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Man with powers by Andre Platteel , September 23rd

We drive away in the early evening, just at that moment when darkness suddenly descends, and trees shift from producing oxygen to producing carbon. Quite a long drive through the woods; not really a road, just layers of broken branches, crushed leaves and dried mud. The outside air slips through the window, bringing the nearby sea into the car. The driver asks the usual questions I have become accustomed to over the last month: Where are you from? How long have you been here? Where are you going? For the people who live here, the questions are a way to get an idea of who you are. I answer quite fully. And I ask him about the candles I can see outside. “People meditating, using candles to keep away the bad spirits hidden in the trees.” Trees are important. I have seen trees with leaves that tell your future; I have seen trees with little dead babies wrapped in cloth hung on thick branches like exotic fruits; I have seen little black trees, home for thousands of bats, trees that look death and naked at night. The longer we drive the more silent it becomes. The driver keeps asking questions, but it is as if the darkness takes away his words. It becomes more and more difficult to understand him. He loses words, blanks develop, and soon he’s little more than a moving mouth creating soft waves of air. Weeks ago, I met a friend of a nephew of the driver. He told me that if I should visit this area, I had to contact him. He wanted to bring me in contact with a “man with powers”. And that is about to happen. The car stops. The house has no roof, just walls made of white stone. Naked walls, apart from a poster of a Buddha with the head of a bald, smiling baby. Stars and moon seem to be within reaching distance, like low hanging fruit. The couch is covered with plastic. I sit down, sparking a sound that lasts longer than the action of sitting itself. I am offered a cookie: two layers of cake with a soft pink filling. My teeth are dancing. He wears a sarong – quite colourful, purple and gold – and a simple white shirt. His belly is big, yet he is quite tall and slim. His eyes are dark with the expression of a young boy: naughty, excited, sparkling. He doesn’t say a word; he communicates by laughing. He pours tea and looks at me, laughing. He shows me the box of cookies again, and laughs. I do not dare to refuse, my teeth offered another bite. Long moments of silence don’t seem to feel odd to him. + more We drive away in the early evening, just at that moment when darkness suddenly descends, and trees shift from producing oxygen to producing carbon. Quite a long drive through the woods; not really a road, just layers of broken branches, crushed leaves and dried mud. The outside air slips through the window, bringing the nearby sea into the car. The driver asks the usual questions I have become accustomed to over the last month: Where are you from? How long have you been here? Where are you going? For the people who live here, the questions are a way to get an idea of who you are. I answer quite fully. And I ask him about the candles I can see outside. “People meditating, using candles to keep away the bad spirits hidden in the trees.” Trees are important. I have seen trees with leaves that tell your future; I have seen trees with little dead babies wrapped in cloth hung on thick branches like exotic fruits; I have seen little black trees, home for thousands of bats, trees that look death and naked at night. The longer we drive the more silent it becomes. The driver keeps asking questions, but it is as if the darkness takes away his words. It becomes more and more difficult to understand him. He loses words, blanks develop, and soon he’s little more than a moving mouth creating soft waves of air. Weeks ago, I met a friend of a nephew of the driver. He told me that if I should visit this area, I had to contact him. He wanted to bring me in contact with a “man with powers”. And that is about to happen. The car stops. The house has no roof, just walls made of white stone. Naked walls, apart from a poster of a Buddha with the head of a bald, smiling baby. Stars and moon seem to be within reaching distance, like low hanging fruit. The couch is covered with plastic. I sit down, sparking a sound that lasts longer than the action of sitting itself. I am offered a cookie: two layers of cake with a soft pink filling. My teeth are dancing. He wears a sarong – quite colourful, purple and gold – and a simple white shirt. His belly is big, yet he is quite tall and slim. His eyes are dark with the expression of a young boy: naughty, excited, sparkling. He doesn’t say a word; he communicates by laughing. He pours tea and looks at me, laughing. He shows me the box of cookies again, and laughs. I do not dare to refuse, my teeth offered another bite. Long moments of silence don’t seem to feel odd to him. Suddenly he goes to another room and comes back with what was once a green hairbrush. He shows me how to use a knife, and how to defend against a knife attack. His body is low to the ground, feet moving quickly; he maintains a perfect balance despite fast-changing positions. He holds the hairbrush in one hand and his other hand close, ready to create extra power or to defend a counterattack. He puts away the hairbrush and asks me to come to him, laughing and waving with his hand, just like a young kid who wants his friends to join him, yet is too shy to ask. “He wants you to come to him.” My driver seems to have found his words again, spoiling the moment; he has joined us silently, sitting in a dark corner of the room. “He will check and heal your body, if you want.” I walk up to the man, leaving a few inches between us. He has his eyes closed and he asks me to do the same, striking his covered left eye while smiling. Although my eyes are closed, I see his hand following the shape of my body, sometimes freezing; he is feeling the warmth and energy of my organs, his hands sensitive scanners. He grabs my hand with both of his; I feel a strong energy invading me. He whispers sounds and blows on top of my head. Silence. He hits my shoulder softly; I open my eyes. He writes something in the air with his finger, close to my heart. He nods his head and looks into my eyes. Liberation is starring into my face. I fly. Now I know that I know how Jesus could walk on water. “The words he wrote will protect you,” the driver says. “If, for example, someone wants to hurt you with knife, the knife cannot touch you.” It all feels very reassuring. The ‘man with powers’, laughing face and big belly, needs to go. “There is a Muslim celebration in a place two hours’ drive from where we are,” my driver says, explaining the sudden hurry. I am a bit confused. “Is he a Muslim?” I ask. “Yes, in this part many Muslims live. They come from Java, which is just an hour by boot from here.” ‘Man with powers’ asks my driver what we are talking about. Then he speaks to me, a couple of words, then laughs and leaves. My driver wants to translate, but ‘man with powers’ has planted his words directly into my system: What appears to be two and different must be one. - less tagged:   difference   oneness   master   darkness   trees   Muslim    permalink  read: 6385  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: André Platteel

