Falling Water
Part 3 : WATER Photographs
Part 3 : WATER Photographs
Introduction
The photographs in this project were made on August 20, 2018. I was unexpectedly invited by my son Shaun, my daughter Jessica and my two grandchildren, Claire and River, to join them for a visit to the Niagara Falls State Park, which is a two hour drive from Rochester, N.Y. Most of the images you will be seeing were made during our Cave of the Winds tour which consists of a series of stairs and platforms that provide varying dramatic views of the Bridal Veil Falls, the Niagara River, and the other surrounding falls and natural wonders within the Niagara Gorge.
Following the presentation of the 16 photographs below, I have written some commentaries on selected images, my experience photographing the Falls, and I'll share with you more of my continuing investigation of Gaston Bachelard's fascinating book Water and Dreams, An Essay On the Imagination of Matter.
WATER Photographs : The Complete Project Titles
Following the presentation of the 16 photographs below, I have written some commentaries on selected images, my experience photographing the Falls, and I'll share with you more of my continuing investigation of Gaston Bachelard's fascinating book Water and Dreams, An Essay On the Imagination of Matter.
WATER Photographs : The Complete Project Titles
Falling Water
Photographs
Photographs
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Image #1 Falling Water
Image #2 Falling Water
Image #3 Falling Water
Image #5 Falling Water
Image #6 Falling Water
Image #7 Falling Water
Image #8 Falling Water
Image #10 Falling Water ~ Symmetrical Photograph
Image #11 Falling Water ~ Symmetrical Photograph
Image #12 Falling Water ~ Symmetrical Photograph
Image #13 Falling Water ~ Symmetrical Photograph
Image #14 Falling Water ~ Symmetrical Photograph
Image #15 Falling Water ~ Symmetrical Photograph
The Supreme Shakti, whose nature is to create,
constantly expresses herself upward
in the form of exhalation, and
downward in the form of
inhalation. By steadily
fixing the mind on
either of the two
spaces between
the breaths,
one experiences the state of fullness of Bhairava.
V.24 Vijana Bhairava
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Commentary
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The sequence of sixteen images consists of 9 straight photographs and seven symmetrical photographs (images constructed from one straight photograph repeated four times and conjoined at the center such that the four images reflect each other above and below & left and right). The Alchemical concept of "Above and Below," and the "miracle of the 'One Thing'" which was addressed in part 2 of the WATER project, continues to be a central theme in this project. Any large water fall forms a luminous, sacred-numinous Vertical bridge which connects or merges the two archetypal poles, Above and Below (Heaven-sky and Earth), and in doing so accomplishes the "miracle," (the "meeting," the "union") of the two.
Image #1 in the sequence was taken from the American side looking over the Niagara River to the the Horseshoe Falls in Canada.
Image #2. I was standing on a Cave of the Winds platform down by the Niagara River looking up and past the Bridal Veil Falls. I included on the right edge of the frame just a small part of the precipice of the American Falls in order to provide some visual context for what I was really trying to photograph: the luminous clouds and mists suspended in the soft blue space of the sky.
As I photographed I was surrounded and immersed in sights, sounds and pounding-pulsating rhythms of water which induced in me something like a meditative or dream-like state of wonder. The physical reality of the falling waters, the mists, the clouds suspended in space, and the sunlight which was making everything luminescent, dancingly alive with sparks of light . . . all this had dissolved into one ineffable presence for me as I watched.
I was standing in waves upon waves of fallen water; I was being cleansed by wind-blown mists and water droplets; rainbows were fluttering around me everywhere like happy butterflies. I could not separate what was "real" from what was Imaginal. What was clouds, what was mist forms, what was sky? Was I seeing these natural wonders as they appeared? or as I imagined them to be as potential photographs?
Image #6
Images #4 thru #6 follow the vertical, falling movement of the water from the precipice of the Bridal Veil Falls down to its first interface with the earth. Images #7 & #8 follows the horizontal movement of the water to its next precipice from which the water then falls again downward into the lower level of the Gorge and the Niagara River.
At each earthly touchdown of the falling waters from the Bridal Veil Falls there is an explosion of light and sound as the water crashes down upon piles of rock. The water then gathers itself together again and continues its journey downward until it merges into the Niagara River.
The color of the water goes through changes--from blue to green--as it falls from the sky toward earth. It's as if the water carries the cool blue sky within itself as it falls; and then just before making landfall the water transforms into various shades of darker and iridescent greens.
In the deeper, more rapidly moving horizontal waves of water, there are momentary openings in which the sunlight enters the water's interior depths. This permits brief glimpses of a mysterious emerald green color--a color that appears to be self-luminous.
As I pay closer, more intimate attention to the movements and changes of the water . . . I too become changed. Bachelard writes in his book Water and Dreams, An Essay On the Imagination of Matter about how the substances of Nature force us into varying modes of contemplation. I was particularly interested in his mention of a "dreamer" who sees only reflections at first when he looks at water. Then suddenly the dreamer "sees the water itself." The water is blue. But then the dreamer wonders if what he is seeing is indeed water. The dreamer exclaims that what he is seeing is "more beautiful and purer and bluer than the water of this earth." Indeed what the dreamer is seeing is so beautiful that he can no longer "dare look at it."
