Self Knowledge
Contemplating
Symbolic Photographs
Introduction
I have been writing this introduction throughout May and into the first week of June, 2020. It remains a fearful, anxious time, when the Coronavirus Pandemic, acts of police brutality and protests around the world is changing the lives of untold numbers of people who are growing impatient with mounting distrust and anger toward governments, political leaders, police departments and corporate powers who appear--too often--to be deliberately mis-leading, mis-informing, disrespecting and hurting people in ways that endanger every aspect of human life and the life of the natural world on this beautiful ailing planet we call Earth.
It's been a time when peace of mind can be found, by my, only by turning within, and in this regard I feel fortunate in being able to take refuge in the making and contemplation of photographs, and performing the Siddha Yoga Meditation practices.
I have been re-reading two remarkable books of published talks by Gurumayi Chidvilasanda: The Yoga of Discipline, in which she speaks of the discipline of "Seeing," the discipline of "Listening" and the discipline of "Silence," and My Lord Loves A Pure Heart, in which she speaks on themes such as "Fearlessness" and "Steadfastness In Knowledge." Regarding "Fearlessness" she said:
[There is a] veil that falls between the individual soul and the supreme Self,
the fear that separates you from God. . . . Spiritual practices weaken
the hold fear has on your mind . . . They weaken the agitation of
the mind and strengthen its power to be still. Spiritual
practices weaken the outgoing tendencies of the
senses and strengthen the longing for Truth.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
My Lord Loves A Pure Heart, "Fearlessness"
It's interesting to think about the "veil that separates" in relation to governmental orders to wear face masks and stay at least six feet apart from each other. So many people are feeling the strong need to connect with loved ones, and because people have been lied to or misinformed so often during the past several months, a great longing for the Truth has been rising up within them as well.
As the title of this project suggests, I have been focusing my attention recently on contemplation, the yogic practice that connects me and all students of yoga to the Truth, the Knowledge of the Self that dwells in the depths of the Great Space of the Universal Heart:
The Heart is the abode of the Truth. When you want to receive knowledge,
you have to enter that inner space. . . . Then wisdom arises
from deep within the great space of the heart.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, My Lord Loves A Pure Heart
And contemplation is an important practice which connects the contemplator to the grace that pervades the ancient yogic texts, the words of the poet-saints, and the teachings of the Great Beings, such as Gurumayi, who has achieved the goal of Yoga: Union with God, the supreme Self.
I have found that the yogic approach to contemplation also works very well in relation to photographs that function for me as living Symbols, for symbols are images radiant with grace, the Light of Consciousness, the ineffable knowledge of the transcendent Self. When I look deeply into a photograph alive with grace my mind settles down, it becomes calm and still so that I'm able to be fully aware of the mystery, the presence of the Truth that dwells within the image, a presence that cannot be understood by the mind in ordinary intellectual terms.
The yogic scriptures tell us that our minds--our intellects, our egos--are not equipped to understand the transcendent nature of Self, which Gurumayi often refers to as "Knowledge of the inner Self." The yogic practice of contemplation, however, does provide a means of accessing this sacred knowledge embedded within the language of the saints, the yogic scriptures and sacred works of art. In this project I will offer some steps one can take in the process of contemplating sacred works, including symbolic photographs.
Symbols speak in a silent language, a language that requires of the contemplator to enter into a mode of silent being. In Gurumayi's talk on "The Discipline of Silence," she says:
In silence you hear the songs of the birds.
In silence you hear the message of the Truth.
In silence you hear the sounds of the stars and
the voice of the inner Self. It is in silence that you
hear the voice of the earth. ~ God speaks in silence.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, from her book The Yoga of Discipline
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, from her book The Yoga of Discipline
In another quote by Gurumayi, this time from her talk "The Discipline of Seeing," she quotes four lines from a poem by the modern day poet-saint Ram Tirth, then she comments on "the language of the saints," the "mystery of the Truth," and the kind of vision that is possible when the "inner eye" of the Heart has been opened by the power of grace:
Since the eyes of my heart were opened,
I am able to see deep within.
