Forgotten Wisdom
Duality : Illusion & reality
Part VIII of the Pandemic-Inspired Photography Projects
Introduction
This is the eighth part of my continuing series of photography projects inspired by the Coronavirus & Trumpism Pandemic. Before I introduce the themes of this particular project--Forgotten Wisdom, Duality, Illusion & Reality, I will report on the Covid-19 Pandemic, then discuss what I mean by Trumpism.
The Covid-19 Report
The Coronavirus Pandemic appears to have begun to show, in late January, a turn for the better, despite many confusing and seemingly contradictory reports. There has been a decrease in numbers of new hospitalizations, generally, but the daily death rate varies in different parts of the US and in different countries around the globe. In some areas deaths have remained near all time highs (probably because of all the travel during the holidays and lack of discipline in regards to social distancing). ~ The entire world has just topped 100 million infections.
There are several vaccines on the market, now, and more are on the horizon, but the production and distribution of the drugs is progressing much slower than expected, and to some extent this is probably due to the Trump Administration's lack of involvement (and denial of) the Pandemic. For example, all fifty states had been promised vaccines that had been stored in reserve, but it turns out that was just another lie by the Trump Administration.
In New York State, where I live, though I qualify for vaccination (because I am over the age of 75) no appointments are available in our area and it may be several months before I will get a scheduled appointment for the first of the two required vaccine shots. Because there are new and more contagious strains of the virus emerging, additional booster shots may be on the horizon. The NY Times reported that "many communities (like New York City) remain at extremely high risk of contracting the virus, with the number of new cases 40% lower on January 29 than at the U.S. peak three weeks earlier."
Wearing a mask everywhere (and double masking would be even better) when near other people, plus the basic rules of social distancing and the washing of hands seem to be the best solutions to staying safe until all can be vaccinated, and by all I mean everyone on the planet. Poor countries are having an even more difficult time getting the vaccine. And variant strains from South Africa, Brazil and Britain have been detected in several states in the US in the past thirty days. ~ The new Biden Administration has made big efforts to get vaccines for the United States . . . but it may take many months to get the product and then distribute it. "It is a pivotal moment," one virologist said. "It is a race with the new variants to get a large number of people vaccinated before those variants spread."
Regarding Trumpism
The end of the Trump presidency was officially consummated on January 20, 2021 when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn into office. Trump had done everything he could to win the election, including voter suppression, outrageous lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories, and applying threats to election administrators to help him turn over the election results . . . and more.
On January 6, the day after the results were announced that the Georgia Runoffs resulted in two new Democratic Senate seats, the members of Congress gathered together in the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. to formally certify the results of the Presidential Electoral College Votes. Trump publicly called on a mob of his far-right supporters who had gathered in Washington DC, to storm the Capitol Building to disrupt the certification process.
Five people died in the violent, chaotic mob attack on the Capitol Building (and two other guards committed suicide afterwards). Hours after the attack, the lawmakers reconvened in the Capitol Building and certified the Election results. In the days that followed many of the mobsters were located and arrested. And a week after the attack on the Capitol Building, the House Impeached Trump for the second time in his presidency. Mitch McConnell shut down the Senate making it impossible to have an Impeachment Trial before the inauguration. And McConnell made some kind of deal with the Democrats to delay the trial until February 8. Trump has continued claiming the whole election was a fraud, and this has brought him financial support from his base which he could use to cover the legal costs he will be facing in the near future. If congress fails at stopping Trump from running for a Federal Office in the future, he may use his supporter's gifts of money to cover costs of running for president in 2024.
I was talking with a friend about the events that had taken place in the first week of January and I expressed my frustration with Trump's dangerous, anti-democracy behaviors. He responded: "The problem is not so much with Trump himself, but rather with Trumpism. I think he meant that the problems that exist in our country as a whole--which Trump has brought out of the shadows and into the light of day--will not go away with Trump no longer occupying the Whitehouse. Indeed, this country has entered a new realm of life in which lying, misinformation, and conspiracy theories have become an everyday mode of operation for those in power who who take the far right side of politics, including racism and white supremacy.
