Elegy
~The Messenger~
Finding Light in the Darkness
The following quote is from the introductory part of President Joe Biden's nationally televised speech on March 11, 2021:
Good evening my fellow Americans. Tonight I'd like to talk to you about where we are as we mark one year since everything stopped because of the pandemic. A year ago, we were hit with a virus that was met with silence and spread unchecked, denials for days, weeks, then months. That led to more deaths, more infections, more stress, and more loneliness. . . . It was difficult for everyone, we all lost something--a collective suffering, a collective sacrifice, a year filled with the loss of life and the loss of living for all of us. But in the loss, we saw how much there was to gain in appreciation, respect, and gratitude. Finding light in the darkness is a very American thing to do. In fact, it may be the most American thing we do. And that's what we've done. We've seen frontline and essential workers risking their lives, sometimes losing them, to save and help others. . .
Introduction (The Pandemic Report)
I am publishing this tenth project inspired by the Coronavirus Pandemic, on April 5, 2021, the Day following Easter Sunday, and just a few days after my wife Gloria and I received our second dose of the Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine at our neighborhood Walgreens Drugstore in Canandaigua, NY. I feel grateful and optimistic about how President Biden has been trying to turn things around in this country after ex-president Trump left the country in such a mess on just about all fronts when he was voted out of office, including his denials of science, not only in regard to Climate Change but the Pandemic as well. I find myself mourning the well being of the planet itself as well as the deaths of well over 551,0000 Americans over the past twelve months from the virus and its more recent variants. At the beginning of April the number of hospitalizations has been on the rise, and more escalation is expected after students and families return from spring breaks happening throughout the country this week; clearly many people have begun traveling again, despite the CDC's new recommendations.
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It certainly has been a dark, difficult, challenging year, and certainly not just for Americans; many many people around the world, especially the poorer countries, have suffered tremendous hardships, fear and grief due to the virus and the lack of medical help and supplies necessary for an appropriate governmental response. In the United States vaccinations are progressing better than expected. By May perhaps nearly everyone will have received at least a first shot of one of the vaccines now available.
There is so much that needs to be done in the US before we can regain some equilibrium from the difficult changes the Pandemic --and the Trump Administration's negligent handing of it--has imposed upon our usual ways of living. Joe Biden pleaded with all of us in his speech of March 11 to "come together as one people, one nation, one America." ~ "There's nothing we can't do when we do it together."
Just hours before Biden's speech he signed the 1.9 trillion dollar American Rescue Plan for COVID relief in the US, a bill which will help get our kids back into school, get more people back to work, and get our economy moving again . . . I'm sorry to have to say that the bill was totally unsupported by Republicans in both the House and the Senate; and several states--in our very divided country--seem determined to not participate in the new social distancing guidelines, including the wearing of masks, which President Biden feels is essential to getting us, as a whole country, back up and running again.
(Separately, the ex-president--Donald Trump--is continuing his familiar con game of lashing out at his enemies--"RINOS"--he is calling them--and asking for money from his personal support base so he can create and take control of his own "political committee." [click here to learn more] The other "Epidemic" that has been plaguing this country--namely, Trumpisim--has apparently not let up much, yet.)
Regarding this project and its Influences
I officially started my series of Photography Projects Inspired by the Pandemic a year ago with the the project entitled STAY HOME. In some ways the project before you now echos the first project in that the photographs were all made in our home; however the images in this project are darker, not only because they were made in extremely low levels of light in our basement . . . but also because they are giving voice to my grieving, the feeling of loss which pervades much of our nation. Still, all the images in this project share a most important characteristic: each contains the presence of light--if only a "spark," a glint or a glimmer--the light of hope that carries the real potentiality for creativity and renewal. The light emerging from within the darkness serves as a reminder for me of a greater Truth that is always present everywhere, within and without.
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There have been many influences that have come together to help inspire and give direction to this project, and I feel I should mention some of them here before I present my collection of 27 photographs. Following the photographs I will offer some commentary on selected images and include within the commentaries mention of other important influences, including the recent night photographs my friend Dick Knapp has been making.