Even when I look at the world around me,
I find my Beloved wherever I turn.
In the language of the saints, it is when the inner eye opens, when the eye of the heart, the subtle eye, becomes active, that a person truly begins to see, truly begins to understand, truly begins to live in the light. The eyes begin to fathom the mystery of the Truth.
Contemplation vs Commentary
I often write commentaries on selected photographs in my blog projects; however there is a big difference between commenting on images and the process of contemplating photographs, and more particularly those images that are functioning for me as symbols.
When I write commentaries I share my associations to the image, memories invoked by the image, and a varied range of intellectual ideas and personal feelings that have--for me--some direct relationship to that image. Commentaries originate primarily in the mind, the intellect, the ego--those parts of the divided-fragmented psyche which create and maintain the "veil" that separates the individual soul from the supreme Self, those parts of the psyche which creates the world of Duality consciousness, or maya.
I can only contemplate photographs which are functioning for me as Symbols because it is the grace pervading the symbolic photograph which stills my mind and opens my Heart to the ineffable knowledge of the inner Self which pervades the image.
I sometimes use the word meditation instead of "commentary." I use it deliberately, and carefully, for it does mean something different for me compared to commentary and contemplation. The only way I can define the word meditation, when I use it in relation to trying to discover various levels of meaning in a photograph or a related body of images, is that meditation lies somewhere between contemplation and commentary.
The American poet Robert Bly edited and wrote some extraordinarily articulate and interesting introductory texts and essays for an important book of poems which he chose (poems written by many poets from different cultures and historical periods, including is own). The book is entitled News of the Universe : poems of twofold consciousness. As an Afterword to the book, he includes two essays on individual poems, essays which he refers to as "Mediations." In the meditation he wrote on a poem by Goethe, Bly says there are two distinctly different kinds of poems: the kind which gives us news of the mind of the poet, news of the individual soul; and then there is the kind of poem which gives us news of an impersonal nature, News of the Universe. The poem on Goethe, Bly makes clear, is a poem that gives us News of the Universe. When I speak about true, living symbols, regardless of the various forms they come in (poems, visual images, music, sacred objects, etc.) I am speaking of that which give us News of the Universe, "news" of the Universal Soul.
Photography A Yogic Perspective
My wife Gloria and I met Gurumayi for the first time in August, 1987. Gloria's sister had been a student of Siddha Yoga for many years and wanted us to experience for our selves--see with our own eyes why it was so important to her. She gifted us with a two day meditation program with Gurumayi called an Intensive at Shree Muktananda Ashram in New York State. Gloria and I embarked upon this adventure with some fear and a good amount of doubt and skepticism, however by the end of the meditation Intensive both of us had been blessed with astounding, transforming experiences of Gurumayi's grace, her Shakti, the Creative Power of the Universe.
We returned home with our hearts overflowing with the longing to remain connected to Gurumayi, her grace and her yogic teachings, so we started reading Siddha Yoga books, and we began doing some of the Siddha Yoga practices at home. Then later we attended weekly meditation programs at the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Milwaukee. We have continued practicing Siddha Yoga for the past 33 years.
(Note: Gloria and I acknowledge that Siddha Yoga may not be the right path for everyone; however our experiences over the past 33 years have proven to be profoundly meaningful for us. ~ I invite you to see my blog project Photography and Yoga. It the introductory chapter I have written in detail about my experience of Gurumayi's grace in that first Intensive, an experience of yogic initiation known as Shaktipat.)
Seventeen years before I met Gurumayi, I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a graduate photography student in photography (1969-72). A fellow graduate student got me interested in the ideas of depth psychologist Carl Jung, and in order to fulfill a degree requirement I wrote a long MFA thesis paper entitled The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self Knowledge which was based on Jung's ideas of the divided psyche, the creative process of Medieval Alchemy, the symbol, and synchronicity.