Bachelard remarks: "Dreams are made of such substances," and he adds: "A soul" is also a "great substance." It's possible the soul of the dreamer and the soul of the water share the same Consciousness. In some "dreams" of water there are timeless moments of recognition in which an unveiling of Truth occurs; and in such magical-transcendent moments the soul comes to understand the "miracle" of its Oneness with everything in the universe. The great poet-saint Lalleshwari, of Kashmir, India (1320-1390) wrote:
The name Bridal Veil Falls suggests to me a mystical-poetic alchemical revelation in which a bride's veil inexplicably falls away allowing her self-luminous Face of Truth to become visible to her Beloved. In this moment of extraordinary vision of recognition the two--bride and Beloved (So and Ham--Fire and Water--Sky and Earth) merge in marriage. Their conjunction constitutes a return to their Original primordial condition: the Unity of Being, the miracle of the "One Thing."
I want to pause here to remember other forms of this "miracle" which I introduced in my two other WATER projects, and especially part 2, The Mirror in the Temple. The title of the chapter refers to Henry Corbin's perception--which took place in a mosque in Isfahan--in which he saw the Sky above the Templum reflected in a basin of fresh flowing water--a "water-mirror"--which was located at the very center of the Templum. Corbin says that it is by means of the "water-mirror" that the Templum brings about the meeting of Heaven and Earth. The mirror, he states, provides the ["horizontal"] mosque with its "vertical dimension."
I also want to recall here the poem by Mary Coleridge (1861-1907) in which a blue lake, "below the hill" reflects the sky above, a sky which "at last was blue." The "Blue-in-Blue" Lake also catches in its reflection the image of a Blue Bird as it flies over the water. This is a hauntingly beautiful poetic image for me of the merging of water, sky and blue bird.
And from Bachelard's book Water and Dreams I want to briefly revisit a passage from Paul Claudel's project for an Underground Church in Chicago in which a lake is situated within a sacred underground basin, a lake whose Water (the poet tells us) carries an "immense symbolism." He says the Water "signifies the Sky." Bachelard then gives us his response to the poet's image, which he characterizes as a subterranean sky: "Water in its symbolism can bring everything together."
Returning now to The Man of Light In Iranian Sufism, Henry Corbin writes about "The Hermetic Idea of Perfect Nature" and invokes the Western Alchemical treatise: the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus ("As Above, so Below").
In the Western Tradition, the Alchemical miracle of the "One Thing" (Perfection, Completion of the Creative Process) is symbolized by the marriage of dark male and female earthly substances. Their union results in the luminous and most transcendent of all Earthly substances: Gold. Corbin tells us that in the Arabic-Sufic Hermetic Tradition the merging of opposites (Dark and Light) results in Perfect Nature, symbolized by the color of light: Emerald Green.
The Sufi-alchemist initiate, through various ritual acts, and with the assistance of his "Guide of Light" or Angel of light, finally reaches, in Corbin's words: "the Center, the Pole . . . before whom the Darkness of the primordial secret is transformed into a Night of light by the seeker's Guide of Light. The initiate enters a subterranean chamber, and there sees "Hermes . . . who is [the initiate's] own image sitting on a throne holding an Emerald Tablet."
The seven symmetrical photographs in this project, Images #10 thru #16, have (for me) the feeling-presence and the visual appearance of Hermetic "initiatory" imagery. (Visit this link to see alchemical images that provided CG Jung with important direction to his research on medieval Alchemy.)
Each of my symmetrical images has its own "ritual Center" which represents the sound OM, Origin of the Created World, and which often has the appearance and character of an Eye (the Witness in Heaven). The images--which are often suffused with a mix of luminous sky blues, emerald greens, and dark earth tones--are a symbolic Imaginal embodiment of the Alchemical Marriage--the conjoining of opposites into Perfect Nature. These images often seem to me to be pervaded by an Angelic presence.
The Cave of the Winds tour takes you to a platform that is within just a few feet of the where the falling waters of the Bridal Veil Falls first makes contact with the Earth. It is a place of profound visual and audible power: the rhythmic pounding of the falling water on the stone, and the explosion of the water splashing upward. It seemed the water turned into light as it spirited upward--as if in a vertical gesture of longing to re-unite with its origin, the sky (the Heavens) above.
My grandson, River, who was a very active five-year-old at the time, became seemingly hypnotized by the sights and sounds of the falling water exploding upon the rocks. He sat down on the wooden platform, with legs crossed, and remained there--seemingly transfixed--for a prolonged period of time. He looked like a Buddha sitting in meditation. It was as if he had become a witnessing participant in some magical initiation ritual. As he sat motionless before this spectacle he was being enveloped and showered upon by the grace of water mists, sprays and droplets which were being transformed by the sunlight into dancing rainbows and glistening gems which emitted fire-like sparks.
*
Image #1 in the sequence was taken from the American side looking over the Niagara River to the the Horseshoe Falls in Canada.
Image #1
Image #2 The Sky above the American Falls
Image #2. I was standing on a Cave of the Winds platform down by the Niagara River looking up and past the Bridal Veil Falls. I included on the right edge of the frame just a small part of the precipice of the American Falls in order to provide some visual context for what I was really trying to photograph: the luminous clouds and mists suspended in the soft blue space of the sky.
