Ramana, one of India’s great enlightened ones, lived in Tiruvannamalai. At the center of his teaching stands the concept of the Self: its emptiness and, at the same time, its immeasurable vastness. His teaching is simple; he does not follow a long tradition of interpretation. He was a simple man who meditated on the mountain and held satsangs. He was a contemporary of Aurobindo; people listened to both of them and compared their radically different approaches. I am in Tiruvannamalai…
Slowly, and at long intervals, I keep reading Sri Aurobindo. Why not read a lot and quickly, soak everything up and finally bring order to my world of thought, which wants to break out of the consequences of a rational monotheism? Why do I not give my intellect the freedom, concentration, quiet and strength to embark on one of life’s greatest adventures? As a student, I once went swimming in the Rhine, very naively, somewhere before Basel, where the water,…
It is so beautiful and also so sad to live in a world that sees the West as foreign. I take this perspective more and more and don’t understand much anymore. The obsession with career, comfort, security, prosperity, accuracy, correctness, know-it-all attitude and arrogance, ignorance and intolerance. All this becomes clearer, it becomes almost evident. I was sick for a few days, and as many people do, I watched movies, nothing inspiring. Series garbage. I haven’t done that for a…
Many of my friends have a strong will, they are creative, create, make, act, do… They confront the world with their own will and add themselves or refuse to accept it as it is. This generates creativity, change. It is the power of Shakti, the creative energy of the universe. I am different, I observe, try to understand the world as it is. I don’t want to change it, even though I see a lot of suffering and injustice, I…
we experience the power of consciousness through the intermingling of different vibrations. This text explores the constitution of consciousness in a meditative state.
There was a time in Europe when people spoke of polymaths. In Germany, this would be Alexander von Humboldt, or Goethe; in France, an Enlightenment thinker; in Italy, the Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci. In antiquity, Aristotle. Surely there are wise people in many cultures and epochs of whom history tells us that they knew everything one could have known at the time. Of course, that is nonsense. But this narrative serves a longing. We want to know everything, yet…
An intense month comes to an end. Moving, physical separation, friends separating, the love of godchildren, new friendships, longings, waiting… I could write a screenplay about the past few weeks in Provence. Every day filled with pain, compassion and love—collectively in different constellations. But I do not want to tell these small stories, although Marcel Pagnol might perhaps have enjoyed them. What occupies me is the question of pain. Life is suffering, Buddhists say—to put it very briefly. Wanting and…
Many partnerships around me are undergoing a stress test at the moment. The word midlife crisis often comes up. A stupid word, I think, since it suggests that life, individual life, has a crisis. This perspective unsettles me. Why should life have a crisis? It seems rather that partnerships are being called into question. A breaking out, a drive for freedom, self-realization, wanting to make up for something. This too is a notion that unsettles. Was the past wrong? That…