As so often happens in my creative process, music has once again become an important influence on this project. As I was completing my previous project The Great Wonder In Simple Things, I became fixated on the piano music of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937), and in particular his haunting 1996 composition entitled The Messenger. I had been listening to several different recordings of Silvestrov's piano solo compositions, and on those albums which included The Messenger I would often find myself playing that haunting composition over and over again.
Silvestrov wrote The Messenger in two different versions: 1) for solo piano; and 2) for solo piano, string orchestra and synthesizer. One day, unexpectedly, I received an email advertising Helene Grimaud's new album entitled The Messenger (!) which includes both versions of the composition. After listening to a few excerpts of the album on her website I immediately ordered the album.
Grimaud's album is stunningly beautiful and powerful. Her interpretations in both versions of The Messenger are wonderfully articulate and deeply moving, and the quality of sound is excellent. Her performances are the best recorded versions of The Messenger I have heard so far. And the conceptual arc of the album is fascinating, and revealing. She has coupled five Silvestrov compositions with three compositions by Mozart: two solo piano pieces (the Fantasy in D minor, K397 and the Fantasy in C, K475) and the Piano Concerto #20 in D minor. I've been listening to Grimaud's recordings of the Silvestrov compositions non-stop as I've been working on this project. It feels to me like the grace of music (the grace of Silvestrov's compositions & the grace of Grimaud's performances) has found its way into my Creative Process and become a vital presence in every aspect of this project, especially the photographs.
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Silvestrov wrote The Messenger in 1996 as an elegy for his wife Larissa who died unexpectedly that same year. The title comes from the writings of a Russian philosopher, Jakov Druskin, with whom Silvestrov feels a deep spiritual kinship. Druskin's "messenger" is a fictional character who represents a link between this world and the world beyond. Silvestrov wrote about his musical composition, The Messenger: "It is as if a visitor from some other dimension in time came to us with a message . . . perhaps Larissa herself, perhaps some distant muse [Mozart] speaking in the language of the late eighteenth century. This archaic and yet vitally contemporary language is filtered through a profoundly postmodern sensibility."
The synthesizer that Silvestrov calls for in his string orchestra version of The Messenger is used to create a wind-like sighing sound that represents the arrival and the departure of the "visitor from some other dimension." It also represents, for me, the sounds of breathing. The sonic presence of sighing (of breathing) can be felt throughout the performance; it shrouds the sounds of the solo piano and the sounds of the string orchestra in a "mist" of mystery, in a feeling of melancholy, in a living presence of illumination that could only have come from some deep internal place of longing.
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The photograph, below, of a gallon bottle of water--shrouded by an old stained rag--was the very first photograph I made after completing my previous project (of snow photographs). I sensed when I took this photograph that perhaps I was receiving a "sign" or "hint" (or message) from my Creative Process regarding a visual direction or thematic idea I could (or should) pursue in my next project.
The image came to me in a rather unusual way. I was sitting on our exercise bike, peddling away as I was looking out through the basement window at the soft dimming light of evening; and I happened to glance to the left of the window and noticed the bottle, with the rag covering its top, sitting in the corner, against the wall, on the inside ledge of the window. (My wife Gloria keeps water in the bottle for watering plants in the basement.) I tried to ignore it, but I kept feeling drawn back to look at the bottle and the rag, over and over again. Finally I reached the point where I could not take my eyes off it. I became captivated by the soft glow of light inside the bottle; the shadow of the bottle on the wall; the perfect little "still life" composition that had spontaneously formed on the ledge just to the right of the bottle. ~ The rag seemed emblematic, perhaps of mourning, of suffocation . . . a foreboding of death. ~ I began wrestling with the idea of making a photograph of what was presenting itself before me. I wondered if I should stop peddling and go upstairs, get my camera, come back down and take a picture? ~ When my exercise period came to an end, of course, that's exactly what I did. Now the photograph seems like a gift that had been offered me by some unknown aspect of my Creative Process, some intuitive function that serves as a Messenger.