I highly recommend that you Click here to see Wikipedia's long explication on the word Trumpism. And see PBS's Frontline documentary United States of Conspiracy which was first aired in July, 2020 and was updated following the January 6, 2021 event at the Capitol Building.
Illusion & Reality
At the center of Trump's manipulative strategy is his attempts to "divide" so that he can bully and gain "power over" others. He uses any means to accomplish this, for he needs this sense of power to satisfy his insatiable sociopathic form of narcissism. We live in a Dualistic World and Trump, being the con-man that he is, has learned how to use division to his advantage.
In my previous seven photography projects I repeatedly stated that the projects were inspired by the Coronavirus Pandemic; and in more recent projects, including this one, I have acknowledged Trumpism as a Pandemic as well. To say that the corrupt and dangerous events of the past year has "inspired" my creative process in some way requires some additional explanation.
Rather than engage the outer events directly, I have focused most of my attention and energy inwardly, through my creative process in photography, and through my yogic practices. Indeed, making and contemplating photographs are, for me, a form of meditation. The great yogic teachings say that turning within, and getting in touch with the divine that dwells within each one of us, is the most important thing one can do for ourselves individually, and for the universe as a whole.
For everything you can think of there is an opposite: intellect, intuition; devils, angels; sinners, saints; above, below; visible, invisible; inside, outside; ego, Self; lies, truth; same, different; separate, interconnected; forever, end; fact, fiction. Photographs that function for me as True living Symbols retun me to the remembrance and the experience of the Oneness of Being, what the yogis refer to as the divine Self that dwells within us, as us.
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In this project, two of the major subject matter themes, snow and trees are physical manifestations of silence and stillness which, according to most yogic traditions, are considered the essential characteristics of God, or the divine Self. Though most people are certain that trees are different from human beings, the Irish environmental visionary, poet, botanist and biochemist, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, wrote in her book The Global Forest that trees and humans "share the same God." Her wonderful film The Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees is based on her writings in The Global Forest, which she has said is a "prayerbook to the Forests, the Trees and our Planet." Her film has been an inspiration for this project, and I have respectfully, lovingly and gratefully paid homage to Diana by taking part of her film's title and using her words Forgotten Wisdom in my title for this project.
Diana tells us that the Forests and the Oceans of the world are connected by an ancient, silent conversation that has supported and sustained this planet, and will continue to do so . . . if trees and forests are allowed to live and grow in a sustainable way. ~ There is, she explains, an invisible chain of relationships that become visible in the most tragic of ways when man disrupts the natural ecology of forests by clear-cutting, dirty mining, and other such things.
Humans don't yet understand what happens underground in a forest other than that all the trees communicate with each other via a web of interconnected roots and the other elements within the rich forest soil. Diana wants us to understand that the Laws of Trees are a sacred trust that we humans must honor. After all, trees clean the air we humans breath; trees help purify the water that we need to imbibe in order to live. Without healthy Forests the ecology of our Oceans will be significantly disrupted; and without healthy Forests and Oceans humanity will not be able to survive.
There is an end to the Forests and the Oceans, Diana tells us. The short sightedness of human greed and consumerism has become a major problem for the well being of our planet and its future. Fairy Tales are filled with the magic and mystery of forests, but if we don't remember and respect the natural world, if we don't regain a loving and vital relationship with the Forests, if we don't pay attention to the Wisdom that dwells within trees, forests . . . the entire natural world . . . the planet will get rid of us.
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Remembering & Forgetting; paying attention, ignoring; the sacred, the profane; light, dark; silence, noise; the known, the unknown . . . There are poets and deeply intuitive scientists and saints that say the world of dualism is an illusion; that everything in this world is connected and part of a holistic Reality, and that the inner world and outer world are One. Our minds (our egos), however, create a veil of separation, a veil of illusion such that our perception of the world is pervaded by opposites, the appearances of separation.