I had thought, before I met Gurumayi, that I would be able to access what Jung called Self Knowledge on my own through applying his ideas to my Creative Process in photography. But, to be quite honest, that didn't work out very well for me. After I experienced Gurumayi's grace in 1987 I understood--quite viscerally--that I needed something more than ideas and theories to help me accomplish the goals I had set out to achieve in my MFA thesis. What I needed--both as an individual and as an artist--was a direct connection with the Creative Energy of the Universe, otherwise known as grace, which only a True teacher, like Gurumayi, could provide me.
(Note: a True teacher, or Sadguru, is one who lives in the constant, conscious awareness of his or her Union with God, the supreme Self; one who lives in the ever flowing stream of Knowledge of the inner, divine Self.)
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Photographs can function in so many different ways. For example, photographic images can be literal, mechanical descriptions or "documents" of the apparent visible world; and they can be a way of communicating personal points of view regarding just about anything including social, political and even religious ideas and agendas. By the time I was a graduate student (1969-71) I had already developed a strong attraction to the Equivalent photograph which Alfred Stieglitz introduced to the New York art world in the 1920's, and which Minor White carried forward into the 1950's (through the 1970's) via his quarterly photography publication, Aperture, and his teaching of photography as a fine art at the college level.
My interest in the Equivalent photograph had prepared me for my discovery of Jung and his ideas. Then after I completed my MFA thesis paper on the Symbolic Photograph and spent the fifteen years exploring those ideas as an exhibiting photographer and teacher, I had at last become prepared to experience and receive the transforming energy of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
When I first started practicing Siddha Yoga I considered my Creative Process in photography a separate activity from my yogic practices. However, over time I began to observe how the two practices reflected and supported each other, and how Gurumayi's grace and the grace of the Siddha Yoga practices were adding a new dimension of experience, meaning and understanding to my practice of making symbolic photographs and then the practice of contemplating those extraordinary images. Gradually my yogic practices and my photographic practices naturally merged into each another.
Carl Jung Alchemy, the Symbol & the Self
Carl Jung spent a large portion of his life studying Medieval Alchemy, its creative processes and its symbols, and this research which helped him develop his theories of the divided, fragmented, layered aspects of the human psyche, the archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, the symbol and his concept of the Self. An Alchemical treatise, The Emerald Tablet, written in Arabic between the 6th and 8th centuries, states in a very brief but concise way the basic ideas belying both the alchemical process and Jung's ideas about the psyche and the Self:
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"
Essentially the treatise states that for every created, physical thing "Below" in our Earthly realm of dualistic existence, there is a corresponding psycho-spiritual image which originated in Heaven, "Above," that is to say, in Divine Thought or Imagination.
Jung came to understand that the Alchemical process--of purifying masculine and feminine base metals and then "marrying" or conjoining the two into the "Miracle of the One Thing," --Gold-- was essentially a psychological process of uniting and integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of the Alchemist's psyche into the Unitary Reality which Jung termed the Self.
Jung used the word "Self" in different ways over the course of his career, according to how his research and understanding of the human psyche evolved and changed. At first the word "Self" referred to the sum total of the separated, layered aspects of the human psyche, those parts that he had been able to identify and name through his careful scientific modes of research, observation and documentation (these include the ego, the personal unconscious, the shadow, the Collective Unconscious.)
Later, Jung used the word Self to refer to a condition of psychological wholeness, a mode of Being in which the divided human psyche--the conscious and unconscious--had became conjoined through a psychotherapeutic process of transformation he called Individuation. Jung would work with his patients to help them recognize the symbolic expressions of unconscious contents that spontaneously emerged in their lives in the form of dreams, works of art, experiences of synchronicity, etc. Then he would help them withdraw the unconscious projected contents from the symbols and integrate that content into the patient's unfolding conscious awareness. Jung wrote endlessly about the role symbols played in the process of Individuation.
Late in life Jung published a major paper about synchronicity, the paranormal phenomena in which one would experience meaningful coincidences, the spontaneous "acausal falling together" of events in time and space that functioned as symbolic revelations of a patient's unconscious processes and "knowledge" of the Self. The Symbol, in Jung's approach to psychotherapy, was the uniting principle that did the "alchemical work" of conjoining (marrying) the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche, thus returning the psyche back to its original condition of Unity at an entirely new level of "Self" conscious awareness.