Oneness is never the same by Andre Platteel , November 29th

I have to wait for transport. Around here, waiting for transport can take hours. So I try to get rid of the feeling of ‘waiting.’ At a certain point I need to go to the toilet. I find it behind a small square building with no doors. Instead of a water tank, the toilet has a straight pipe that goes into a beautiful river that I can see through the broken wooden floor. Walking back I come a cross a strange object: an installation made out of various materials that were probably found by the road or in one of the dumps that are on almost every corner, including next to the most beautiful Roman, Greek and Ottoman remains. The installation has been created from various objects made from metal, wood, wire and stone. I have no idea what the purpose of this installation is. In a museum it could easily be the creation of a Dadaist, but here I doubt that it has been made from an artistic perspective. Although the object has many pieces that seem to have been picked at random, the object feels coherent, which makes it feel like one piece: as if the combined materials have begun a second, new life. It must be about ten years ago that I was invited to give a presentation at the Arthur Andersen training centre near Chicago. When I arrived it was obvious that I didn’t conform to the Arthur Andersen dress code – and my haircut was way out of line. Every man there wore a dark blue suit, a dark tie and black shoes. I wasn’t. Every man wore his hair short; mine was quite long. Because of this, the conference organizer advised me to stop by a tailor and get a haircut. Easy: both shops were part of the Arthur Andersen compound. At the barbershop, the barber didn’t ask what I wanted, so I asked him how he would cut my hair. He smiled, walked back to a desk, opened a drawer and took out a sketch of a man who looked just like the many men I had already encountered at the centre. In the middle of my house there’s a big table, about four metres long. It has many chairs around it, which I have collected over the years. Most of the chairs don’t match. But you can sit on all of them. And all the chairs are recognizably chairs because in some way they reflect the concept we have created of what a chair is all about. + more I have to wait for transport. Around here, waiting for transport can take hours. So I try to get rid of the feeling of ‘waiting.’ At a certain point I need to go to the toilet. I find it behind a small square building with no doors. Instead of a water tank, the toilet has a straight pipe that goes into a beautiful river that I can see through the broken wooden floor. Walking back I come a cross a strange object: an installation made out of various materials that were probably found by the road or in one of the dumps that are on almost every corner, including next to the most beautiful Roman, Greek and Ottoman remains. The installation has been created from various objects made from metal, wood, wire and stone. I have no idea what the purpose of this installation is. In a museum it could easily be the creation of a Dadaist, but here I doubt that it has been made from an artistic perspective. Although the object has many pieces that seem to have been picked at random, the object feels coherent, which makes it feel like one piece: as if the combined materials have begun a second, new life. It must be about ten years ago that I was invited to give a presentation at the Arthur Andersen training centre near Chicago. When I arrived it was obvious that I didn’t conform to the Arthur Andersen dress code – and my haircut was way out of line. Every man there wore a dark blue suit, a dark tie and black shoes. I wasn’t. Every man wore his hair short; mine was quite long. Because of this, the conference organizer advised me to stop by a tailor and get a haircut. Easy: both shops were part of the Arthur Andersen compound. At the barbershop, the barber didn’t ask what I wanted, so I asked him how he would cut my hair. He smiled, walked back to a desk, opened a drawer and took out a sketch of a man who looked just like the many men I had already encountered at the centre. In the middle of my house there’s a big table, about four metres long. It has many chairs around it, which I have collected over the years. Most of the chairs don’t match. But you can sit on all of them. And all the chairs are recognizably chairs because in some way they reflect the concept we have created of what a chair is all about. The experience of being all connected creates a feeling of Oneness, ‘all’ being the source of what you can call consciousness, or the divine, or whatever you want to call it. Life? The feeling of Oneness cannot be seen (yet), but can be sensed, somehow. When silent, you can depict it. Most of the time we try to create what we think must be Oneness. Being one can feel strong, as I saw at Arthur Andersen. But this created oneness is not the same as Oneness. At Arthur Andersen, every individual man was modelled as if they were all one and the same, without doing justice to the differences in form and qualities that makes each of us unique (and at the same time One). The underlying longing to create a group that feels ‘one’ actually leads to the opposite of Oneness. It creates a stark division; us and them. And it’s a paradox that is not only found within business communities but also in spiritual communities and social communities – despite the individual's longing to be different somehow, especially and also within the community. I find it very difficult to exemplify the idea that we are unique and One at the same time. Usually, we either look for differences (first) or look for similarities (to conclude). The different chairs in my house, for example, are clearly all chairs. That’s easy to see. Yet we generalize, précis and create a common idea that excludes the differences all chairs have. We ignore what we see and make a mental projection: ‘This is a chair.’ What I liked about the installation near the tank-less toilet was the fact that it demonstrated difference and oneness at the same time. An almost naïve illustration of both, simultaneously. And it did something else to me: it showed me that a thing has different meanings in different moments. Once I have really seen something and understood its simultaneous uniqueness (its difference to something else) and Oneness, this does not mean that it is still the same the next time I see it. Oneness is never the same. - less tagged:   understanding   consciousness   oneness   life   spiritual   business   community    permalink  read: 4047  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: André Platteel