The word yoga means "union," the Oneness of Being. Saints of all religious Traditions have spoken and written about their continuous conscious awareness of their experience of grace, their union with God, the union of the individual soul with the supreme Soul . . .
Photography & Yoga
After I met and experienced the grace of the yogic saint Gurumayi Chidvilasanada, in August, 1987, I came to a new understanding about my creative process in photographic picture-making. That is, photography has become a means by which I can have the darshan, the inner visionary experience, of the divine Presence, the grace that pervades everything in the outer world. When that experience, however brief, however intuitive, is given its equivalent visual form, those photographs become (for me) radiant with grace, the creative power of the universe. The images celebrate the Oneness of Being. They can invoke the experience of Unitary Reality within a contemplator. I call these kinds of image True, living Symbols.
According to the teachings of the Siddha Yoga Path, meditation is the practice of quieting the mind, stilling the mind's thought-waves. When the mind is silenced, the ego dissolves; and when the ego dissolves the mind's psychic veil (maya) dissolves. Images which function for me as symbols provide me with brief glimpses of the Truth which serve as open-hearted reminders that I live in a world in which--despite appearances--everything is connected, everything is radiant with grace, everything is pervaded by stillness and silence; everything is part of the One, divine "play" of the Self, supreme Consciousness.
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As a prelude to the photographs I am presenting, below, I am offering a selection of quotes from a book entitled Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri. The book consists of a collection of edited writings by Swami Muktananda, the founder of the Siddha Yoga Path, about his teacher Bhagawan Nityananda who was born an enlightened being, and was one of the most beloved saints of India. The excerpts I've chosen include some of Nityananda's teachings that are related to the themes I am exploring in this project. Following the photographs I have written some commentary on a selection of the images, then I close the project with an Epilogue which contains two additional images.
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Even though you are being swept away by the river of illusion . . .
every soul in this world is a part of the supreme Soul, and is
always seeking reunion with that blissful Lord. All the
knowledge in the world, all the arts and sciences,
should be understood as paths to [that] joy.
Swami Muktananda, Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri pg. 46
This entire world consists of different forms of God. This
world is not a solid substance, not the final reality; it is
a form of the Self, a play of divine Consciousness . . .
The Lord, though He is one and indivisible,
reveals Himself in millions of forms. The
delusions of maya, and maya herself,
are also forms of the Lord. All this
is [God's] amazing composition,
His mysterious creation. The
only One dwelling in this
entire world is God.
Swami Muktananda, Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri pg. 38
Bhagawan Nityananda used to say: "This universe is
infinite and it is your own Self. See the world as a
form of the inner Self. The world is not separate
from you and you are not separate from the
world. This is Vedanta, this is devotion,
and this is worship. Dwelling right
within you is your own Lord."
Swami Muktananda, Bhawawan Nityananda of Gneshpuri, pg. 29
My Gurudev, Nityananda urged seekers to penetrate the
apparent differences of this world through meditation
and knowledge, to reach the underlying Reality
and have the darshan of the Lord
both inside and outside.
Swami Muktananda, Bhawawan Nityananda of Gneshpuri, pg. 72
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The Photographs
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Note: I encourage you to click on each image, this will enable you to view the
images in a darkened background, and in a more technically refined mode of
presentation. If you click on the image a second time the image will appear
enlarged, allowing you to explore detailed areas of the image more closely.