(Note: the word" yoga" comes from the Vedic term which means "joining together"-- referring to the union of the individual soul with the Universal Soul, the merging together of the small "i" and the transcendent "I". Gurumayi speaks frequently about yoga in alchemical metaphorical terms: "purification of the Heart," making the "mind Golden." Other definitions of yoga abound: silencing of the mind, transforming the mind into a thought-free state.)
Importantly, the Medieval Alchemical process consisted of two essential practices which I wrote about and adapted for my MFA written thesis regarding the Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self Knowledge:
1) The Work--purifying and transforming base metals into the "Miracle of the One Thing,"
the making of Symbolic Photographs.
2) The Contemplatio--the contemplation of the alchemical process and the symbols which
the process manifested, the contemplation of Symbolic Photographs.
1) The Work--purifying and transforming base metals into the "Miracle of the One Thing,"
the making of Symbolic Photographs.
2) The Contemplatio--the contemplation of the alchemical process and the symbols which
the process manifested, the contemplation of Symbolic Photographs.
Henry Corbin Creative Imagination & the Imaginal World
One of the techniques Jung used to help his patients withdraw the knowledge hidden within their unconscious psyches and the symbols they had spontaneously manifested through dreams, artworks and experiences of synchronicity, was called Active Imagination.
Similarly, a colleague of Jung's, named Henry Corbin, a well known religious scholar and mystic, had explored a concept, "Creative Imagination" in an important book he authored entitled Alone With the Alone, the Creative Imagination In the Sufism of Ibn' Arabi.
Ibn' Arabi was a twelfth century Sufi mystic who asserted, very much like the Alchemical Treatise I quoted above, that the world of Earthly existence came into being from the interior world of Divine Thought, or the "Creative Imagination."
In this regard Corbin wrote about an "Intermediate" plane of reality, one that existed between the spiritual world and the physical world. He called this intermediate plane the Imaginal World, an ineffable "place" where the spiritual transmuted into matter, and where matter transmuted into the spiritual. Corbin asserted that the Imaginal World was associated with the Heart, and Prayer and mystic vision. And he asserted that the Imaginal World was the place of origin of True, living symbols, images which embodied the Union of the spiritual and the physical. Corbin also wrote about "Theophanic Imagination," the way visionary experiences would spontaneously "break through" the veil of the plane of dualistic reality thus revealing ("unveiling") the mystery, the Truth of the reality of the Oneness of Being.
I find all this quite fascinating in relation to many visionary experiences (of grace) I have had, even while in the process of making symbolic photographs. It is certainly easy for me to perceive the connection between what Corbin was saying regarding the spontaneous "breaking through" of the "veil" of dualistic reality with Jung's fascination with synchronicity. And there is a direct relationship between Corbin's "Theophanic Prayer," the Alchemical Contemplatio, Jung's Active Imagination, and the yogic approach to contemplation.
Before I move on to my discussion of the Symbolic Photograph, "Self Knowledge" and the process of Contemplation I want to share with you a fascinating quote by Corbin in which he invokes the words contemplation and God in the same breath. In his book Creative Imagination Corbin devoted an entire chapter to "Man's Prayer and God's Prayer," and I discovered a quote (by Corbin, included below) that address this complex issue in a very direct way in an excellent book about Corbin and his ideas by Tom Cheetham, entitled The World Turned Inside Out : Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism:
"Henry Corbin cites again and again the hadith
central to the spirituality of Sufism:
'He who knows himself knows his Lord.'
Corbin writes: Through the redemptive path of pure love,
the consciousness [of the faithful] becomes that of the mystic who
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."
Note: to see more quotes visit my blog page:
The "Symbolic Photograph" and "Self Knowledge"
When I was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (1969-72) pursuing an MFA degree in photography, I wrote a 110 page paper entitled The Symbolic Photograph: A Means To Self Knowledge based primarily on the research and ideas of Carl Jung.