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There is something of "the grave" in the photographs I have made, in the basement, for this project. I can sense a feeling of the earth pressing in on the foundational walls of the images, and in the low angle and low level of light that comes into the basement from the ground level windows. The light itself has a peculiar, distinctly "dark" "earthy" quality about it which can be interpreted perhaps as a feeling of despair, or mourning, or longing. Certainly, throughout the past twelve months I have been fearful of losing the people I love and care about most, and could not be close enough to. As the thousands of deaths from the virus were being announced in the news each day, I would feel the loss, the grief that others were undoubtedly experiencing when their loved ones at last passed on after having watching them suffering horribly, in isolation. In that regard, Silvestrov's The Messenger was particularly comforting to me, and helped me remain conscious of the feelings I was experiencing.
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Among the instructions Silvestrov provides the pianist for his composition The Messenger, he insists: "the lid [of the piano] should be completely closed." This instruction invokes in me the image of a wooden coffin. (When I listen to the recording there is a sense in the sounds coming out of the closed piano that they are emerging from another dimension of reality that is beyond linear time and space). Silvestrov also includes this instruction: "The [sustaining] pedal should be used immediately so that the previous sounds can resonate" . . . as if the composer wants the sounds from the closed piano to last forever, as a suspended living musical presence that would exist beyond time, beyond space; a musical presence that would keep alive the remembrance of his wife Clarissa, the person with whom he had been the closest, the person dearest to him and to whom he dedicated the composition.
(Note: I have a very strong empathy to this music, and the emotional world from which it emerged in Silvestrov's creative process, for I nearly lost my wife, Gloria, twice: in 1969, just weeks before we were to be married, when she was hit by a car in Brooklyn, NY; and in 2003, when she was undergoing surgery and then chemo therapy as she battled a very aggressive form of cancer. (Gloria's will to live was (and remains) astonishing. She found ways to survive the cancer on her own initiative. And--very importantly--she had the inner support of the living grace of a True, yogic saint: Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. I will be writing more about Gurumayi and her teachings, below.) ~ I also, wanted to mention that when I was nearly ten years old, I experienced the unexpected loss of my dad, a loss that I believe is directly tied to the grace of my becoming passionately involved with photography. ~ Click here to see my collection of my death-themed photography projects--including an important essay I wrote entitled Death, Art and Writing).
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In 2011 Gloria and I traveled to Turkey where I experienced a series of extraordinary encounters with various forms of Islamic sacred art. The experiences were mysterious, transformative, visionary. (See my project Prayer Stones, for detailed descriptions of those experiences. Prayer Stones is the first project in my multi-chaptered project entitled "An Imaginary Book" that was inspired by my experiences in Turkey.)
Upon our return home I began studying about Islamic sacred art and Sufism, the esoteric aspect of Islam. In my unquenchable thirst for this knowledge I came across frequent references in my research to the Qur'an, the Holy book of Islam, and the story of how it came into existence. Muslims believe that each and every Arabic word in the Qur'an was orally revealed by God to the final prophet, Muhammad, through the archangel Gabriel who Christians consider the celestial patron saint of Messengers.
I mention this here also because while I was visiting a museum in Istanbul, looking at an exhibition of Qur'an Illuminations, I experienced a glowing golden light emerging from within one particular image that had attracted me, and which I had been looking at very closely. It was as if the geometrical abstract designs had come to life before my very eyes. Indeed the image seemed to be breathing and pulsating with its own interior light.
Also, as we traveled through Turkey I had several remarkable experiences while hearing the haunting sounds, the "music" of the Ezan--the Islamic Call to Prayer--wafting through the air from nearby mosques.