As I photographed I was surrounded and immersed in sights, sounds and pounding-pulsating rhythms of water which induced in me something like a meditative or dream-like state of wonder. The physical reality of the falling waters, the mists, the clouds suspended in space, and the sunlight which was making everything luminescent, dancingly alive with sparks of light . . . all this had dissolved into one ineffable presence for me as I watched.
I was standing in waves upon waves of fallen water; I was being cleansed by wind-blown mists and water droplets; rainbows were fluttering around me everywhere like happy butterflies. I could not separate what was "real" from what was Imaginal. What was clouds, what was mist forms, what was sky? Was I seeing these natural wonders as they appeared? or as I imagined them to be as potential photographs?
Where is reality--in the sky or in the depths of the water? Infinity
in our dreams is as high in the firmament as it is deep beneath
the waves. ~ Here at its juncture, water grasps the sky.
Through dreams, water comes to signify that most
distant of homes, a celestial one.
Gaston Bachelard, chapter 2:
"Deep Waters" from Water and Dreams
Image #3
Image #3 gives symbolic visual form to the poetic idea suggested in the name Bridal Veil Falls. It's an image which marries water, earth and sky into the Imaginal miracle of "the One Thing." I use the word Imaginal in the sense that Henry Corbin uses it: a "world" that exists in-between the physical and the spiritual. The Mundus Imaginalis is an ineffable, unknowable "place" in which the physical become spiritual, and in which the spiritual becomes physical. It is the "place" of Origin of symbols, objects or images which conjoin archetypal images with their corresponding physical counterparts.
Image #4
Image #5
Image #6
Images #4 thru #6 follow the vertical, falling movement of the water from the precipice of the Bridal Veil Falls down to its first interface with the earth. Images #7 & #8 follows the horizontal movement of the water to its next precipice from which the water then falls again downward into the lower level of the Gorge and the Niagara River.
Image #7
Image #8
At each earthly touchdown of the falling waters from the Bridal Veil Falls there is an explosion of light and sound as the water crashes down upon piles of rock. The water then gathers itself together again and continues its journey downward until it merges into the Niagara River.
The color of the water goes through changes--from blue to green--as it falls from the sky toward earth. It's as if the water carries the cool blue sky within itself as it falls; and then just before making landfall the water transforms into various shades of darker and iridescent greens.
In the deeper, more rapidly moving horizontal waves of water, there are momentary openings in which the sunlight enters the water's interior depths. This permits brief glimpses of a mysterious emerald green color--a color that appears to be self-luminous.
*
As I pay closer, more intimate attention to the movements and changes of the water . . . I too become changed. Bachelard writes in his book Water and Dreams, An Essay On the Imagination of Matter about how the substances of Nature force us into varying modes of contemplation. I was particularly interested in his mention of a "dreamer" who sees only reflections at first when he looks at water. Then suddenly the dreamer "sees the water itself." The water is blue. But then the dreamer wonders if what he is seeing is indeed water. The dreamer exclaims that what he is seeing is "more beautiful and purer and bluer than the water of this earth." Indeed what the dreamer is seeing is so beautiful that he can no longer "dare look at it."
Bachelard remarks: "Dreams are made of such substances," and he adds: "A soul" is also a "great substance." It's possible the soul of the dreamer and the soul of the water share the same Consciousness. In some "dreams" of water there are timeless moments of recognition in which an unveiling of Truth occurs; and in such magical-transcendent moments the soul comes to understand the "miracle" of its Oneness with everything in the universe. The great poet-saint Lalleshwari, of Kashmir, India (1320-1390) wrote:
As long as I failed to see my Self, I could not see the ocean
even though I was drowning. When I held aloft the torch
of So'ham I saw that I was the ocean itself.
My Meditation Master, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, wrote about So'ham in her Introduction to the 1983 edition of Swami Muktananda's book I AM THAT. She explains that So'ham is the primordial mantra, the sound of Universal consciousness, the life-force--prana--and essence of all living things.
So'ham is the awareness "I Am That," the realization that one's individual soul is identical with the Universal soul. And So'ham is the sound of One's own in-breath and out-breath. In the space between the the two breaths there is a "place" where they meet and become blended together. This place of meeting and merging between the two breaths forms a "bridge" that takes the contemplator into the subtle Imaginal realm of the Oneness of Being, the divine inner Self, the very Origin of the Created World which the yogic scriptures say was the sound-vibration "OM."
Gurumayi wrote: "The entire cosmos is alive with sound. Fire crackles, water gurgles as it flows, and the wind sighs in the branches of the trees. Similarly, our breath naturally makes the sound So'ham."
I am fascinated by Lalleshwri's identification of So'ham with a torch--a light of fire, the light of recognition that enables her to see that she is the Ocean itself. In her epiphany there is the poetic meeting of fire and water.