Though what I wrote about then remains essentially true for me today, my understanding of those ideas have been vastly expanded and deepened by what I have learned from my practice of Siddha Yoga Meditation, and my study of Henry Corbin's ideas. (A good place to start with Corbin is Tom Cheetham's series of four books, beginning with The World Turned Inside Out).
The ancient yogic scriptures say that seeing, or perception is a process of projection; that the outer world we perceive is a projected manifestation of the interior world of our own divine, Universal Self. This of course echos the ideas that Corbin wrote about in his book Alone With the Alone, the Creative Imagination In the Sufism of Ibn' Arabi, and Jung's ideas about the Creative (unconscious) Process of Medieval Alchemy, and the concept of synchronicity.
The ancient yogic scriptures say that seeing, or perception is a process of projection; that the outer world we perceive is a projected manifestation of the interior world of our own divine, Universal Self. This of course echos the ideas that Corbin wrote about in his book Alone With the Alone, the Creative Imagination In the Sufism of Ibn' Arabi, and Jung's ideas about the Creative (unconscious) Process of Medieval Alchemy, and the concept of synchronicity.
(Note: my essay Seeing the Grand Canyon provides a detailed account of my own personal experience of perception as a process of projection. And I highly recommend the book entitled The Splendor of Recognition by Swami Shantananda, a Siddha Yoga teacher, which has some fascinating material regarding perception. Also I recommend the book Art and the Creative Unconscious by Eric Newmann, a student of Jung's)
Jung's involvement with synchronicity was supported by his experiences as a psychotherapist, his work with patients would tell him remarkable stories of their synchronistic experiences of meaningful coincidence. Jung believed that these apparently acausal-coincidental perceived events were the patient's experience of their own projected unconscious contents onto the things and events in their personal physical-sensible world.
In my MFA written thesis I argued that photographs experienced to be meaningful in a particularly deep, revelatory though unsayable way were symbolic photographs, spontaneously formed images which sprang from within the unconscious psyche that had been projected out onto corresponding real world experiences. In a way, the images are the pictorial manifestation of highly intuitive visionary-perceptual Imaginal experiences--experiences of synchronicity.
For example: when I experience a strong impulse to photograph something that I am perceiving to be meaningful, and I am imagining how what I am seeing could yield a potentially meaningful and visually articulate photograph, and then I decide spontaneously to make an exposure with my camera of what I am seeing . . . I am essentially giving visual photographic form to my experience of synchronicity, my intuitive perceptual recognition of unconscious content I have projected onto their outer-world corresponding physical counterparts.
The The Symbolic Photograph, then, is a photographic image which conjoins inner and outer world corresponding images into a unified visual whole. Symbolic Photographs appear "alive," "radiant" with unknown meaning, and are compellingly attractive to me and perhaps other viewers because of their hidden, unconscious, spiritual, divine content, what Jung called Knowledge of the Individuating Self.
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The concept of the Self took on a whole new world of meaning for me after I met Gurumayi in 1987, experienced her grace and began studying the yogic texts and teachings. Gradually I came to understand that my experience of making photographs (which functioned for me as symbols) and my experience of contemplating those images was based in the same transcendent Creative Energy that I had been experiencing directly from Gurumayi's state of Oneness with God, and in her gestures, her talks, poems and other writings. Essentially, the Creative Energy that drove my Creative Process of photographic picture-making, and the contemplation of those images which were functioning for me as symbols, was the same divine Energy that manifests and maintains the entire created Universe.
When I make a photograph that functions for me as a True, living symbol, what I am being attracted to, what invokes the longing in me to contemplate the image, is its inner radiance--what in Siddha Yoga is called the Light of Consciousness, the divine Knowledge of the inner supreme Self. And contemplation is the process by which the Creative Energy of the Universe that pervades a symbolic photograph is interiorized, absorbed and integrated into the wholeness of my being. That longing to imbibe the photograph's grace is the same longing that compels me to do the Siddha Yoga practices: the desire to be immersed in that transforming, purifying energy, to know its meaning deep within me beyond the realm of words and duality, to become consciously united with the supreme Self which dwells within me as me.