#1 Early Morning view of the Snow-dusted Miniature Crabapple Tree and Bird Feeder
#2 Snow-dusted Staghorn Sumac
#3 Snow-dusted Broken, Fallen Tree Limbs
#4 The Rings of Life Inside a Sawed-off Tree Trunk
#5 The Little Boy and the Christmas Tree (Round Cookie Tin)
#6 Round Serving Platter with Light Reflections
#7 Light Streak on Piece of Paper with Blue Tape
#8 Two Snow-covered Stones on top of a Raised Bed Timber Piece
#10 Melting Cloud-like Snow Piles On Lawn
#11 Snow Angel
#12 Two Bent-over Meadow Plants In Snow
#13 Meadow Plant In Snow with Mouse Hole
#14 Soft-spot in the Center of the Iced-over Snow-covered South Meadow Pond
#15 Soft-spot, Enlarged, in the Center of the Iced-over Snow-covered South Meadow Pond
#16 Iced-over Snow-covered South Meadow Pond with a Small Tree-like Crack Form
#17 Iced-over South Meadow Pond with Snow Shapes and a Large Tree-like Crack Form
#18 Iced-over South Meadow Pond with an Ice-Crystal Shape pointing at a Small Tree-like Crack Form
#19 Iced-over South Meadow Pond with Petroglyph-like Crack Image
Commentary
on
Selected Photographs
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Introduction to the Project's visual themes
As I worked on this project, its title changed several times. Ideas and themes would come and change and go as I watched my growing collection of images unfold, and as I experimented with different selections of images and ways of sequencing them within this blog's vertical format. The changes affected the way I saw and understood the images as a whole, and this changed the way I thought of titles for the project.
Of course Snow is a recurring subject matter theme in this project, as it was in my previous project which celebrated snow and the spirits of Christmas. However I did not realize Trees was a dominate theme in this project until my wife and I watched the film by Diana Beresford-Kroeger, The Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees.
My sequence of 21 photographs begins with an image of a tree (see below), a miniature hanging crabapple tree, with a bird feeder hanging--like a Christmas tree ornament--from one of its lower limbs. This beautiful tree has become the center, the heart, the hub of the natural world as it pertains to our small back yard which interfaces the Meadow (with its two ponds) and then the tapering woods and the rolling hills beyond. Each morning I fill this and two other feeders in our back yard with sunflower seeds. The birds especially like the feeder under the apple tree. I think they prefer the intimacy of the space, the winds are less intense there, and I suspect the little birds feel safer--from predators--under the tree, though I have often seen hawks perching on the top limbs of the tree quietly watching over the meadow for prey.
The feeder attracts all kinds of wildlife. We have seen possums hanging from the apple tree's limbs trying to get to the seeds inside the feeder; several squirrels come over from the woods and stretch from the tree's trunk struggling to get seeds out to the feeder. Deer come at night and eat whatever is left in the feeder and on the ground. And all sorts of birds fly into and on top of tree, and just hang-out with each other, and waiting for the right moment to make their move toward the feeder, or the other two feeders in our backyard.
The tree is so beautiful in the spring when delicate luminous snow-like blossoms cover the tree; then later the miniature apples come, and in the fall the leaves turn wonderful colors. The below was taken early in the morning after it had received a dusting of snow. Just beyond the tree, out of sight, is the smaller of the two meadow ponds where I have taken many of the other photographs in this project.
#1 Early Morning view of the Snow-dusted Miniature Crabapple Tree and Bird Feeder
Another theme in this project, one that surprised me, is represented by three photographs (images #5,6,7) taken inside my house. I had become so fixated on photographing outside in the snow after I completed my previous project (which celebrates snow and the spirits of Christmas) that I hardly noticed I had taken the three interior images. My first Pandemic-inspired photography project, STAY HOME consists of still lifes, images of domestic objects, and interior spaces. The three "inside" photographs in this project are very personal images for me; each is pervaded by a magical, intimate quality of space and light.
The #6 image (below, of the metallic serving platter), contains three thematic ideas: it is an "interior" photograph, it is a "round" object, and within the round form there are "curved forms that turn in on themselves." The #4 image, of the sawed off tree truck, below, unveils its interior rings, each representing a year of growth. The rings seem to vibrate and expand outwardly from its center-point like a vibration about to transform into audible sound.
