dimension anyway. It has something Kafkaesque about it, its own logic, which has become quite detached from the processes of the outside world.

So this long wait makes encounters possible, but again in a completely different way than I thought. People react very strongly to my waiting. Many perceive my move to start a new life as a challenge. They reflect on their own situation or have the feeling that they can now tell me things that they might not otherwise tell me, as I am leaving their world anyway. But perhaps they also hope to get to know a different perspective through me. Whatever the case, I have quite intense encounters. I pour my heart out and others open up.

An encounter, meeting, participating

Participation seems to me to be an important element of the encounter. In order to encounter the other, this openness is important, to leave oneself (Deleuze sometimes speaks of a de-territorialization) and to become something else (Metamorphosis). When I'm traveling on the train, for example, or looking around me at a concert, sitting on a park bench or in a café, I often see people who are also looking around them. Many are looking for an encounter. We are often too shy to actually talk to each other, but the first encounter has already taken place: Opening up to the other, and the perception of the other.

It seems to me that we have forgotten how to really participate. A smile or a brief word, a bit of sympathy. In India, people say NamasteThe encounter is expressed in this greeting. It is not about wishing each other a good day or greeting God, but about seeing that the other person is also part of what makes me who I am.

What does that have to do with art? Everything.

When I was a teenager, I had lost my heart to someone who lived in Rome. I traveled to the Eternal City with no money, no plan, it was supposed to be a surprise. That went somewhat wrong. We ate a pizza together, otherwise I had a lot of time to myself. I spent many hours on one of the hills looking up at the sky. I thought about Einstein. What else. Everything else seemed too trivial. There, for the first time, I had an awareness of the whole. Not that I understood Einstein, although I felt like I did: looking up at the starry sky, I realized that everything is connected and interacts. That energy, matter, space, consciousness, time - everything is connected and can be transformed into one another. I still remember that moment today. It seemed so clear to me, so indisputable. As a result, I lost my self. From then on, it made no sense at all for me to speak of a self. Identity now seemed to me to be an ideological construct that was only valid on passports. The foundation for my philosophy studies had been laid.