(Note: regarding the "inner radiance of symbols," I had am extraordinary, mysterious experience one day in 2011, at a museum in Istanbul, Turkey while viewing an exhibition of illuminated Qur'ans. I actually "saw" an illuminate image glowing with its own inner radiance. I have written about this experience in a photography project Prayer Stones," the first chapter of a large multi-chaptered project entitled "An Imaginary Book." It was that experience, and the Imaginary Book project that led me to the writings of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham, and many other wonderful Sufic writers and scholars.)
The Discipline of Seeing & Contemplation
In Gurumayi Chidvilasananda's book The Discipline of Yoga, she says that although God dwells in all of its Creations, including the Heart of every human being, it takes great yogic discipline to have the darshan, the "vision" of that Truth. And she talks about a meditation practice that involves "installing an object of worship into one's own being." Of course this "object of worship" could take many different forms, an ancient revealed yogic text, a poem by a poet-saint, the teachings of a Master of Yoga, or any True living symbol. A Symbolic photograph, by its very nature, is a "sacred object" worthy of "worship," worthy of being "installed into one's own being."
The yogic practice of contemplation, then, is a form of meditation which gives a contemplator longing to know the Truth a means of interiorizing, absorbing and integrating the grace, the Self Knowledge contained within any True "object of worship."
Following are some excerpts I have drawn from The Discipline of Yoga which--for me--relate to the practices of both making and contemplating symbolic photographs. The quotes appear in the chapters entitled "The Pursuit of a Great Goal," the "Discipline of Seeing" and the "Discipline of Listening."
When you focus your mind on something, whatever it may be, absorb its qualities.
In a very real way, you take it into yourself. At the same time, you also
infuse it with your own energy. You give it life. It is your bhav,
your devotion, your deep feeling, that gives meaning to
everything. . . . The formless takes on
a form that you can relate to.
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When the Seer and the seen become one,
when you recognize the unity between
them, great ecstasy explodes within.
Your perception is cleansed,
it becomes divine.
Through the knowledge of the Seer within
the eyes, you attain divine perception.
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"The inner eyes see what lies beyond the mind;
. . . I saw the whole universe within me."
the words of poet-saint Jhaneshwar Maharaj, as quoted by Gurumayi
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when you recognize the unity between
them, great ecstasy explodes within.
Your perception is cleansed,
it becomes divine.
Through the knowledge of the Seer within
the eyes, you attain divine perception.
*
"The inner eyes see what lies beyond the mind;
. . . I saw the whole universe within me."
the words of poet-saint Jhaneshwar Maharaj, as quoted by Gurumayi
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"Don't be deluded.
Kabir says, O noble seeker, listen,
Gold exists in the mine, but you must dig in order to get it."
the words of the poet-saint Kabir, as quoted by Gurumayi
the words of the poet-saint Kabir, as quoted by Gurumayi
So you go deeper into yourself. You transcend yourself
to find gold, and that is the light of God, the Truth.
"Don't be deluded." Don't be infatuated with
words and with flattery. You must dig
within in order to find gold.
Contemplation & the Discipline of Silence
Also in her book The Discipline of Yoga, in the chapter regarding the discipline of Silence, Gurumayi writes:
Only a seeker who has been able to silence all his senses
is worthy of beholding the splendor of God.
This statement is particularly relevant to me in the way that I experience my practice of photography as a form of "meditation in action." When I am photographing I enter a mode of consciousness that is very much like a mediative state. My mind is still, and I am seeing the outer world intuitively, that is to say, from inside the silence of my innermost being, the infinite space of the Universal Heart:
. . . it is when the inner eye opens, when the eye of the heart,
the subtle eye, becomes active, that a person truly
begins to see, truly beings to understand,
truly begins to live in the light.
The eyes begin to fathom
the mystery of the
Truth.
The mode of consciousness I am experiencing when contemplating a symbolic photograph is very similar to the mode of consciousness I experience when making photographs. The next four quotes regarding silence and listening also relate to the practice of contemplating symbolic photographs:
It is when you become completely silent that you are able
to absorb knowledge. ~ In silence you hear the
message of Truth. ~ In silence you hear the
the voice of the inner Self. God
speaks in silence.
