A Little Bit of Nothingness (Eighty-One Observations on the Unnameable)

The teachings of Karl Renz are a bit like Zen Koans – those short statements that stop the mind’s activity by contemplating their paradoxical meaning. But Karl takes you even further: pondering his words have the power to turn the mind back upon itself, toward our original awareness of being.

A Little Bit of Nothingness is a unique juxtaposition between the dialogues of Karl Renz and the eighty – one verses of the Tao Te Ching. Here, the reality of the Tao – The unnameable, original cause of all that is - has the potential to become evident as our own reality, by the deep insights provided through Karl.

The search for happiness usually takes us on an outward journey where we find ourselves identifying with everything except that which we truly are. What we really need is to taste a little bit of nothingness – the absence of any kind of ideas that we have about ourselves.

No one sees this as well as Karl Renz, the German mystic-artist who, for the last ten years, has travelled around the world pulling the rug out from under our hallowed , leaving us blissfully wanting even less.

‘Realization means that consciousness, which once was identified with an object, becomes boundry-less. It becomes conscious of being consciousness. But the Self is never realized nor not-realized. It is always prior to any ideas about enlightenment or non-enlightenment. Anything you can say about it is an idea.

What is man in his essence? What is the point of VV this whole existence? Is there a deeper meaning behind everything? These are the leading questions that have shaped our culture - religion, philosophy, science, and art - for thousands of years.

In this book we encounter Lao Tsu, a Chinese wise man who lived 2,500 years ago, and Karl Renz, a German artist and mystic of our time. They meet where time and space no longer have any meaning.

Lao Tsu is not a name but a title of honor, which means "The Elder." The transmission says that an old civil servant, who served as an archivist of scriptures, was leaving the empire when he was asked by a border patrol official to write down his realizations. Lao Tsu handed over more than 5,000 Chinese characters and continued on his way westward. The work influenced the governments of several later emperors and received the title Tao Te Ching, which roughly means "the classical book of the meaning of life."

There are many, often contradictory accounts, about Lao Tsu (Laozi) and the origin of the Tao Te Ching (DaodeJing). Equally diverse are the translations and interpretations that have spread across Europe since the nineteenth century. For this book, the German translation of Richard Wilhelm has been referenced, except for a few rare cases in which Rudolf Bachofen's translation was used.

Richard Wilhelm points out in his introduction that the term "Tao" is to be considered more like an "algebraic sign" for something that is fundamentally indefinable and unpronounceable. Tao has also been translated as "God," "the inscrutable," "the way," or as "sense" by Wilhelm Reich. In this book, it is simply referred to as Tao.

The idea to bring together the Tao Te Ching with some of the dialogues of Karl Renz comes from Dietmar Bittrich, the publisher of Das Buch Karl (published in English as The Myth of Enlightenment). In Karl's meetings, which he occasionally calls "Self Talks" or "Performances," he speaks completely spontaneously. Even he says that he doesn't know what speaks through him or what he speaks about. These transcribed recordings only very rarely refer to specific texts of the Tao Te Ching, This is more about an allocation and mutual fertilization of Karl Renz and Lao Tsu.

Karl addresses exactly that dimension of the Tao which is not graspable and usable. The rejection of how we function, in an organized and goal-oriented world, is a central theme that runs through the Tao Te eking, while on quite another level through the talks of Karl Renz.

While Lao Tsu occasionally strives to enlighten the population and the empire through ethical principles, Karl' , talks completely transcend ideas of "good" and "bad." But, as with many differences, they are only apparent. This unique combination darkens and illuminates, confuses and clarifies. One doesn't have to understand anything, but as Karl says, "Something always understands!"