reinhardschleining

Reinhard Schleining is a writer and illustrator, born in Vienna where he studied Psychology and Fine Art. Since 1999 he's living and working in London.


    His work revolves primarily around the writing of fiction (with the occasional narrative illustration as a ‘result’) – a format of ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’ that he successfully uses to convey ‘higher truths’, or in other words, knowledge of a more secret, ancient and esoteric kind. However, his images and writings are firmly relying on an upright tradition of craftsmanship and can thus be deciphered – or ‘read’ – by people from all walks of life, however naturally diversified they may be owing to their different backgrounds, education and / or initiation.



2. BACKGROUND


He started to read up everything he could get hold of about esoteric, the supernormal and magic when he was about 13. He soon discovered that from all those teachings, Astrology and Psychology seemed to be most upright and ‘professional’. While the supernatural can be almost taken for granted, isn’t ‘esoteric’ really, and is permeating everything around us anyway (with so-called ‘supernatural abilities’ being inherent to the human body), most reading material that is obtainable by the general public about spiritual teachings, yoga and the like, in comparison seemed rather crooked and in a way a bit ‘silly’. He back then already understood that cultivation matters and anything related to ‘truth’ in terms of true human history and true understanding of human body (not unlike present-day behind-the scenes political frameworks) aren’t something that can be acquired easily or casually, but are rather only to be imparted or given to whoever higher levels of heaven feel is ‘deserving’. His eventual accomplishments of understanding the ancient mystery of Astrology alongside present-day mechanics of Human Psychology are far-reaching and profound.
    Later in his teens, he got more and more involved in the Psychology and Esoteric scene flourishing in Vienna, that although being fairly advanced, for the most part is being kept secret and low-key. At about the same time, after failing to pursue a career in music (composition and piano), he began to write and to draw. He took psychology and art history at university and eventually graduated with a degree in Digital Media Art with Prof. Peter Weibel and Valie Export. 

3. WORK



a. Creative Industries

Through a career in the creative industries (designer, animator, art director, creative director) that lead him from Vienna to London for the post as a senior lecturer, he grasped the essentials of communication in a sophisticated environment such as London’s creative scene. He pitched an illustration portfolio that soon found him a home with top-notch illustration agency Synergy, leading to commissions for 125 magazine, The New Yorker, TimeOut London, Oxford University Press, Coca Cola or Halifax. His design, video and animation work, meanwhile, brought him clients such as Nike, Mother, Issey Miyake, ITV, MTV, Viva, ARD or Henkel.
    While seemingly raising his status and credentials, he soon discovered that behind all of those commissions were workings unbeknownst to the general public and that the more he ‘knew’ about present-day reality, the fewer those commissions appeared to be handed out to him.
    It was during this time that a series of cartoons strips have seen the light that attempt to pin-point our tragic human condition and day-to-day strive with surreal, psychologically lacerating humour: Still Life, published as a prestigious signed print-edition or for free reading at Berlin based electrocomics.
    As he found increasingly more trouble while rolling out his more personal, spiritually tinged elements of work, up to the point that in the end all available doors had been shut (and even his agency sadly had to ‘let im go’), he was finally left to pursue his future mission in free fall and entirely left on his own devices.


b. Publishing

One of the key projects Reinhard Schleining set up was a publishing house called draft. Conceptually a media enterprise based in London with English as its core language, it was to be the only media outlet left in today’s world that could honestly claim to still be completely and utterly ‘free’. It was meant to serve as an umbrella for all the future publishing ventures that he was now to undertake. 
    Its flagship publication, draft magazine – love, life, culture, reality, was a literary magazine targeting a market of free-thinking individuals who’ve managed to ‘see through’ the endless stream of lies churned out day-after-day. It had Cultivation at its core, meaning, issues that were otherwise not at all readily available. Like mentioned above, most publications on that subject that are available to the public are either vague, misleading or outright crooked. Any Cultivation Secrets, given the gravity of their subject matter (the  true history of mankind, the successful cultivation of the Elixir of Immortality, or in other words, the successful ‘enlightenment’ and ‘getting out of this place’ the ‘elevation of one’s being’ were traditionally only passed down orally). If anything written was to be ‘allowed’ to be passed on, it was only metaphorically or philosophically done so, with any of the true meanings behind the words only accessible to the already quite initiated. 
    It was eventually through his own cultivation of Falun Dafa (Chinese for ‘ The Law Wheel Great Law’) that Reinhard Schleining felt the need and the urgency to make public a lot of these otherwise secret or at the very least ‘invisible’ cultivation secrets. The draft magazine project establishes such a unique portal, using writing and art, the true Gnostic tradition of ‘putting knowledge to paper’, to pave a way for the future, where people can have access to such otherwise very secret things. It is also setup for future cultivators (or if not quite cultivators, at least Gnostic thinkers) to share and exchange angles and views about their experiences, insights and worldviews.