This has reminded me of a passage in Henry Corbin's book The Man of Light In Iranian Sufism. In this amazing book he explores the forms of light and color which signify the various stages of progress on the Sufic journey to Unity Consciousness. He also discusses the Heavenly Person, known as "the suprasensory Guide of Light," "the Angel of Light," or the "Witness in Heaven," a spiritual presence which supports the seeker in reaching his or her goal which is symbolized by the color of light: Emerald Green. (Visit my project : The Green Light of Sufi Travel)
So'ham is the awareness "I Am That," the realization that one's individual soul is identical with the Universal soul. And So'ham is the sound of One's own in-breath and out-breath. In the space between the the two breaths there is a "place" where they meet and become blended together. This place of meeting and merging between the two breaths forms a "bridge" that takes the contemplator into the subtle Imaginal realm of the Oneness of Being, the divine inner Self, the very Origin of the Created World which the yogic scriptures say was the sound-vibration "OM."
Gurumayi wrote: "The entire cosmos is alive with sound. Fire crackles, water gurgles as it flows, and the wind sighs in the branches of the trees. Similarly, our breath naturally makes the sound So'ham."
I am fascinated by Lalleshwri's identification of So'ham with a torch--a light of fire, the light of recognition that enables her to see that she is the Ocean itself. In her epiphany there is the poetic meeting of fire and water.
This has reminded me of a passage in Henry Corbin's book The Man of Light In Iranian Sufism. In this amazing book he explores the forms of light and color which signify the various stages of progress on the Sufic journey to Unity Consciousness. He also discusses the Heavenly Person, known as "the suprasensory Guide of Light," "the Angel of Light," or the "Witness in Heaven," a spiritual presence which supports the seeker in reaching his or her goal which is symbolized by the color of light: Emerald Green. (Visit my project : The Green Light of Sufi Travel)
Corbin writes about the great Sufi, Najm Kobra, who, during an episode of intense love experienced "an outburst of flame." Najm Kobra wrote: "My breath exhaled flames of Fire. And each time I breathed out fire, lo and behold, from the height of heaven someone was also breathing out fire which came to meet my own breath. The two shafts of flame blended between the Heavens and me."
We see in this story an image of two conjoined "flames" of breath--from the Earthly seeker below, and from his Heavenly counterpart (his Guide of Light, his Angel or Witness in Heaven). This image of union--the "miracle" of the Above and Below becoming One Thing"--parallels the yogic teaching of the meeting place where the two breaths (inner and outer) blend or merge into each other.
I must quote another fascinating passage by Nam Kobra in which he references the Angel Guide of Light as a "spring" of "gushing" light, and a "sun of the spirit" which becomes visible behind a "diaphanous veil" that goes "to and fro in the body." Here of course we are given the poetic image in which the inward and outward breaths are equated with spirit, i.e., inspiration. Through "inspiration" or grace, finally, the seeker in able to come face-to-face with his own Self:
When the circle of the face has become pure it effuses lights as a spring pours forth its water, so that the mystic has a sensory perception that these lights are gushing forth to irradiate his face. This outpouring takes place between the two eyes and between the eyebrows. Finally it spreads to cover the whole face. At that moment, before you, before your face, there is another Face also of light, irradiating lights; while behind its diaphanous veil a sun becomes visible, seemingly animated by a movement to and fro. In reality this Face is your own face and this sun is the sun of the Spirit that goes to and fro in your body. . . . This person of light before you is called in Sufi terminology the suprasensory Guide. from Henry Corbin's The Man of Light
*
That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and
that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below,
to accomplish the miracle of "the One Thing."
Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
I want to pause here to remember other forms of this "miracle" which I introduced in my two other WATER projects, and especially part 2, The Mirror in the Temple. The title of the chapter refers to Henry Corbin's perception--which took place in a mosque in Isfahan--in which he saw the Sky above the Templum reflected in a basin of fresh flowing water--a "water-mirror"--which was located at the very center of the Templum. Corbin says that it is by means of the "water-mirror" that the Templum brings about the meeting of Heaven and Earth. The mirror, he states, provides the ["horizontal"] mosque with its "vertical dimension."
I also want to recall here the poem by Mary Coleridge (1861-1907) in which a blue lake, "below the hill" reflects the sky above, a sky which "at last was blue." The "Blue-in-Blue" Lake also catches in its reflection the image of a Blue Bird as it flies over the water. This is a hauntingly beautiful poetic image for me of the merging of water, sky and blue bird.
And from Bachelard's book Water and Dreams I want to briefly revisit a passage from Paul Claudel's project for an Underground Church in Chicago in which a lake is situated within a sacred underground basin, a lake whose Water (the poet tells us) carries an "immense symbolism." He says the Water "signifies the Sky." Bachelard then gives us his response to the poet's image, which he characterizes as a subterranean sky: "Water in its symbolism can bring everything together."
*
Returning now to The Man of Light In Iranian Sufism, Henry Corbin writes about "The Hermetic Idea of Perfect Nature" and invokes the Western Alchemical treatise: the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus ("As Above, so Below").
In the Western Tradition, the Alchemical miracle of the "One Thing" (Perfection, Completion of the Creative Process) is symbolized by the marriage of dark male and female earthly substances. Their union results in the luminous and most transcendent of all Earthly substances: Gold. Corbin tells us that in the Arabic-Sufic Hermetic Tradition the merging of opposites (Dark and Light) results in Perfect Nature, symbolized by the color of light: Emerald Green.