After I returned home and had time to contemplate my extraordinary experiences in Turkey, I realized that I had been blessed with experiences of grace that were connected to my practice of Siddha Yoga meditation, and the teachings of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda,
a saint from India that Gloria and I had met in August, 1987 in her New York Ashram. We received shaktipat initiation from her at that time in a two-day meditation program called an Intensive. (Gloria and I had been studying yoga with Gurumayi for 24 years at the time we traveled to Turkey in 2011; and we have continued our yogic practices with Gurumayi since then. See my project Photography and Yoga for details about my shaktipat experience.)
Gurumayi is the human embodiment of the Truth; in other words, she is a True "Messenger," one who radiates grace and speaks with a wisdom filled with the wonder of her constant state, her constant conscious awareness of her Oneness of Being, her Union with God.
After Gloria and I began practicing Siddha Yoga with Gurumayi, my creative process in photography became for me a form of yogic practice. Those images which function for me as a True living Symbols are illuminated with the grace of my Creative Process which is intimately connected with Gurumayi's grace and the grace of the entire lineage of Siddha Masters. (click here for more details about the lineage)
A True living symbolic photograph is, for me, another form of The Messenger, an image radiant with grace which unites the visible forms of the outer world with their corresponding invisible inner world counterparts, Imaginal, transformational forms of the light of grace. In other words, True living symbols are images which embody the radiant grace of the Oneness of Being. All True symbols deliver--directly to the Heart of a contemplator--messages of grace from the divine Self. The poet Robert Bly refers to these kinds of messages as the News of the Universe.
The
Photographs
(Note: if you are viewing this project with a desk-top or lap-top computer, I encourage
you to try clicking on each images once, twice, to see if that will enable an alternate
darker blog viewing space. You may notice that the image will then be sharper
and more luminous as well. A second click on the image may enlarge the
image thus permitting a closer viewing of selected detailed areas.)
Image #2
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Image #7 The Messsenger
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Commentary
on
Selected Photographs
Contemplate Kundalini:
Who shines like a flash of lightning,
Who has the brilliant light of countless suns,
And who is a shaft of light as cool as hundreds of nectarean moonbeams.
from the Shri Vidya Antar Yaga quoted by Gurumayi Chidilasananda in a 1986 talk
"Kundalini: The Awakening" published in Kindle My Heart, vol. I
The primary motivating force that initiates my making of a photograph is the grace, the magic, the transforming power of Light. It is Light, its grace, which directs me to, and points me toward an image that feels as if it must be given pictorial form. In other words, what I would call True art comes from within, from a feeling of inner necessity, from the creative power of the Universe, the Heart, and which in the yoga that I practice is called Shakti, or grace.
In this sense, then, light is a "Messenger" that delivers the impulse from some deep source within myself, to make a photograph. It is the grace of light within a photograph that transforms a photograph into a True, living Symbol. Each of the photographs in this project represents my experience of "Finding Light in the Darkness," an experience that is akin to an awakening of the Shakti, the grace, the divine Consciousness that exists both within me and simultaneously in whatever I have perceived to be meaningful in the "outer world."
In this photograph, which contains but a small flash of light, there is nonetheless the possibility that in the realm of the Heart, this light could illuminate a whole new Imaginal world of ineffable meaning--if the image is functioning for me as a True living symbol. And if I absorb that image, its grace, and integrate it within my whole being through the creative, meditative process I often refer to as contemplation,
I can gain access to that "Hidden Treasure" which exists within my own Self.
Thus my creative process in photography consists of constantly seeking that interior light out in the world, that light which has become projected outward through my perceptual processes. (Visit my essay Seeing the Grand Canyon.) When that light of grace illuminates the world in such a way that it invokes the impulse in me to make a photograph, those images which function for me as True living symbols become a messenger of Self-knowledge, wisdom which existed within me as a "Hidden Treasure" longing to be consciously recognized and embraced.
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In a talk Gurumayi Chidvilasananda gave in 1986 entitled "Patience," she quotes from a poem by the great Indian saint Kabir, and then comments on it:
Kabir says:
"If you look for me
you will find me in your search."