True silence must take its seat in the mind.
It must emerge from there.
You have to let your mind know that this awareness of silence
is actually a great state, a state in which you experience
inner miracles, inner treasures.
This silence is not an inert state of the body but the
state of shimmering consciousness. ~ Your
entire being scintillates with
Consciousness.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, The Yoga of Discipline,
Chapter 11, The Discipline of Silence, "The State of Shimmering Consciousness"
Steps of the Process
Contemplating Symbolic Photographs
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The consciousness of [the contemplator] becomes that of the mystic who
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.
Henry Corbin
I offer the six procedural steps outlined below merely as pointers along the way for the grace of the contemplation process moves with Its own volition; It goes where It must go, in the way that It must, according to the needs and capabilities of each contemplator and the image being contemplated. As you gain experience in the contemplation of symbolic images you will learn how best to align yourself with the grace of the process.
The important thing is your attraction to the image, the grace embodied by the image; and the strength of your intention (your longing) as a contemplator. Your intention will invoke grace and contribute its grace to the process.
The mystery of the Truth contained in a living symbol is based in grace rather than in the rational intellect, thus it will be best to enter into the experience of contemplation without expectations. Simply be open to what the creative energy of the process and the creative energy within the image want to give you.
1) Look carefully at the photograph. If the image is functioning for you as a symbol, its presence of grace, its unknown but felt sacred Knowledge, and the grace of your intention as a contemplator will work together to still and steady your mind.
2) With a stilled and steady mind, focus on the photograph with one-pointed concentration; look deep into the image; and then look even more deeply into the image until your Heart begins to open.
3) Allow your Heart, the innermost part of your Being, to open to the image.
4) Take the image deep into the center of your being, the cave of the Heart. Allow the consciousness of your inner "Witness" to keep a steady, focused awareness on the image. Allow "the Eye of the Heart" to "see" what the image wants you to see.
5) The grace of the contemplation process, and the grace of your intention will initiate a "Silent Dialogue" between the image and your "witness" consciousness. Allow the "Ear of your Heart" to "listen." Hear what the image wants to say to you.
Note: During the "Silent Dialogue" words will not be "heard" for words have no practical use in this deep realm of meditative consciousness, in the cave of the Heart. The meaning of a True, living symbol is beyond words, however its sacred Knowledge will "speak" to you in the "language of the Heart" revealing the mystery of its Truth to you in a way that will be most appropriate to you.
6) It's possible that during the contemplation process you and the image will merge, become inseparably one. It's equally possible that the feeling of Oneness with the image will come to you some time after the contemplation process has appeared to have come to a closure. In any case, remain vigilant; watch for any hints of the process bubbling up into your conscious awareness at any time. Those surprising moments of recognition can be filled with wonderful "inner treasures."
When you bathe the mind in contemplation
of the divine, it gains everlasting purity.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, My Lord Loves A Pure Heart
The Knowledge revealed to you by the symbolic image and the contemplation process will eventually become absorbed into the Great Silence, the Great Space of the pure Heart, the supreme Self which exists within you, as you. That Knowledge will act as a purifying fire
that will, when the time is right, dissolve the veil separating you from your own inner Greatness.
that will, when the time is right, dissolve the veil separating you from your own inner Greatness.
The Fire of Self Knowledge
. . . the fire of knowledge. Knowing that everything in the world is enveloped by
God. ~ Knowing how to be content with what is happening to you, inside
and out . . . When this knowledge arises inside you through God's grace
you do understand that everything is God, and you need not worry,
you need not fear. ~ All that is, is God's. ~ Then you don't have
the terrible attachment which brings about pain. Then your
freedom is complete. ~ This is the knowledge of the Self.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, My Lord Loves A Pure Heart,
"Steadfastness In Knowledge
click on the image to enlarge
This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page on June 8, 2020
Welcome Page on June 8, 2020
Related links:
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects from most recent to those dating back to the 1960's. Here you will also find my resume, contact information . . . and much more.
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