The Sufi-alchemist initiate, through various ritual acts, and with the assistance of his "Guide of Light" or Angel of light, finally reaches, in Corbin's words: "the Center, the Pole . . . before whom the Darkness of the primordial secret is transformed into a Night of light by the seeker's Guide of Light. The initiate enters a subterranean chamber, and there sees "Hermes . . . who is [the initiate's] own image sitting on a throne holding an Emerald Tablet."
In all these examples, there is a merging at the "center" which bring the alchemist, the poet or the seeker-initiate into the Oneness of Being. For me, the symbolic photograph, and--most obviously--the symmetrical photographs, are the visual embodiment of this Unitary Reality. At the center of each symmetrical image there is the "place of merging" of the above and the below, left and right mirroring images (which corresponds to the yogic blending place of the in-breath and out-breath). This "Center-point" of the image is the Imaginal Origin-point from which the symbol has emerged into the Created World.
*
The seven symmetrical photographs in this project, Images #10 thru #16, have (for me) the feeling-presence and the visual appearance of Hermetic "initiatory" imagery. (Visit this link to see alchemical images that provided CG Jung with important direction to his research on medieval Alchemy.)
Each of my symmetrical images has its own "ritual Center" which represents the sound OM, Origin of the Created World, and which often has the appearance and character of an Eye (the Witness in Heaven). The images--which are often suffused with a mix of luminous sky blues, emerald greens, and dark earth tones--are a symbolic Imaginal embodiment of the Alchemical Marriage--the conjoining of opposites into Perfect Nature. These images often seem to me to be pervaded by an Angelic presence.
Image #16
Image #16, the concluding symmetrical photograph in the sequence has at its center a diamond-shaped Golden Eye that points Horizontally in relation to the Vertical dimension of the water that is falling simultaneously downward from above to the Center, and upward from below to the Center. These vertical and horizontal movements intersect and conjoin behind the Golden diamond, the Witnessing Eye.
I am reminded of a "fall upwards" I experienced in Vermont when I was visiting friends and relatives in 2014. I was going down a flight of stairs backwards, helping my one-year-old grandson River navigate the stairs. I stumbled and fell backwards; as I fell I held River close to my chest to protect him. When we made "landfall" at the base of the stairs my head hit a wooden statue of a horse . . . which resulted in a mild concussion.
The day after my emergency visit to the hospital I was offered a free healing-massage by a young woman who actually was in the house at the time of my fall. During the healing session I experienced a vision of an Angel's wings spread infinitely wide across an eternal horizon. I had been working on my Angel project at the time of the fall, and had been reading Henry Corbin, Tom Cheetham, and other Islamic scholars about the appearance and function of Angels within Islamic-Sufic traditions. (To read a full, detailed account of my experience visit A Personal story : The Fall Upwards.)
I am reminded of a "fall upwards" I experienced in Vermont when I was visiting friends and relatives in 2014. I was going down a flight of stairs backwards, helping my one-year-old grandson River navigate the stairs. I stumbled and fell backwards; as I fell I held River close to my chest to protect him. When we made "landfall" at the base of the stairs my head hit a wooden statue of a horse . . . which resulted in a mild concussion.
The day after my emergency visit to the hospital I was offered a free healing-massage by a young woman who actually was in the house at the time of my fall. During the healing session I experienced a vision of an Angel's wings spread infinitely wide across an eternal horizon. I had been working on my Angel project at the time of the fall, and had been reading Henry Corbin, Tom Cheetham, and other Islamic scholars about the appearance and function of Angels within Islamic-Sufic traditions. (To read a full, detailed account of my experience visit A Personal story : The Fall Upwards.)
*
My grandson, River, who was a very active five-year-old at the time, became seemingly hypnotized by the sights and sounds of the falling water exploding upon the rocks. He sat down on the wooden platform, with legs crossed, and remained there--seemingly transfixed--for a prolonged period of time. He looked like a Buddha sitting in meditation. It was as if he had become a witnessing participant in some magical initiation ritual. As he sat motionless before this spectacle he was being enveloped and showered upon by the grace of water mists, sprays and droplets which were being transformed by the sunlight into dancing rainbows and glistening gems which emitted fire-like sparks.
Image # 10 Symmetrical Photograph
(click on the image to enlarge)
(click on the image to enlarge)
Image #10, the first of the seven symmetrical images in this project, was constructed with a straight photograph I had made by pointing my camera directly into the center of the splashing water in front of my grandson. This mandala-like water image, I wonder, does it represent what I imagined River saw? What I imagined I saw? It certainly represents a luminous marriage of falling and splashing waters, the Imaginal reality which exists somewhere between my perception and River's, and between the corresponding-mirroring opposites that constitute Earthy existence.
Image #10 also represents an intimacy I experienced with the natural and supra-natural powers of water, light and space, and an intimacy I shared with River, though this time the experience was more Imaginal than when we literally fell together down a flight of stairs).
Bachelard writes in his introductory chapter to Water and Dreams: "Beneath the imagination of forms . . . [one] will recognize in water, in its substance, a type of intimacy that is very different from those suggested by the 'depths' of fire or rock." He then speaks of destiny, "an essential destiny" which he says "endlessly changes the substance of one's own Soul."