#4 The Rings of Life Inside a Sawed-off Tree Trunk
#6
#13
Regarding the South Pond Photographs
The Meadow which interfaces our back yard gets mowed (regretfully) each year in the late Fall, and when it snows only the tallest of the cut and surviving whole plants remain visible in the snow. When I see their elegant forms isolated in the snow I often think of them as "lines" drawn on white paper. It seems even the simplest visual forms and events, when seen isolated against the whiteness of snow, carries tremendous though silent meanings.
Of the two ponds in the Meadow I have been very attracted, recently, to the smaller South Pond. It's closer to our back yard, more accessible and easier to photograph; and its surface, as it freezes and thaws, has been manifesting some remarkable visual forms to photograph. Six of the images in this project are of ice forms which seem to have emerged from deep within the pond's ice. Image #17 (below) was first published in my previous Snow project. The tree-like (root-like) form within the ice fascinated me so much that I began to return frequently to the same place on the pond to see what other forms might present themselves. In Image #18 the white-crystalled form on the surface of the ice resembles an arm, a hand, and a finger which seems to be pointing toward a small, dark tree-like form . . . as if the surface forms didn't want us to miss the little spectacle emerging from inside the ice.
#17
#18
#19
Image #19 (above) reminds me of a prehistoric petroglyph. It's cryptic message could have something to do with the sun. I can image the image etched into the surface of an ancient stone, though here we know the image was created by natural forces, or perhaps the "ice spirits" or a snow angel. Who knows what communication is being offered through the many forms that have appeared from within the pond's luminous gray space, forms that change and eventually dissolve back into deeper waters below.
#11 The curved forms of a Snow Angel's wings
#15
Images #14, #15 and #16, all pond images, have circles in them. Image #15 (above) reminds me of an eye. There is a poem I often think about that says, essentially: "Everything is alive! Everything has eyes! Everything is looking at me!" (In Image #6, above, the light curved shapes in the silver platter form an "eye" . . . which is "looking at me.")
My wife Gloria and I recently watched a new documentary film, The Phenomenon, which is about UFO's. It impressed me very much, and some of the new pond images with circles in them remind me of UFO images presented in the film. The Phenomenon takes a positive stand towards UFO's and aliens . . . and is very critical toward our Federal Government's attempts at covering up some very compelling evidence and interviews with people who have experienced close encounters. There is a very intense part late in the film in which 60 young school children were interviewed after they had experienced a close encounter with aliens (close, like three feet away!). It occurred in 1994, in Zimbabwe as they were playing together outside during recess. The makers of the film were able to find many of those children, and interview them again, just recently, as adults. Though they seemed visibly shaken as they recounted their experience, they said that as children their intuitive sense was that the aliens were not threatening. Just the opposite. For they felt that some internal, nonverbal communication was going on between them that was urging them to care for the environment.
The close encounters discussed in the film invoked a memory of when I was young boy, growing up in Piqua, Ohio. Shortly after my dad died, in August, 1955, there were several news stories on the radio and in the news paper about UFO sightings and possible abductions. I felt very vulnerable at the time (I had just turned ten years old) and became quite frightened that the aliens might single me out and try taking me away with them into the vast space of a starry night.
#5
The Young Boy and the Christmas Tree
I took this photograph just after I had published my previous project consisting of snow images in praise of Christmas Spirits. It contains four of the primary visual themes I have identified within this project: 1) snow, 2) a tree; 3) the image was made inside my house; and 4) the object photographed was round, and contained curved forms turning in on themselves.
The tin was a Christmas gift from our son; he had filled it with his very special home made Christmas cookies. I was fascinated with the illustration on the lid which invoked nostalgic memories of the Christmases I knew and loved as a young boy growing up in a happy working-class family. Before I took the photograph I had fallen into something like a reverie. It was if I had imaginatively entered the image of the boy with a Christmas tree on his shoulder and re-experienced an old, haunting memory.
The golden light falling down over the cookie tin from a table lamp above gives the image a magical, warm inviting quality. The cooler light skimming across the surface of the tin--which was coming from the rising sun through our opened front door--is illuminating parts of the rounded edges on the top of the tin, creating multiple thin, crescent moon-like shapes which appear to be swirling around the illustration, energizing the image of the young boy and "bringing it to life" with surprising vitality. . . . When I came out of my reverie and became conscious of what I was looking at again, I quickly ran and got my camera and made the photograph.