Where the heart is by Andre Platteel , November 27th

As I sit in the back of the four-wheel drive and look down through the window, everything looks upside down. Things I usually look up to see are now far below me: houses and mountain roads are all down there. The only other time I have been this high is in a plane. The boat that was to bring us back didn’t go. Why is not clear and, at this moment, almost on top of a 1600-meter-high mountain, no longer relevant. We have decided to take the mountain road instead, a seven-hour trip through an astonishing, empty landscape. Our driver has never driven this road before. This road is the reason people use the boat. It’s a road that isn’t really a road, more a surface of dirt and mud barely wide enough for a car. It’s raining outside. We drive slowly, slipping and sliding. The driver tries to reassure us, telling us he’s concentrating to the full – he wants to see his wife and children again. But somehow his words do not reassure me. How close do you have to get the edge of the cliff before you decide to jump and test the powers of gravity? The road’s height and narrowness play an interesting game with my mind. The road is just wide enough to hold the car, but for some reason I begin to doubt the solidity of the mountain itself – will the mud and stones hold us? And although I am sitting on a solid seat, I also begin to doubt the solidity of the car: what if it suddenly decides to grow? Then another question starts to bug me: Why do mountain roads always go so high? One of the reasons becomes visible after we make a sharp turn: the rain has moved on from this side of the mountain and the view is unbelievable: I see a huge lake with five rivers entering and leaving. Various dams form ‘compartments’ that control the flow of water. The rivers come down the mountain into the lake then leave it again to continue their journey, to discover the land. The image resonates with my picture of the human heart: blood from different veins and information from different cells flowing into the heart, welcomed within the different chambers of the heart. Blood and information brought together, momentarily becoming one then immediately leaving as separate flows once again. The heart – the organ that welcomes differences – both brings together essence and accepts that this essence will leave again via different, separate routes. + more As I sit in the back of the four-wheel drive and look down through the window, everything looks upside down. Things I usually look up to see are now far below me: houses and mountain roads are all down there. The only other time I have been this high is in a plane. The boat that was to bring us back didn’t go. Why is not clear and, at this moment, almost on top of a 1600-meter-high mountain, no longer relevant. We have decided to take the mountain road instead, a seven-hour trip through an astonishing, empty landscape. Our driver has never driven this road before. This road is the reason people use the boat. It’s a road that isn’t really a road, more a surface of dirt and mud barely wide enough for a car. It’s raining outside. We drive slowly, slipping and sliding. The driver tries to reassure us, telling us he’s concentrating to the full – he wants to see his wife and children again. But somehow his words do not reassure me. How close do you have to get the edge of the cliff before you decide to jump and test the powers of gravity? The road’s height and narrowness play an interesting game with my mind. The road is just wide enough to hold the car, but for some reason I begin to doubt the solidity of the mountain itself – will the mud and stones hold us? And although I am sitting on a solid seat, I also begin to doubt the solidity of the car: what if it suddenly decides to grow? Then another question starts to bug me: Why do mountain roads always go so high? One of the reasons becomes visible after we make a sharp turn: the rain has moved on from this side of the mountain and the view is unbelievable: I see a huge lake with five rivers