Another milestone on the Esoteric topic is The Language of Growth – a canon for systemic astrology. Combining the entire body of knowledge of the so-called ‘Royal Science’ that is Astrology with knowledge of Western Psychology has resulted in a concise and powerful tool to learn and utilize the language of cosmic bodies in order to understand oneself and reality on  higher level. It even goes so far as to build a bridge to true cultivation disciplines that are higher (and following laws outside of the Three Realms represented by our Solar System) – the Eastern Schools of Buddha and Dao cultivation.


c. Books

Apart from one book  – Systemics, a book containing a critical analysis of present-day worldly matters, using a humorous cocktail of upright psychology and common-sense philosophy, his other works can primarily considered to be pieces of ‘art’. In terms of books, they’re so far as follows:

    – The Destruction of Matrix – a dismantling exorcise. This is a little booklet using the form of poetry to dismantle Neuro Linguistic script injunctions from the ‘system’ aka the ‘matrix’ and setting them harshly against sweet pieces of common-sense narratives that take up the metaphor of children playing in a sandbox.

    – Love Etc – 7 fictional angles. This has already become a classic in its own right. With an eye-catching cover (whose original drawing now resides with a Swiss art collector), many people from the so-called ‘younger generation’ cherish the psychological insights about relationships and sexual attraction that can be obtained through these 7 fictional short pieces. Knowledge of psychology about the eternal male / female struggle about who’s right and wrong is extremely difficult to find and zealously guarded by the ‘powers at large’. “Funny for those who know. Scary for those who don’t”, as this book is pitched on some of its ads. Its contents is scary indeed for anyone merely following emotional responses while believing themselves to be totally free and self-willing.

    – Nanoboy – a movie. This is one attempt to draw people’s attention to the fact that fiction contained within ‘motion pictures’ have still been, in a traditional sense, ‘written’. It uses the format of screenplay to tell a tale about a boy who’s more-or-less autistic but finding himself, while on the surface following pursuits that are essentially ‘evil’, to be chosen to attain enlightenment and serve as a ‘saviour’ figure. There are lots of piss-take references to Hollywood’s emotional conditioning and hilarious special-fx bonanzas between the lines.

    – Virginizer – a novel. Eventually, the first novel did indeed happen. It was bound to. From various novel projects that make their ways in and out of the writer’s desk drawers, this present story succeeded into a finished product first. It is about a guy who suddenly finds himself with a peculiar supernatural ability that catapults him to the life-style echelons of stardom, only to crash into oblivion through the curses that inevitably go with fame.

    – Grausamen & Liebreizer – 30 gute nackgeschichten. It’s a work from his Austrian teenage ‘Sturm & Drang’ period, in German, re-edited and compiled into a neat book project. Crazy and dark but not to be taken too seriously.

    – More Love – 6 fictional angles plus bonus track. It is considered to be a kind of ‘second part’ of Love Etc, since there are again short fiction pieces put together into a concise compilation, and again, they highlight psychological ‘truths’ about ‘love’. While Love Etc was already looking at the mechanics behind love and attraction from a fairly high level, this time around the bar has been raised ever more. It is finally leading to a key-essay about human sexuality in the book’s middle section (the book’s so-called ‘bonus track’) whose knowledge and rationale cannot be found anywhere in the public realm. And an inconspicuous short-story at the end (Republic is Wrong), raising the question of whether the present setup of this cycle of mankind, culminating in a ‘world republic’ under the leadership of ‘goddess liberty’, is not altogether a flawed divine setup, destroying itself from inside out against the friction of one single guy representing ‘truth’. It will certainly take a while for people to realise the sheer enormity of worldly repercussions that may be unleashed through this book (Which also applies to the content of draft magazine, obviously). 