Isn't it true that we never see what is closest to us?
The object of the search is within the seeker.
In his song Kabir says: When you look,
you will find the Lord in a second,
because He is in your
very search.
Kabir says:
"What you are searching for is with you constantly."
Everything in this creation is the Truth. Contemplate
a flower, and you will transcend the flower and see
the light in the flower. Concentrate on the carpet
and you will transcend the carpet and see the
Truth in it. Contemplate your loved one
and you will transcend flesh and bones
and see the light in your beloved.
You can meditate on a dewdrop, which is transitory, and it
will reveal the secretes of the ocean. You can meditate
on a spark, and it will reveal the secrets of fire.
Gurumayi Chidilasananda, from a 1986 talk "Patience"
published in Kindle My Heart, vol. I
This photograph has, for me, that "spark" of light which enlivens and illuminates every aspect of the photograph's pictorial space. It is an image which I must (once again) pay homage to the great Italian painter Morandi. I spent over a year studying his work, making photographs inspired by his painting and drawing, his quiet introverted way of life, his commitment to a disciplined life of art making. This photograph contains "his" light, "his" compositional grace, "his" use of simple everyday objects in simple looking but nonetheless complex compositional interactive relationships.
In this spontaneously (naturally) formed configuration of objects which I discovered on my studio worktable, in a light just slightly more than a shadow, the metallic base of a mat knife is dramatically reflecting an unexpected spark of strange light which was coming from the same basement window I had written about earlier for Image #1, the photograph of a bottle with the rag placed over its top. ~ Next to the mat knife, emerging from within the shadowed area of the work table, there is the presence of red color from the handle of a screw driver; then next to the red there is a small dispenser of cellophane tape; and further to the right, on the very edge of the picture, there is a stapler. In the background, a larger red tape dispenser is sitting just a bit off of the back edge of the table which is near but not touching a wall upon which the light from the window is projecting an upward shadow of the larger tape dispenser. ~ All objects coexist together, peacefully, inside that shadowy light in which sparks of light fly out in varying intensities as if to greet me and insist that I make a photograph.
The picture is not about the objects, but rather the elegiac mood that pervades the image and the grace of the relationships of each object to the others as they coexist within the shadowed space of my work table. And of course the picture is also about the radiant grace of the light that unveils and celebrates the image's overarching presence of the the Oneness of Being.
The red light in this photograph is like a pulsating heart. As I imaginatively inhabit this photograph--made in a dark basement room full of wires and flashing lights--I enter another interior world, perhaps that world of a living body, or perhaps a brain or a living cell . . . in which electrical impulses are transforming into thoughts, feelings, visual perceptions, unveilings of new understandings. ~ Perhaps, on an even grander scale I am witnessing the "flashing forth" of Creation. The yogic seers say that everything outside comes from within, and that everything is in a perpetual state of change, a constant recurrence of creation and destruction, emerging and departing. Only the divine Self, the Supreme Soul is said to be forever unchanging, and a conscious witness to the divine play of the world of duality.
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This image, like many of the photographs in this project, is undoubtedly connected in spirit to other artists who have made dark pictures with "sparks" of light within them. We are all connected, say the yogic seers; we all share the same one divine Self. The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology believed in a similar concept of a unified realm of the human psyche, a wholeness of being which he referred to as the Self. Jung was an important influence to me when I was awakening more consciously to the subtleties of my creative process. It was Dick Knapp that introduced my to Jung and his ideas.
