Seeing the Grand Canyon
Perception = Projection
Each of us carries in himself the Image of his own world, his Imago mundi, and projects it into a more or less coherent universe, which becomes the stage on which his destiny is played out. He may not be conscious of it . . . Henry Corbin: Avicenna and the Visionary Recital
I was on a road trip with my wife Gloria in June, 2000 to visit the Grand Canyon and other nearby National Parks. We assumed there would be plenty of places to stay overnight near the Grand Canyon's rim because of it being such a popular vacation destination, but we didn’t realize there were three Rim locations for visitors who wanted to see the famous Park: the North, South and West Rims. The North Rim was closest to us after our visit to Zion National Park, so of course the North Rim had become our next destination.
When we got to Jacob Lake, Arizona, which is a 30 miles drive from the Grand Canyon's North Rim, we found that all the motels were fully booked. It was late in the afternoon so we drove on toward the Park in hopes of finding a motel along the way. The drive was essentially through a beautiful meadow, with no commercial development. Experientially it was a relaxed, meditative preludial drive to the relatively rustic North Rim Park. We felt anxious, however, because night was rapidly approaching and we had no place to stay overnight. Would the Park Lodge have any openings?
When we arrived at the North Rim's Visitors Lodge, we immediately went to the reservations office. There was a long line of people checking in. When we finally were able to talk with the man at the reservations desk he told us there were no available rooms, that reservations were made a year in advance, that cancellations were unusual, and that they didn’t have a waiting list--the only thing we could do was check back with him from time to time to see if any cancellations were called in.
Just as he was finishing telling us this, the phone rang . . . a couple had just canceled their room for the night . . . and we were permitted to fill the vacancy!
After checking in we walked out onto the Lodge Terrace for our first view of the Grand Canyon. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the canyon, its vastness, its soft colors. The late afternoon light filled the canyon’s misty space with a gentle, intimate, mysterious golden luminous presence. The subtle colors in the layered canyon walls gently separated from the earthy dark browns and grays; the colors appeared to be floating in suspension toward me in slow motion. I felt very close to the canyon's vast space, its graceful gem-like beauty. And, as so often happens when I encounter the sacred, tears began to swell in my eyes. My heart had opened.
After checking in we walked out onto the Lodge Terrace for our first view of the Grand Canyon. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the canyon, its vastness, its soft colors. The late afternoon light filled the canyon’s misty space with a gentle, intimate, mysterious golden luminous presence. The subtle colors in the layered canyon walls gently separated from the earthy dark browns and grays; the colors appeared to be floating in suspension toward me in slow motion. I felt very close to the canyon's vast space, its graceful gem-like beauty. And, as so often happens when I encounter the sacred, tears began to swell in my eyes. My heart had opened.
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The next morning we drove along the edge of the North Rim. At the first stop area we parked the car and looked out over the rim's edge into the vast space of the Canyon. We saw three different thunder storms over the Canyon, and each one had it’s own rainbow! In the Hindu tradition, rainbows are very auspicious signs of the presence of the sacred.
At the next stop we were able to walk out onto a long narrow viewing point. When I arrived at the point I felt as if I was in the center of the canyon. As I tried to comprehend the vastness of the space before me and around me and above me and below me I noticed the wind blowing into my left ear in a rhythmic pulsating manner. This seemed to initiate in me an awareness of some kind of gradual shift in my consciousness that was unfolding.
Slowly my whole being became pervaded with a deep sense of stillness. I could hear children playing and laughing in the parking lot behind me, and yet I felt enveloped in a profoundly deep palpable presence of silence. Time seemed to be slowing down to a halt. My visual perception began to contract until it was reduced to what seemed to me a highly concentrated point.
A wedge of luminous imagery was being projected out from within me--from within that point of conscious awareness--onto something in front of me that was like an unfathomably large screen. I was the projector, and I was the screen receiving the projected imagery; I was the point of origin of the image, and I was the vast space expanding ever wider and deeper within me, a space so vast my mind couldn't comprehend it. I had become the seer and the seen, the projector and the scene . . . simultaneously.
I was seeing brilliant, astounding images of the Grand Canyon, and yet I was aware that the images were coming from me, from inside myself projected out onto a "screen." It felt like I was experiencing the very center of All Space; the very center of my own Heart.
Gradually, I began to sense the pulsation of the wind again in my ear; at first I was aware of being in a state of total openness and expansion, and yet I was beginning to feel a process of contraction happening to me. Gradually this extraordinary mode of perception--which was more like a mode of being--dissolved slowly away until I finally retuned nearly “to my senses.” Time seemed to running again pretty much at its usual pace.