Image #10 functions for me as a symbol of Perfect Nature. That is to say, it represents the Imaginal explosive meeting-point where the vertical and horizontal forces of Nature conjoin in their primordial, eternal perfection.
Being so physically close and emotionally intimate with the power, the Grace of Perfect Nature is a mind-altering life-transforming experience. I felt as if I were constantly being showered upon by the Creative Power of the Universe which had manifested in the ever changing-pulsating forms of water, light and sound. My experience was like a dream overflowing with shimmering light--the light of grace, the kind of supra-natural light that can awaken one to One's own Soul; the kind of light that can bring one Face-to-Face with one's Angelic counterpart. The experience is also, simultaneously, an awakening to the Soul of the World, that is to say, the inner Self that pervades the entire universe.
Bachelard devotes an entire chapter to the sound, the Voice of Water. He says that the many sounds of water could have a transforming impact on any contemplator. Indeed, he suggests that every "elemental substance" has is its own Voice. He writes that a thing's sound "precedes its substantial form" in the world.
This idea is in accord with many of the yogic traditions I have studied, and other Creation stories I have read about, which say the Created World began with the primordial, archetypal sound or vibration "OM." Out of this sound-vibration of the Oneness of Being came the two sounds So and Ham. From these correspondingly opposites sounds--the sounds of duality (the in-breath and the out-breath, Shiva and Shakti) came the letters (sound-vibrations) of the alphabet, then words. From the matrika Shakti, the "power of words" all the things of the Created World emerged into being. The yogic scriptures say that everything in the universe consists of sound vibrations.
Bachelard wrote that falling water makes a "humming sound." Then he wrote this:
Sounds can induce visionary-Imaginal experiences, and thus shift one's sense of Time from linear (horizontal) time to Vertical Time. The dreamer (or contemplator) then merges into the Eternal Moment, the primordial Timeless moment in which the universe is perpetually flashing into Creation and Dissolution, the Timeless moment when the whole world is unfolding from within the humming vibrations of So and Ham, the pulsating spanda that becomes falling water, the sights and sounds of exploding-splashing water, and the infinite and ever expanding number of other substances which constitute the Earth and the Universe, with all its apparent surfaces, spaces, colors and lights.
There is a sense of violence and urgency in the rapidly moving waters of the Bridal Veil Falls, but there is also the gentle murmuring sounds of water rolling over stones, and its silent merging into the greater depths of the River. Eventually the water will flow into a Lake and then, somehow, it will return to the Ocean.
Image #10 also represents an intimacy I experienced with the natural and supra-natural powers of water, light and space, and an intimacy I shared with River, though this time the experience was more Imaginal than when we literally fell together down a flight of stairs).
Bachelard writes in his introductory chapter to Water and Dreams: "Beneath the imagination of forms . . . [one] will recognize in water, in its substance, a type of intimacy that is very different from those suggested by the 'depths' of fire or rock." He then speaks of destiny, "an essential destiny" which he says "endlessly changes the substance of one's own Soul."
Image #10 functions for me as a symbol of Perfect Nature. That is to say, it represents the Imaginal explosive meeting-point where the vertical and horizontal forces of Nature conjoin in their primordial, eternal perfection.
Being so physically close and emotionally intimate with the power, the Grace of Perfect Nature is a mind-altering life-transforming experience. I felt as if I were constantly being showered upon by the Creative Power of the Universe which had manifested in the ever changing-pulsating forms of water, light and sound. My experience was like a dream overflowing with shimmering light--the light of grace, the kind of supra-natural light that can awaken one to One's own Soul; the kind of light that can bring one Face-to-Face with one's Angelic counterpart. The experience is also, simultaneously, an awakening to the Soul of the World, that is to say, the inner Self that pervades the entire universe.
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Bachelard devotes an entire chapter to the sound, the Voice of Water. He says that the many sounds of water could have a transforming impact on any contemplator. Indeed, he suggests that every "elemental substance" has is its own Voice. He writes that a thing's sound "precedes its substantial form" in the world.
This idea is in accord with many of the yogic traditions I have studied, and other Creation stories I have read about, which say the Created World began with the primordial, archetypal sound or vibration "OM." Out of this sound-vibration of the Oneness of Being came the two sounds So and Ham. From these correspondingly opposites sounds--the sounds of duality (the in-breath and the out-breath, Shiva and Shakti) came the letters (sound-vibrations) of the alphabet, then words. From the matrika Shakti, the "power of words" all the things of the Created World emerged into being. The yogic scriptures say that everything in the universe consists of sound vibrations.
Bachelard wrote that falling water makes a "humming sound." Then he wrote this:
The noise of the floods fills the immensity of the sky or the hollow of a shell.
It is in these two movements that living imagination must live. It hears
only voices that are approaching or fading in the distance. He who
listens to thing is well aware that they will speak too loudly or too
softly. We must hurry to hear them. . . . Once the imagination
is mistress of dynamic correspondences, images truly speak.
We shall understand this accord of sound and images if
we meditate on "these subtle verses in which a girl,
bent over a stream, feels passing into her face
the beauty born of murmuring sound."