Dick Knapp & his Night Photographs
In the past few years I have re-connected with an old friend and artist, Dick Knapp. We first met and began sharing our work with each other in 1970-71 while we were students in the three year MFA Graduate Photography Program at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. I was a student there from 1969-72, and Dick entered the program the year after I arrived. (See my project New Mexico Photographs 1971-72) Dick was probably my most influential "teacher" in those exciting days of graduate study in New Mexico. He was for me a "Messenger" who had been, it now seems to me, destined to bring my attention to some very important influences which would prepare me, ultimately, for Siddha Yoga and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
When I met Dick--the year after I had entered the graduate program in New Mexico--he helped me make a very important and necessary transition to a more literate and intellectual engagement with my creative process, a transition that would help me survive the rigorous scholarly requirements of the UNM graduate program. Dick introduced me to his vast storehouse of knowledge regarding important artists outside the world of photography, such as Paul Klee and Barnett Newman; he introduced me to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, in particular his wonderful book The Poetics of Space (see my New Mexico project inspired by Bachelard: Intimate Space and this link to my Water Themed Projects).
And most importantly, Dick introduced me to the ideas of Carl Jung. Jung's ideas about the Symbol and synchronicity became the foundation upon which I would formulate my ideas about the Symbolic Photograph and its ability to provide access to Self-Knowledge. All these ideas became the major themes of my rather substantial MFA thesis paper all of which remain relevant to me today.
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After I left New Mexico for my first teaching job in Atlanta (1972-75) I saw Dick only a few times (as I remember): once in Atlanta, and once or twice in Rochester, New York, probably in 1974 at Christmas time, just months before I would leave Atlanta and move to Milwaukee--with my wife Gloria and our two very young children--to originate a photography program within the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1975-2007).
When I showed Dick the new multiple-exposure photographs I had made for my 1974 In the Woods project (1973-74) and the Atlanta City Series (1974-75) I told him I felt I had to do one last multiple-exposure project, but with a different kind of subject matter. Dick made several important observations about the work I had shown him and he suggested I try photographing a more personal kind of subject matter for the third project. ~ After my family and I got settled in our house in Milwaukee in the late fall of 1975 I began working on the third multiple-exposure project which would be, for me, the most important photography project of my life up to that point in time: The Persephone Series.
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I lost contact with Dick after I moved to Milwaukee for over forty years. Then, a few years ago, one of Dick's close friends from graduate school days got me reconnected with Dick and we started communicating back and forth again via email. Dick had gotten involved in sculpture before we reconnected, but then he started making photographs again around the time we reconnected. Our relationship gradually grew through the emailings of recent photographs Dick had begun sending me.
I believe it was in September or October, 2020, when Dick began sending me photographs he had been making at night with his iPad. I really liked Dick's night photographs, and he began sending me emailings of his night images several times a week. His night photography grew rapidly in ambition, invention and scope and eventually the project became a very impressive body of work for me. The images are filled with the light of real creative enthusiasm, a broad range of subject matters and sense of place, and a rich variety of visual-conceptual thematic directions . . . all of which he worked on simultaneously.
Most recently Dick began identifying some of his emails containing night photographs with the subject title: "Light in the Darkness." I felt a particularly strong attraction to those images which contained little glints or sparks of light in vast dark visual fields.
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On March 11, 2020, as I was in the midst of trying to find my way into the project before you now, and as I was becoming absorbed in Dick's new "Light in the Darkness" photographs, when I read Joe Biden's speech in which he talked about Americans "finding light in the darkness" I felt the spark of acausal meaning which Jung had written about in regards to his theory of synchronicity. That spark ignited, illuminated and provided clear direction for the project before you now. That is to say, the synchronistic "falling together" in time and space of Dick's "Light In the Darkness" themed photographs, Joe Biden's phrase "Finding Light in the Darkness," and my new work which was clearly being influenced by Dick's night photographs and Valentin Silvestrov's music, The Messenger . . . all this felt deeply interconnected and meaningful to me. And with this experience of recognition it then became clear to me that I must at least mention Dick's night photographs as an important influence on this project.