But my "heart" remained open for several hours after I returned to the car. The experience had transformed me, expanded me in a way I had never experienced before. I was overflowing with awe and wonder. The experience had shaken me to my core; I felt as if my whole being had been turned inside out. Every time I tried to talk about my experience with Gloria I would start sobbing. I felt overwhelmed with love for the world, for myself and Gloria and my children . . . and for something I had no words for.
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That night, before going to sleep, I reread--as I often did in those days--a few paragraphs from the recent monthly set of lessons I had received from Ram Butler and the Siddha Yoga Correspondence Course. Each month Ram would write a 10-12 page essay focusing on a particular theme related to the Yogic scriptures and the Siddha Yoga teachings. Gloria and I had been practicing Siddha Yoga since 1987, when we first met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and received Shaktipat Initiation from her. (See part 1 of my project Photography and Yoga).
In June, 2000 I received Ram Butler's Volume 6, Lessons 15/16 which focused on the themes of perception, the mind, the present moment, and the eternal moment. He wrote that when we truly are living in the present eternal moment our hearts are in a state of pure openness; we can observe and hear the things in the outer world, and at the same time we are fully aware of being in a space of absolute stillness and silence. He said, this is an experience of grace, an experience of our own Divine Self.
As I was re-reading this lesson--in our Grand Canyon Lodge room that night--that I had been graced with a direct inner experience of the yogic teachings Ram had written about in the Correspondence Course.
Ram concluded his Volume 6, lesson 15 letter with a quote by Gurumayi which I want to share with you here and which will conclude my essay "Seeing the Grand Canyon." Gurumayi wrote:
The sages, the great beings, and the scriptures all say that we create everything in our own minds, and then we live in the reality that we have created. They say that nothing is really outside us; whatever seems to be outside is our own projection. If we have this understanding, then we know God, we know the Self, we know what we really are.
Baba [Gurumayi's teacher, Swami Muktananda] used to say, "It is your thought that affects the environment, the atmosphere. It is your thought that affects other people." . . .
We should understand that we live in our own reality. We create it for ourselves. The scriptures say that all of nature, all the elements are also the creation of our own minds. The sky, the earth, the air, the mountains, and the rivers are all parts of the mind. They only appear to be outside. . . . the sages go on to explain that if our minds did not exist, then those things would not exist either. As long as our minds are still there, those things exist. Once our minds go, everything else goes too. So what we see outside is our own creation.
What is the mind? The mind is nothing but Consciousness, ultimate reality. There is a great philosophy called the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam, which discusses the recognition of the Self. This philosophy describes how Consciousness has become the mind. In the beginning Consciousness is expanded and without form. Then it gives up its lofty state and condenses into particular forms. It becomes various objects. It also becomes the mind. Everything is the manifestation of that Consciousness, and because Consciousness is not different from the mind, everything is the creation of the mind. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, quoted in Vol. 6, Lesson 15 of the Siddha Yoga Correspondence Course.
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Note: I highly recommend a book entitled The Splendor of Recognition, which is authored by a Siddha Yoga Swami, Swami Shantananda. It consists of his modern-day commentaries on each of the twenty sutras of the ancient yogic text, the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam. For a brief survey of his commentaries on the sutras, see my project: Photography and Yoga, part 3: "Flashing-Forth" - Creation, Perception, and the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam. Click here
Revised 4-14-19
Steven D Foster
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A poet once wrote that contemplation was the necessary first step to writing poetry, and he defined contemplation as the inward seeing of outward things.
When I am out with my camera I photograph on impulse. The exposure is like a gesture of intuitive recognition in that moment. My camera image is then a point of departure, raw material, which I can pass through a series of exploratory, transformative processes in order to discover, “to see” what the initial picture might be wanting to offer me. I try to make myself at the service of the Creative Process, allowing it to do what It needs to do.
Edward Weston has written about “the flame of recognition.” For me the experience of making or seeing a meaningful photograph is like recognizing an image, remembering something I had lost but that had always been inside myself. The photograph seems to represent a “re-union”, a conjoining of matching interior and outward images. This relates to CG Jung's idea of Synchronicity, Alfred Stieglitz's idea of equivalence, the medieval theory of correspondence, and what I have termed the Symbolic Photograph.
Related topics:
The Symbolic Photograph
The Sacred Art Photography Projects
Nature
Sacred Art & Sacred Knowledge
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
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