Bachelard, chapter 8, "Water's Voice"
only voices that are approaching or fading in the distance. He who
listens to thing is well aware that they will speak too loudly or too
softly. We must hurry to hear them. . . . Once the imagination
is mistress of dynamic correspondences, images truly speak.
We shall understand this accord of sound and images if
we meditate on "these subtle verses in which a girl,
bent over a stream, feels passing into her face
the beauty born of murmuring sound."
Bachelard, chapter 8, "Water's Voice"
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There is a sense of violence and urgency in the rapidly moving waters of the Bridal Veil Falls, but there is also the gentle murmuring sounds of water rolling over stones, and its silent merging into the greater depths of the River. Eventually the water will flow into a Lake and then, somehow, it will return to the Ocean.
Image #9
Image #9 is for me about taking a "leap" into the unfathomably deep and oftentimes seemingly dangerous waters of the imagination . . . which Bachelard says "is not, as its etymology suggests, the faculty for forming images of reality." Rather, he says "the leap into deep waters is the faculty for forming images which go beyond reality," that is to say, images which function as symbols.
A leap into water is a "leap into the unknown," writes Bachelard. More than any other physical event, leaping into water--he says--awakens in us "echoes of a dangerous and hostile initiation."
Bachelard's words "leap into the unknown" reminded me of when I was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico. The university's MFA thesis requirements consisted of two parts: a visual exhibition and a major written dissertation on a theme relevant to the photographs. I had gotten very interested in the ideas of Carl Jung in Graduate School, especially his psychological-symbolic reading of medieval alchemy, and his fascination with a theory he termed synchronicity. The two came together for me shinning new light into my Creative Process in Photography. So I decided I would try to put these ideas into some coherent written form for my written thesis--but the task seemed overwhelming to me.
I shared my fears and anxieties with one of my Thesis Advisors, Beaumont Newhall. I said in my defense: "I was a photographer, not a writer!" He calmly sympathized, and helped me understand--from his own personal experience (for he had written the first ever History of Photography) that all True creative processes share at least this one thing: the necessity of "leaping into the dark waters of the unknown." click here to see a synopsis of my thesis The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self Knowledge - A Jungian Approach to the Photographic Opus
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Bachelard touches on the theme of Death in nearly every chapter of his book Water and Dreams: "Water carries things far away, water passes like the days. But another reverie takes hold of us to teach us the loss of our being in total dissolution. Each of the elements has its own type of dissolution, earth into dust, fire into smoke. Water dissolves more completely. It helps us to die completely." Bachelard then provides us with a quote from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus:
"O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops,
And fall into the Ocean--ne'er be found."
Image #2
One of Bachelard's favorite poets of water, as we already know from my two previous chapters, is Paul Claudel. In the following quote, Bachelard is both writing about and quoting from Claudel:
He has lived through those hours when "the sky is no longer anything but the mist, and the space of water" . . . when "everything is dissolved" so that one would look about in vain for an "outline or a form." . . . "Nothing to mark the horizon but the cessation of the darkest color. The matter of which everything is composed is united in a single water, similar to that of which these tears, which I feel running down my cheek, are composed."
He has lived through those hours when "the sky is no longer anything but the mist, and the space of water" . . . when "everything is dissolved" so that one would look about in vain for an "outline or a form." . . . "Nothing to mark the horizon but the cessation of the darkest color. The matter of which everything is composed is united in a single water, similar to that of which these tears, which I feel running down my cheek, are composed."
The first to be dissolved, writes Bachelard, "is a landscape in the rain; lines and forms melt away. But little by little the whole world is brought together again in its water. A single matter, he states, has taken over everything. "Everything is dissolved."
Dissolution is a wonderful word: the dematerialization into nothing . . . or everything; the merging of substance and soul. Just as Gold is the symbolic goal of Western alchemy, attained only through the purification of dark, earthly masculine and feminine materials, we have in the vertical-spiritual power of falling water one of greatest images of the ritual of purification: the dissolution of the ego, the dissolution of one's identification with the body into light. Dissolution can be an expansive experience of awakening, an experience of recognition that one's Soul is the inner divine Self that pervades everything in the Created World.
Over and over again we have noted that Falling Water is the poetic embodiment and spiritual idea of Verticality. On the other hand, the destination of falling water, Bachelard tells us, is ultimately the horizontal depths and vast horizons of Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans. He says horizontality is a kind of Death: "To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon," . . . "to become part of depth or infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water."
Dissolution is a wonderful word: the dematerialization into nothing . . . or everything; the merging of substance and soul. Just as Gold is the symbolic goal of Western alchemy, attained only through the purification of dark, earthly masculine and feminine materials, we have in the vertical-spiritual power of falling water one of greatest images of the ritual of purification: the dissolution of the ego, the dissolution of one's identification with the body into light. Dissolution can be an expansive experience of awakening, an experience of recognition that one's Soul is the inner divine Self that pervades everything in the Created World.
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Over and over again we have noted that Falling Water is the poetic embodiment and spiritual idea of Verticality. On the other hand, the destination of falling water, Bachelard tells us, is ultimately the horizontal depths and vast horizons of Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans. He says horizontality is a kind of Death: "To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon," . . . "to become part of depth or infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water."