Seeing the Christmas tree on the young boy's shoulder sparked the remembrance of two very poignant experiences that occurred after my dad died just before I turned ten years old. During a family gathering at our house following the memorial service for my dad, my Aunt Betty came up to me and said, very seriously: "You are the man of the house now, Stevie. You must take good care of your mom." I carried the weight of those words on my shoulders well into my adult life.
Before my dad died, Christmas was the most exciting time of the year for me. For example, once Christmas Eve I just could not get to sleep. As I lay in bed I began hearing Christmas Bells ringing faintly in the distance. As I focused my attention on the sounds they seemed to get louder and louder. At one point, the sounds got too loud, so I went to my mom and dad's bedroom and complained to them about the loud sounds. I asked them if they could "make the bells stop ringing so loudly?" They told me I must have been dreaming, and that I should get some sleep because "Tomorrow was going to be a big day."
The first Christmas that followed my dad's death was anything but exciting. Indeed it with fraught with heaviness and sadness. My mom bought a Christmas tree for me and my younger sister about two weeks before Christmas. She stored it in our garage, and put it in a pail of water to keep it alive and fresh until it was time to bring it inside to decorate. ~ One very cold Ohio night the water in the pail froze. Later, when we brought the tree inside the house to decorate, it took several hours for the ice to melt before we could put the tree in the stand. While we were waiting, some of the needles started falling off the tree; and when we tried to put the tree in the stand . . . practically all of the needles fell to the floor.
My mother started crying; and the tree looked pathetically sad in its nakedness. The needles that had fallen to the floor seemed like tears that had been shed by the tree. I held back my tears--after all, I was the "man of the house." But I was feeling sad too, and confused, scared and helpless.
Fortunately my Aunt Renie called later that day and asked how things were going, and my mom told her about the Christmas tree. Aunt Renie told Uncle Dave and later that evening, after work, he came to our house with another tree! and he helped us put it into the tree stand. The next day my mom and I were able to decorate the tree in plenty of time for Christmas. ~ The memory of that experience has haunted me, like a ghost, every year at Christmas Time.
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Once I went with [Bhagawan Nityananda] for a walk along the
bank of a river. Near the road was a huge rock. He said:
"Do you see this rock? See the miracle? See the doing
of universal Consciousness? Here it has become
a rock; here it has become a human being;
here it has become a tree . . . It is God
who appears in different guises."
Nityananda had seen the
mystery of things . . .
the vision of unity
in diversity.
Swami Muktananda, from his book Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri, pg. 108
Epilogue
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Regarding the Interrelatedness of Things
I have pointed out the primary thematic ideas that pervade the collection of images in this project, and I've noted how several of the images embody multiple interrelated themes. Diana Beresford-Kroeger talks about the interrelatedness of things in nature, and the ancient silent conversations that exists even today between the elder trees in the most healthy of forests in her wonderful film The Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees. She explains how the larger, older forests are directly related to the oceans, and how the magnificent root systems hidden under the forest floor creates a vast unified web of connections that help protect, sustain and support the trees which in turn support the much greater ecology that includes the oceans and the very planet itself. She also talks about the human behaviors that are posing a great threat to the well being of our planet, its forests and its oceans, and how we can work together with the natural world to protect the planet and ourselves.
The idea of the interrelatedness of things in the natural world can be applied to a carefully edited collection of photographs, and a deeply considered ordering of the images within a sequential presentation. Each image has its own "voice," its own meaning of course, but when it is placed before or after or next to another image in an ordered sequence a "silent dialogue" (a communication beyond the limits of human language) is initiated between the images. This silent conversation between the images generates other, more subtle and expansive levels of ineffable meaning. In this regard, then, each image in this project can potentially manifest a meaning greater than itself when we pay close attention to the way the images interact with each other, and to how we as contemplators interact with the individual images and the collection of photographs as an organic visual whole.
