Gravity, Grace and Love

  But already my desire and my will Were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed, By the love which moves the sun and the other stars. – Dante Nietzsche said, “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”  In his reasoning between love, life and madness he finds his resolution : to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. Simone Weil (1909-1943), the renowned French philosopher and activist with outstanding intellectual gifts describes the essence of love in Gravity and Grace :

Continue Reading

A Life Truly Lived

Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us and take with us when we depart. Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), in her pioneering work with patients nearing the end of their lives in palliative care, interviewed them on their feelings about life and death, and how they measure the life they lived.  The results of her work proclaim that the patients unanimously express their emotional state as  “yearning for love,”  a shield needed against the fear of death, and the measure of the degree of inner peace and contentment they savor at the end of their life

Continue Reading

Paying Homage to Leonardo da Vinci 500 Years After His Passing

    “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”  The great Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) –timeless artist, engineer, architect, mathematician, and scientist, with profound knowledge in everything from anatomy and optics to physics to light –is commemorated at the Louvre Museum for the fifth centenary of his death. In his quest to understand the relation between the physical and the metaphysical, he spent a lifetime studying the human being and its place in the universe. His brave creativity, endless genius, and artistic talents arching far beyond the perceptual and scientific realities of

Continue Reading

Atelier des Lumières: A Special Journey to Van Gogh’s Masterpieces

It is an extraordinary exhibition where there is no museum, there are no solid paintings and yet it is a feast for all the senses and for the soul.  Vincent Van Gogh’s (1853-1890) genius brushworks become alive in a mesmerizing movement of images, colors, light and sound. The irises, sunflowers, olive groves, haystacks, his self-portrait and more, are all projected for 30 minutes on a surface of 3300m², covering all over from the floor across the walls and up to the ceiling 10 meters high. It is an exhilarating experience. The “multisensory” digital art exhibition plunges one into a world

Continue Reading

Siri Hustvedt on the Creative Impulse and the Meaning of Life

    Siri Hustvedt, the prizewinning writer and scholar, describes the meaning of life in her vigor for work, the joy she finds in the creative impulse and the urgency to write driven by it. She recounts her life being a woman writer in men’s world, married to the well-known writer Paul Auster and describes her remedies to overcome the challenges of the “writing self”. Her deep knowledge of psychoanalysis, art and neuroscience is woven in her stories where the human condition is playing up real and tangible. She insightfully draws answers to the question “what are we ?” Here

Continue Reading

Why We Make Art

  Victor Hugo, the irreplaceable writer reflects on his life and works “ For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song…but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. “ And that renders the abundant creative power of the writer as reflected in the invaluable and timeless works of Victor Hugo. His insightful saying “ a writer is a world trapped in a person ”  is beautifully captured in Auguste Rodin’s sculpture. From writing, sculpture, and painting to the enchantment of

Continue Reading

Dancing Keeps Us Happy

  In the dance, one finds the cinema, the comic strips, the Olympic hundred meters and swimming, and what’s more: poetry, love and tenderness, said Maurice Bejart, the exceptional choreographer, opera director and dancer. Long before neuroscience confirmed that our brains are wired to move along with music, dancing was there. Babies, children, and adults, all instinctively move to the rhythm of the music. Based on recent cognitive research, it seems like human beings are universally synchronized with the chords of music. Moreover, the rhythmic movement lifts our mood, regulates the mental and emotional fluctuations, and we become happier. Such

Continue Reading

Intelligent Life of Plants

How the intelligence of the trees is measured and what it means for maintaining our life on earth Plants are sentient beings which have emotions, who feel the pain when damaged, enjoy Mozart, can respond to unspoken thoughts of humans and more. Cleve Backster, a former intelligence agent, best known for his experiments with plants using a polygraph (lie detector) instrument in the 1960s long before science has discovered the intelligence of plants capable of cognition, learning, memory and communication. He hooked up the galvanometer of the polygraph instrument to his house plant and to his astonishment, he found that

Continue Reading

Site Footer