The earthly origin of the water of the Bridal Veil Falls is Lake Erie, then it becomes the upper part of the Niagara River. After its fall into the Niagara Gorge it rejoins the vast horizontality of the lower Niagara River, then its waters journey into Lake Ontario. And yet, its waters are destined to merge into something greater: an Ocean which symbolically represents the return of all water to its True Origin.
This glimpse into the potential of our own cyclic personal destiny--a circling movement of trans-formations that will rise and fall endlessly within the One Eternal Moment--will, with a single glance of grace, be liberated by yet an even greater Truth.
Image # 13
Image #13 is dominated by the power of multiple horizontal movements. The two dark shapes mirroring each other vertically--above and below--symbolizes the Earth; at the the center of the symmetrical image is the gentle unfolding of a tender luminous flower within a surrounding horizontal emerald green pod. The "flower" seems suspended in space. Dark and light, vertical and horizontal merge at the center point of the image. In the background, a Great River flows ever-onward as it continues its journey toward its final destination: stillness in the unknown depths of an infinitely greater Imaginal Water.
Image #15 and Image #16 represents the verticality of falling water--both from above downward, and from below upward. There is a conjoining of the two at a shared meeting-point which is the Center and "Eye" and Origin of the image. The center-point is the place of equipoise, the space of supreme silence within the otherwise thunderously loud image of monumental scale. Though the vertical movement dominates both of these images--suspended in the vast space of blue sky--there is nonetheless one other thing that dominates all of the symmetrical images in this project: that timeless, numinous, feeling-presence of the Unity of Being.
Image #15 and Image #16 represents the verticality of falling water--both from above downward, and from below upward. There is a conjoining of the two at a shared meeting-point which is the Center and "Eye" and Origin of the image. The center-point is the place of equipoise, the space of supreme silence within the otherwise thunderously loud image of monumental scale. Though the vertical movement dominates both of these images--suspended in the vast space of blue sky--there is nonetheless one other thing that dominates all of the symmetrical images in this project: that timeless, numinous, feeling-presence of the Unity of Being.
Image # 13
Image # 16
The true eye of the earth is water. In our eyes it is water that dreams.
Are our eyes not "that unexpected pool of liquid light which
God put in the depths of our being"? [Paul Claudel]
In nature it is once again water that sees and
water that dreams. . . . "Thus [writes Paul
Claudel] water is the gaze of the earth,
its instrument for looking at time."
Bachelard, Chapter 1, "Clear Waters"
The movement of water Upwards symbolizes the expansion of the soul into the transcendent Self, for the "True Self" opens "upwards and forever" writes Tom Cheetham in his book After Prophecy.
We could also think of water not only as "the eye that dreams," but also as the inner "Hidden Treasure," and the "eye with which God contemplates himself." I will thus conclude this third part of the WATER project with the following passage by Tom Cheetham, from his book After Prophecy:
In Manichean legend, when, after death, on the Bridge to the other world, the soul meets its Angel [its Celestial Twin, its Heavenly Counterpart] in the figure of a beautiful woman, she says, "I am thyself."
The power of the creative imagination, the gift of Gabriel, the Angel Holy Spirit, enables each of us, if we consent, to give birth to the Angel, whose grace allows us to see all the world as an icon. For we give birth not only to God, but the world itself, transfigured in the light of a personal vision. Tom Cheetham, After Prophesy. click here to read a collection of excerpts from the writings of Tom Cheetham and Henry Corbin.
We could also think of water not only as "the eye that dreams," but also as the inner "Hidden Treasure," and the "eye with which God contemplates himself." I will thus conclude this third part of the WATER project with the following passage by Tom Cheetham, from his book After Prophecy:
In Manichean legend, when, after death, on the Bridge to the other world, the soul meets its Angel [its Celestial Twin, its Heavenly Counterpart] in the figure of a beautiful woman, she says, "I am thyself."
Henry Corbin's mystic "knows that he is the eye with which God contemplates himself; that he himself, in his being, is the witness by which God witnesses himself, the revelation by which the Hidden Treasure reveals itself to itself."
The person of the Angel is infinite and iconic--that is, the succession of transcendences never stops. . . The true self opens upwards, and forever.
The power of the creative imagination, the gift of Gabriel, the Angel Holy Spirit, enables each of us, if we consent, to give birth to the Angel, whose grace allows us to see all the world as an icon. For we give birth not only to God, but the world itself, transfigured in the light of a personal vision. Tom Cheetham, After Prophesy. click here to read a collection of excerpts from the writings of Tom Cheetham and Henry Corbin.
Epilogue
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The Shiva Sutras say:
As Above, so below
As here, so elsewhere.
How can you know what water is until you yourself have experienced being transparent? . . . What allows you to understand [the things of the world] when you come in touch with them on the outside is your own inner experience of all these things. Because you have discovered them within, you're able to grasp all the different shapes and forms and appearances of this world. If you know it within you also recognize it outside.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, excerpts from a writing published in Darshan #53: Sacred Poems & Prayers
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This project--part 3 of the WATER project--
was announced in the "Latest Addition" section
of my website's Welcome Page on November 2, 2018
was announced in the "Latest Addition" section
of my website's Welcome Page on November 2, 2018
WATER Photographs : The Complete Project Titles
Other Related Links
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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