The contemplation of symbolic photographs is a dynamic and ever changing creative process in itself. When a contemplator imaginatively enters an image and perceives it with the Eye of the Heart, the grace, the creative energy, the wisdom that exists within the image can be deeply felt and absorbed into the very center of his or her own Self.
As a contemplator, one can consciously make an effort to become an active participant in the silent dialogues that exist between the images in a carefully sequenced collection of photographs. After becoming silent and focused, we can project ourselves imaginatively into the space between the images . . . and "listen" to what the images are saying to each other. If they speak to us, it might be appropriate to enter into a dialogue with those images, and share our feelings and ideas with those symbolic images.
The wisdom that emerges from the process of contemplation is ever changing and full of expansive potentiality, for the meaning of True, living symbols are open-ended and thus reflect that which exists within each individual contemplator in any given moment.
Karl Pribram's Changing Reality
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As I was writing the text above for this Epilogue and constructing the two symmetrical photographs (presented below) I remembered an article that I always discussed with my Photo II students for an assignment I gave entitled "Multiple-Exposure-in-the-camera." I myself had created three large bodies of work between 1974-76 using multiple-exposure techniques and had benefited tremendously from the experience. The way the process manifests different time-space events such that they appear to co-exist inside one another simultaneously, and in synchronistically meaningful juxtapositions, was very exciting to me and helped me trust my own intuitive relationship with the photographic medium. Thus I was always enthusiastic about sharing that experience with my students and seeing what imagery they would come up with.
For my "Multiple-Exposure" lecture I drew heavily from an article written by Marilyn Ferguson, published in the May, 1978 issue of Human Behavior. I have no idea how this article, entitled "Karl Pribrum's Changing Reality" came into my position, but it was always a pleasure to give that lecture and see what kind of dialogue it would generate between me and my students.
Ferguson presents a series of ideas regarding Pribrum's "holographic model" of human consciousness, ideas which marry his brain research to theoretical physics. She was very interested in the way that Pribrum "accounts for normal perception" and simultaneously "takes paranormal and transcendental experiences out of the supernatural by explaining them as part of nature."
A hologram is made by using two laser beams. When they touch, they produce an interference pattern of light and dark ripples that can be recorded on a sensitized photographic glass plate. If one of the beams, instead of coming directly from the laser, is reflected off an object, the resulting patterns will be very complex but they can still be recorded. Light falls onto the photographic plate from two sources: the object itself and from a reference beam, a light deflected by a mirror from the object onto the plate. The apparently meaningless swirls on the plate do not resemble the object photographed, but the image can be reconstituted by a coherent light source, like a laser beam. The result is a 3-D likeness projected into space, at a distance from the glass plate. If the hologram is broken, any piece of it will reconstruct the entire image.
#20 Symmetrical Photograph (constructed with the #3 image) Please click on the image
#21 Symmetrical Photograph (constructed with an image of the ice covered pond)
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As I wrote about the process of making holographs, which involves the mirroring of an image, it occurred to me that my process of constructing four-fold symmetrical photographs is similar in certain ways. The process includes the duplication of one "source" images four times, then conjoining the four images such that each is mirrored in each other above & below and left & right. The four mirrored images meet each other at the very center point of the symmetrical image; and it has often been my feeling, my experience when I contemplate my symmetrical photographs that the image as whole has emerged from inside that point, as if it has unfolded, like a flower, from within that invisible Imaginal realm. ~ When the symmetrical photographs are functioning at their very best for me, they are radiantly alive visual embodiments of the idea of the interconnectedness of everything, the Oneness of Being. (Note: please click on these two images)
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Marilyn Ferguson then introduces the ideas of theoretical physicist David Bohm. It turns out that he too had been thinking along similar lines as Pribram: "'What appears to be a stable, tangible, visible, audible world," said Bohm, "is an illusion. It is dynamic and kaleidoscopic--but it is not really 'there.'"
