During the Chola Empire, the layout of Shiva temples became highly formalized. Based on the Agamas and Shastras, the temple was fully developed into a place in space, time, and consciousness where microcosm and macrocosm mirror one another. Studying the Irumbai temple as a smaller temple that follows the strict rules of temple construction and serves as a temple for practitioners shows its central role in a cluster of about two dozen temples in the surrounding area. It follows the…
Sometimes meditation is quite simple and natural. I sit down, enter my body, become aware of my sensory apparatus and of how my consciousness and intellect engage with it, bring everything to rest, and higher consciousness shows itself, another kind of knowledge, space and time, another world of experience … Sometimes, though, it is difficult, and then I learn how meditation really works. I sit down; a chaos of thoughts and feelings spreads out. It takes a long time before…
When the rational mind roams through the worlds of knowledge, rummages through the library or searches for the causal laws of the universe, this is meticulous work building systems of knowledge. At first these systems have little in common with the world of experience, let alone the inner world. Only through contemplation does the mind pause and behold the systematized, abstract representation as an image of the world, as a worldview. It is intuition that anchors this image in a…
Discover the importance of asking oneself the question “Why are you here?” in the context of life and the city. Explore the concept of Auroville, a unique city that prioritizes this question and the service to divine consciousness. #MeaningOfLife
Entdecken Sie die faszinierenden Skulpturen von Saravana Deivasegamani im Zentrum für Kunst “The Divine Seed”. Seine Werke spiegeln Tradition, Weisheit und Spiritualität wider und laden zur Reflexion ein. Erfahren Sie mehr über seine einzigartige Technik.
Yesterday I ended the year with a shared meditation. It was beautiful, calm, concentrated. And in a moment I want to go to the sea, swim a little; this seems a good start to me. I let a little of how I have lived over the past years and decades pass before my inner eye. I have lived in different places in different countries. That was exciting: different customs and practices, languages, cultures, different sensory impressions, from nature and food…
As a teenager, still at school, I began meditating; I still vaguely remember my first meditations from that time. Strength and quiet, concentration—mostly at night. They were very special moments. I did not do it often. As a student I continued meditating very irregularly. I remember some of these meditations, mostly lasting 1–2 hours, as though they had just happened. I always lacked the words (when I forced myself to name it, I reluctantly said transcendental); I also had no…
For very many years I have known that I want to practice ‘yoga’, but I have never done it. As with meditation, I did not feel ready for it, or was put off by Western esoteric forms that ultimately understand both meditation and yoga as self-optimization. Meditation and yoga are philosophical, spiritual and ultimately transcending practices for overcoming one’s own Self, opening oneself to a greater consciousness. All this seems so clear now. My “study” of Indian philosophy is slowly…