Dick has agreed to allow me to offer you the opportunity to see 26 of his very interesting and for me influential night photographs. The link that follows will take you to a separate blog page which I created for Dick's photographs, and some introductory comments I have written. Please visit:
Image #6
Image #7 The Messenger
The photograph (#7) immediately above--which I chose to use as the title image for this project--is at first dominated by a glint of light that is being reflected on the glass of a picture frame. The frame, which contains a photograph, is sitting on one of the higher shelves of a tall bookcase in the corner of my computer-printer studio. I intentionally placed it in the shadow of the shelf just above it in order to protect the photograph in the frame from a process of transformation it is undergoing and which is impacted by additional exposure to light.
The glint of light on the glass is a reflection of the light bouncing off a piece of white board which is suspended from the ceiling in front a small reflector flood lamp which is attached to the top of the book case. (Image #6). I used the white board to bounce a soft ambient light from the lamp onto the ceiling. This low level, diffused light provides just the right intensity, quality and angle of light that best helps me see the photographic images I am constantly viewing and editing on the computer in my studio.
If you are able to click on the image entitled The Messenger and view it in the blog's alternate dark viewing space, you should be able to see relatively clearly a figure walking across the picture's space. In the background, just above the figure's head, there is the horizontal shape of sky and a wavy line of the tops of trees.
The figure in the photograph is Bhagavan Nityananada, one of the most revered saints--a Siddha Guru--of India's modern era. He was born an enlightened being, and when he was young he walked all over India. Many people have reported that, though he spoke very little, just by being in his physical presence they received amazing life-transforming experiences of his grace, his state of Union with God. ~ One of the teachings Nityananda became well known for, and which has been repeated and talked about and contemplated over and over again in various Siddha Yoga publications and programs, is a message at once simple and yet profound. It is be basic teaching about the yogic practice of 'turning within':
The Heart is the hub of all scared places.
Go there and roam.
Bade Baba, as Nityananda was affectionately called by those who loved him, was the teacher (guru) of Swami Muktananda, who, upon the command of his beloved guru founded the Siddha Yoga Path. In 1982, just before his death, Muktananda transferred the power, the grace of the Siddha Lineage to Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
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When I was new to Siddha Yoga (perhaps a year or so after I met Gurumayi in 1987 and received her grace in the two-day meditation Intensive) I struggled with a fear of going too deeply into mediation and "loosing myself." (Before I met Gurumayi I had read books on meditation that had warned of such "dangers.") ~ One day, during meditation, Bhagavan Nityananda spontaneously appeared directly before me in a vision; he appeared as real as if he were literally in front of me, though in fact he had left his body in 1961. I didn't recognize him at first, for I had not yet focused much attention on this great being. During the first year of my practice of Siddha Yoga I was totally preoccupied with Gurumayi and her powerful teachings, her living presence, and the heart opening experiences of her grace I had been having with her following the 1987 meditation Intensive Gloria and I took with her.
When Bhagavan Nityananda first appeared to me in my meditation, he had a very quiet demeanor. The silvery light that gently pervaded his being and the space I saw him in, was very intimate and comforting. Then--without warning--instantaneously everything went very still; blank; silent. No images . . . Nothing. I just felt still; peaceful; quiet. I was in a space that had no dimension that I could understand. ~ Later, I realized that the fear I had carried with me into meditation that day, the fear that was limiting my meditation practice, had been completely absent during that experience.
After an unknown amount of time, Bade Baba reappeared and started laughing in a kind and friendly way. It didn't feel like he was laughing at me; rather, it seemed like he just thought that what I had experienced was somehow amusing. ~ As he laughed I looked into his open mouth and saw, through the spaces of a few absent teeth, what might have been the space of the entire universe. (I don't know about this part for certain. I have heard so many stories of such things; maybe I am making that part of the meditation experience up?) Then I saw him sitting outside in the bright sunlight, on the dusty earth, his back against a roughly textured wall. He was laughing such an intense belly laugh that he finally had to roll over onto his side, on the ground . . . and then he laughed some more . . . Then I came out of meditation.
After that amazing experience of Bhagavan Nityanada's darshan (inner vision of a saint) I never again feared "losing myself" in mediation. I have always understood and felt, after that experience, that this great saint, his shakti, his grace was with me, watching over me, assuring me there was nothing to fear when I meditated. To this very day, when I begin to mediate I flash on this experience with heartfelt gratitude and a warm feeling of affection.
