“the eye thinks even more than it listens” (Deleuze) I now remember that, before I began reading Deleuze, I had struggled with an aesthetics of process. I put together a 100-page manuscript with notes, quotations, sketches of structures. I wanted to move away from the idea that art consists of objects perceived in a particular way, because this produces two main strands of thought: 1.) What constitutes an object that we call art, and 2.) why is the perception of…
For many years now, my mind has been filled with emptiness most of the time. My memory is not good either, and I often repeat words or sentences in my mind without knowing why. Often they are simply experiences in a word on an endless loop, in a sense like a mantra. For a long time this worried me a great deal. I tried to find excuses and justifications for it. For example, that I had done a great deal…
Schopenhauer, who was a great admirer of the Upanishads, wrote a small book, “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason” (1847). He identifies four forms of causality, for example, small cause—large effect, or large cause—small effect, and so on… This fascinated me because it offers a broader understanding than the purely scientific model, which ultimately always follows the law of conservation of energy. When someone declares a war, for example, that is a relatively simple act (small…
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…
Our brain is not the seat of our mind, but the medium through which we can reach the spiritual. When I first heard this many years ago at a conference on media theory, I was astonished. Did they really mean this seriously? Is it crazy or brilliant? There is this beautiful old-fashioned word, ‘subtle matter.’ Our body is a medium through which we can reach this. Our media theories generally have in common that they are conceived technically. There is…
I have always had a gut unease about an atomistic worldview. At school we learn that the smallest building blocks of the universe are atoms. Now physics has moved on; we speak of protons, electrons, positrons, quarks and strings, etc.… But at its core, the idea remains the same: the world is composed of the smallest parts of matter. This is such a widespread idea that few people doubt it, that is, doubt the exclusivity of this worldview. I expressly…
I am embarking on an experiment. A city is being built in Auroville. It is dedicated to humanity. It is about exploring consciousness, about spirituality and unity. UNESCO supports the project, the state of India, many people around the world. There is a charter, a plan, many plans, many opinions, progress and difficulties. Nobody is perfect… I am going there to help, and so I do not want to comment now, before arriving there. That would be entirely presumptuous. But…
One of the most consequential misunderstandings of recent generations is the confusion of economic and political theory. There seems almost to be a consensus that capitalism is understood as a political theory. There may be many reasons why capitalism must be understood politically. There are certainly also reasons why capitalism is often thought together with democracy. For many people, they are the same thing anyway. Democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy seems unimaginable to many. It sounds synonymous. This…