4. THEMES


Like a red thread really, there is always the Mystery of the Female lurking behind most of the topics Reinhard Schleining is dealing with. Yes, ancient cultivation matters and the original tradition of writing and art are a backbone of his work, to be sure. And yes, he keeps relying on professional Western psychology and Greek approaches to philosophy in order to give his works the solid footing and the necessary scholarly appeal to withstand even the fiercest scrutiny. And yes, a great deal of Humour is often used to ‘soften’ the gravity of the topics that are put on the plate.
    But the bottom line is that serious cultivation of Buddhahood and Dao lies at its very core. So a severe challenge of prevailing Belief Systems is almost inevitable. And of course, with issues that are our innermost and sensitive, like for instance intimacy, sexuality, power and seduction, ‘natural’ defense shields make it impossible for some people to even ‘look’ at his work, let along examine and acknowledge it. A problem which isn’t helped by the fact that matters of ‘persecution’, which is also a topic which draft magazine keeps exposing, aren’t in fact limited to China alone where Falun Gong is clamped down and persecuted with the most despicable means of all times and all lands – but that the problem of persecution is actually a global one (and ultimately coming from an unspeakably high level, at that).
    So, presented with work such as this, a Schism is bound to happen between a faction that is open, acknowledging and supportive, and a faction that is attempting to sabotage anything related to it by all means. Rational thinkers welcome his work as a refreshing input to a decaying Western culture that is presently flooded incessantly with bullshit of laughable depravity. While all those people who’re still currying favours with the ‘powers at large’, (or the so-called ‘Party’), will try everything to boycot, slander and undermine it. Simply ignoring it, as it used to be the case, will become increasingly difficult. 



5. INTERESTS


Because the true, upright traditions bear such an enormous fascination for him (he also still persists in studying, as a hobby, the pianistic challenges presented by traditional composers such as Liszt, Chopin and Bach), more recently, Reinhard Schleining has focused on the importance of ‘shading’ or actual ‘painting’ in his illustration based works (rather than feeling content with merely colouring-up drawn structure quickly on the computer). He looked into various traditional painting techniques and understood that most of them have been truly lost. It appears that Tizian and Giorgione were the real ‘masters’ of painting, insofar as they used oil paint and canvas to pretty much ‘sculpt’ imagery out of nowhere, in much the same way as Michelangelo would carve out a Madonna from the piece of marble where he ‘found’ her to be already there. 

Apart from continuous philosophical contemplations about the structural setup of present-day society, as well as any cultivation related topics, more and more ‘personal issues’ are dealt with in his work. Most prominently, there is a seeming ‘obsession’ with the purity of (young) girls. His view is that most of today’s women (and of course also men, only in different ways) have been utterly deceived. (He extensively expounds on this in all of his work). So while most of the things that they do and think about are based on deceptive ‘lies’, as a result many women who consider themselves to be ‘liberated’ have actually turned into caricatures and stereotypes – not even of their real selves, but merely of who a modern woman is supposed to be. They have sadly lost the mellow innocence and genuine purity that they once had had as a girl. Seen from the vantage point of psychology, this already is quite a warped way of self-percption. Yet viewed from even higher levels, such a distortion of their own, self-inflicted reality becomes actually a very grave matter.
    
Another one of his recent interests is the topic of numismatics as a tool to re-establish true values and true human exchanges. His website double-phoenix has been designed to draw attention from like-minded people and encourages to take part and share their views. It enormously challenges prevailing notions of trade by actually suggesting that in fact barter-based transactions – not profit- or leverage-based transactions – form the true fundamentals of human exchange. For example, so-called ‘legal tender’ paper-money is in fact also just another ‘object’ which can be exchanged into whatever someone else agrees on. True, a bank would dedicate for it a certain value and that value, expressed in currency and numbers, happens to be legally binding. But so do we. The basis of any business is an exchange rate agreed on between two parties for whatever they presently exchange and from that point onwards, everyone has to live with this agreed exchange rate until it is exchanged again. 


summer 2016