She then quotes Pribram: "Maybe reality isn't what we see with our eyes. If we didn't have that lens--the mathematics performed by our brain--maybe we would know a world organized in the frequency domain. No space, no time--just events." Indeed, Pribram suggests that transcendental experiences, mystical states, may allow us direct access to that world organized in the frequency domain.
Ferguson presents the ideas of many other physicists and astronomers who have shared the opinion that the real nature of the universe is immaterial, but orderly. For example, Einstein professed mystical awe in the face of the harmony of the universe. ~ Astronomer Jame Jeans said that the universe is more like "a great thought than a great machine." ~ Astronomer Arthur Eddington said "The stuff of the universe is mind-stuff." ~ And cyberneticist David Foster described '"an intelligent universe" whose apparent concreteness is generated by--in effect--cosmic data from "an unknowable, organized source."'
To put Pribram's holographic theory "in a nutshell" Ferguson writes: "Our brains mathematically construct 'hard' reality by interpreting frequencies from a dimension transcending time and space. The brain is a hologram, interpreting a holographic universe."
However, Pribram admits that he doesn't really understand what he's proposing. It's an intuition that feels right: "You can't use cause-and-effect reasoning to understand events not bound by time and space." ~ As another scientist put it: "There isn't any there."
Keith Floyd, a psychologist, said of the holographic possibility: "Contrary to what everyone knows is so, it may not be the brain that produces consciousness--but rather, consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain--matter, space, time, and everything else we are pleased to interpret as the physical universe." (This last notion is certainly in line with the ancient yogic traditions associated with the yoga that I practice, Siddha Yoga.)
Ferguson also invoked the philosophy of Henri Bergson who said in 1907 that "ultimate reality is an underlying web of connections." Bergson maintained that artists, like mystics, have access to the elan vital, the underlying creative process. For example, T. S. Eliot's poems are "full of holographic images," says Ferguson, and she cites this line from Eliot's poem Burnt Norton:
"The still point of the turning world."
And she cites a Hindu sutra which offers an ancient description of a holographic reality. In Ferguson's own words she writes:
In the heaven of Indra there is said to be a network of pearls
so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others
reflected in it. In the same way, each object in
the world is not merely itself but involves
every other object, and in fact is in
every other object.
*
Ferguson concludes her article "Karl Pribrum's Changing Reality" by saying: "How brain processes can be altered to allow direct experience of the frequency domain is still a conjecture. It may involve a known perceptual phenomenon--the "projection" that permits us to experience the full, three dimensional stereophonic sound as if the sound emanates from a point midway between two speakers instead of coming from two distinct sources."
And she quotes Pribram: "Mystical experience is no more strange than many other phenomena in nature . . ."
(Note: several years ago I had an experience while looking out into the vast space of the Grand Canyon that I believe qualifies as a "mystical" experience. I believe the experience may have been directly related to a yogic teaching I had been contemplating at the time regarding perception and projection. What I understood from my experience was that the vast space and beauty of the Grand Canyon that appeared to be "outside" of myself actually originated from some place deep within me; that I had projected this interior reality outward, as if onto a vast screen. ~ If this interests you, I invite you to read my full detailed account of that experience. Click here )
*
I will explain to you the essence of thousands of [yoga] scriptures
in half a verse. The world is an illusion. There is no difference
between the individual soul and the supreme Soul.
They are one and the same. ~ The world is as
you see it. You project your own outlook onto
someone else, onto this entire creation.
Everything is inside you . . . this
world is nothing but God,
the Guru, your own Self.
Swami Muktananda, Bhawawan Nityananda of Gneshpuri, pg. 92, 109-10, 116. 124
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This project was posted on my blog's
Welcome Page on February 2, 2021
Related Project Links:
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape blog which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating from the most recent to those dating back to the 1960's. You will also find on the Welcome Page my resume, contact information . . . and much more.