entering and leaving. Various dams form ‘compartments’ that control the flow of water. The rivers come down the mountain into the lake then leave it again to continue their journey, to discover the land. The image resonates with my picture of the human heart: blood from different veins and information from different cells flowing into the heart, welcomed within the different chambers of the heart. Blood and information brought together, momentarily becoming one then immediately leaving as separate flows once again. The heart – the organ that welcomes differences – both brings together essence and accepts that this essence will leave again via different, separate routes. I don’t know if this image of the heart does it justice biologically, but it does justice to the way my heart feels. When open, my heart is an instrument to receive information from the world, information that comes from different sources, different people all expressing their uniqueness in their own way. At the same time – and inspired by consciousness – the heart sees the unity within these differences. Yet in seeing unity, the heart does not attempt to make all things one, it simply accepts the expression of Oneness within the differences. As we drive further I see that one river is drying up. A bit further still and more inland, another of the other rivers is also drying up. Yet it seems as if the first river is trying to help the second: it has divided itself and appears to be trying to reach the same place that the other river is trying to reach. But thanks to all this splitting and dividing, both streams of water have become weak. The translator tells me that one of the dams in no longer functioning. This sends my thinking, or is it my heart (a doctor recently told me that in the process of thinking, there is more activity in the heart than in the brain), off in a new direction: What if the heart is unable to bring back the flow released by one of its chambers and cannot create unity in the first place? - less tagged:   heart   flow   fear   wholeness   oneness   consciousness   body   river   unity    permalink  read: 5194  print  forward  comments: 1  add comment      name:  Frank F., November 30th • Is my hearth the centre of my thinking?

Photo: André Platteel

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June, 2010 Dutch Political Leaders Receive book Our World		May, 2010 Resistance Decadence New Book: Our World		April, 2010 Arrogance Naivety Ignorance		June, 2009 Mother of all memories
May, 2009 Come again, and again, and again		April, 2009 The Wolf		March, 2009 The three voices		January, 2009 Born to adore This Dancing with the Beloved
December, 2008 Listen carefully		October, 2008 A fragment of a circle God’s Gods You, me and everything else		September, 2008 Man with powers		August, 2008 The hidden promise Crazy for love
May, 2008 Dr. Feelgood What’s the limit of love		April, 2008 Spring Snow will fall The Cleaner		March, 2008 Motherless Child What I am made of Falling upwards Northern Lights		February, 2008 Glass-made-mind The outer layer of the mind Growing younger On Holy Ground
January, 2008 Watch for the wind to blow How is Diego Maradona doing? What are we guilty off? Everything is what is besides language The eagle and the condor flying together In the heart of Otherness		December, 2007 The man who loved too much The dark brightness The windmills of our mind To make two mountains one, gone Bigger than the stars		November, 2007 Act of passion Making love Life has no meaning Where the heart is Oneness is never the same		October, 2007 Mind blowing Becoming authentic Coloured Mind Hide and Seek Culture of fear The man on the bench The Swordsman
September, 2007 What is thinking? World happening Unity in diversity Smell no evil Going in all directions without beginning or end Alternative routes Superheroes don’t age No place like Utopia? Fog		August, 2007 The Wholeness of being Spirit through matter Looking in the mirror A new heart Is matter what matters? World of opinions. Spaciousness for a flower to grow