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Getting back to my photograph, above, of the framed photograph of Bhagavan Nityananda: there is something quite amazing happening to the photograph that I wanted to share with you. The image is going through an unusual visual transformation. I bought the 8x10" black and white silver print in the late 1980's for only a few dollars. It probably was not processed correctly, for the image began to fade quite noticeably soon after I brought it home. In order to slow the process of dissolution I have been keeping the print in the frame and in subdued levels of light. ~ Over the past thirty years, because the surface of the silver print has been pressed directly against the glass, the silver in the image has begun to transfer into the glass. In that process of transformation some of the tones in the image have appeared to become inverted; and portions of the image have come alive with a new interior light that seems to originate from a silver-mirroring affect of the image in the glass. ~ I can imagine Bade Baba laughing as I've been trying to write about the transformation occurring in the image--a transformation of merging which is directly related to the goal of the yoga.
Epilogue
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Image #26 Symmetrical Photography (a transformed version of Image #25)
The photographs in this project are about opposing things--after all, we live in a dualistic world. Thus they are about about light & darkness; the seen & the unseen; the inside & the outside; life & death; separation & union. However, because most of the photographs in this project function for me as True, living symbols, the images are also about finding light in the darkness and the Oneness of Being.
If I have succeeded in honoring my Creative Process by allowing Its grace to do the necessary work, perhaps a few of the photographs in this project will have functioned for you as True, living symbols, as well: images radiant with the transformative energy of grace; images that affirm and offer a glimpse into the Oneness of Being--a kind of meaning that is beyond saying, beyond the seen and the unseen; beyond duality.
For example, after I made the symmetrical image (#27 above) the black space in the center of the image reminded me of something I read in Annemarie Schimmel's book Mystical Dimensions of Islam about what the Sufi mystics have spoken of regarding their experience of Black Light, "the light of bewilderment":
When the divine light fully appears in the mystic's consciousness, all things disappear instead of remaining visible. . . . this blackness is "in reality the very light of the Absolute-as-such." ~ "The Absolute is so nakedly apparent to man's sight that it is not visible" . . .
The poet Robert Bly has noticed there is a kind of knowledge or meaning or energy in poetry which feels non-human or impersonal; he calls it "consciousness." In an essay he wrote about a poem by Goethe, which is published in his wonderful book News of the Universe : Poems of Two-fold consciousness, Bly includes a quote by the German writer George Groddeck who referred to that impersonal meaning or energy as Gott-natur. Bly felt that it was this impersonal creative energy, consciousness--Gott-nature--in poetry which brings us News of the Universe.
Henry Corbin, an extraordinary philosopher, theologian, scholar and professor of Islamic studies wrote the following about consciousness:
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: I included this quote in my blog project devoted to contemplating symbolic photographs.)
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda often refers to the sacred energy or the meaning which transcends the limitations of duality as the "pure Consciousness," the "fire of Truth," the "Absolute Knowledge of the [divine] Self." I will close this project with her words from a 1986 talk entitled "Oh Lord, What is this world?":
In the world of duality, we have to see Consciousness.
In the Maharthamanjari the sage says:
"The independent Lord,
Who is pure and who is scintillating with light,
Shines through all the senses of this body.
The whole world is shimmering with the light of Consciousness.
There is no word such as 'world'--
There is only Consciousness."
~
A lotus is so beautiful, yet it grows in a muddy pond. A rose
is so beautiful, but surrounding it are thorns. In the same
way, the temple of God lies within the body. Once we
recognize the divinity inside ourselves, we can
also see the same Truth outside in the world.
We can understand the paradox that the
God who is beyond duality exists in
the world of duality as well.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, from a talk "Oh Lord, What Is This World?"
published in Kindle My Heart, vol. I
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This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page April 5, 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.
