The Secret Eye
A meditation on Three Photographs
and selected yogic teachings
[Great Beings & poet-saints have] the power to say something
that will puzzle the intellect and make the mind stop.
We think the yoga of wisdom is something to
be understood. No! It is that which we
cannot understand. Later on, as it
becomes our experience, it is the
yoga of wisdom for us.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
"The Wisdom Sacrifice" 1986 talk, Vol. II, Kindle My Heart
Introduction The Pandemic Report including A Personal Story
I began this project at the end of April, 2021, after returning from a trip to Milwaukee with my wife Gloria to offer support to our daughter Jessica and her family after she fell from a ladder in her school classroom and broke her leg.
*
Note: July 8, 2021: I was thinking this project The Secret Eye would be have been number eleven in the continuing series of The Coronavirus Pandemic Inspired Projects, but I have changed my mind. It's best to conclude that series with the Elegy project, number ten in the series. The theme of the Elegy project, "Finding Light in the Darkness" actually awakened in me a renewed interest in the art of Giorgio Morandi which began many years ago (July-August 2013) with the multi-chaptered project entitled Still Life.
After completing this project, The Secret Eye, and its complementary project in title, The Secret Cave, I realized it was necessary to re-examine Morandi's darker work, especially in relation to the two Wars he lived and created art through. And so, even though the Pandemic rages on today (July 2021) with its newest DELTA strain, I am happy to leave the Pandemic Series with the Elegy project, and move on.
*
Our daughter, Jessica is a certified Montessori teacher in the Milwaukee Public School's extraordinary, tuition-free Montessori Program, which now is being offered in 8 of Milwaukee's public schools around the city. Her accident happened in late March while she was preparing her classroom with some decorations to welcome her students back to the physical classroom for the first time this year after a difficult year of online teaching and learning. Many of the students in the Milwaukee Schools would be retuning to the physical classroom after the Spring Break (April 2-9, 2021) during which time many parents had planned to take their children to places like Disney World to celebrate the progress the United States had made, under Bidden's leadership, with the coronavirus Pandemic.
There were conflicting responses from the Milwaukee community to Biden's urging to open the in-person classroom, so the Milwaukee Public Schools decided to have a hearing with the parents and teachers about the question and their concerns. Of course many parents favored that option, while many teachers had raised important issues to administration regarding work load, health-safety concerns, the need for additional assistance in the classroom, among other other things . . .
After the hearing the School Board voted to allow students back into the physical classroom after the Spring Break . . . if the parents chose to do that; and for the parents who wanted their children to stay at home and continue to be taught online, they could choose that option. This decision placed teachers in a very difficult situation: they were expected to teach students simultaneously online and in the classroom, both of which required different kinds of preparations, including many challenging safety protocols for those who would be together in the physical classroom. ~ Later, the School Board surprisingly announced they would also be requiring teachers to be testing their students as in previous years (!).
Jessica was furious when she heard the School Board's decisions. She worried about the extra teaching loads, and the dangers of holding class in the physical classroom--especially right after spring break, when families would be returning from their travels away from home in a time in which new Covid variants were being discovered and talked about, and a full range of conspiracy theories were being spread through social media which raised questions about the vaccine formulas, the process as a whole, costs, etc.
Jessica's accident occurred while hanging some Christmas lights in her classroom in a loving gesture to welcome her students. On her way back down the ladder, her foot twisted, she lost her balance, and when she tried to catch herself during the fall, the two large leg bones just above her left ankle fractured into multiple pieces. Surgeons had to use 14 screws and 2 metal plates to put her bones back together. (See one of Jessica's x-rays below made on April 14, 2021 during a follow-up visit with her doctor two weeks after the accident.)
Gloria and I traveled to Milwaukee two weeks after we received our second Moderna shot. We wanted to be sure we were fully vaccinated before we drove 750 miles to Milwaukee from Canandaigua, NY. This allowed us to be with Jessica, Paul and our grandson River for a week without having to wear masks.
Jessica was ordered by her doctor to remain home and stay off her broken leg until a future followup meeting. So she began writing teaching plans for her substitute teacher who had never studied teaching in college, knew nothing about the Montessori Method, but fortunately was a very caring person and enthusiastic about teaching. Besides writing the lesson plans for each day, Jessica talked nearly every evening with her substitute, and often went online with her class at school to reassure her young students (grades one through three) that she was doing fine and was anxiously awaiting her Doctor's permission to return to school to finish out the school year with them.
*
Meanwhile, as teachers were being overwhelmed by the challenges of teaching young children during the Pandemic, ex-president Trump continued his wheeling, dealing and lying on the outer fringes of the political world. His GOP supporters (in both the political and private sectors) have been willing to support his continued false rants about the "rigged election." And people have been giving him money which he can use in any way he wants, including running for the White House in four years.
Ten Republican States (including Texas, Florida and Georgia) are doing everything they can to suppress the ability of targeted populations to vote. Even as Biden is making great strides to correct the messes Trump and his administration made at every turn during their destructive four year term, the Republican Party appears determined to undermine and fracture our country's democracy and sustain Trumpism. This has included, recently, the ousting of the #3 leader of the Republican Party, Liz Cheney, for speaking out against Trump and his political supporters (“I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law.”) And Facebook banning Trump from using its social media platform for the nest two years. ~ The House passed a bipartisan bill that would form an independent commission to probe the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and on May 28, 2021 Senate Republicans blocked the bill with the first filibuster of the year by the chamber's 50-vote minority.
The CDC announced in mid May that it was OK for people who have been fully vaccinated to congregate together without masks. This has confused and caused anxiety amongst many people who could not but help wonder: "Can we trust that all those who do not wear masks have been fully vaccinated?" And "What about the risk this poses for children?" One NY Times editor tweeted: “In this country we have two kinds of people: Those who don’t need masks but wear them, and those who need masks but don’t wear them.” Indeed, when I went shopping at our grocery store here in Canandaigua, NY it looked like about half the people I passed were wearing masks (including yours, truly). There is some data that suggests the recent CDC announcement has motivated some people who were on the fence to go ahead and get their shots.
Also in the US, children aged 12-15 years have begun to be vaccinated. ~ In late May, New York City was back to pretty much full swing again, despite the fact that only half of all US adults have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
(Note: The Whitehouse was pushing to have 70% of all adult citizens to have received at least one shot by July 4, but because of the GOP and their propensity to advance all kinds of conspiracy theories, that did not happen. Instead, many deaths have continued due to the DELTA strain of the virus, and by far the greatest number of those deaths have been with those people who have not received any vaccine protections.)
Biden announced plans to share 25 million doses of vaccine to the rest of the world . . .
*
Introduction to the Photography Project
I am presenting only three photographs in this project: two are straight photographs which had been made several months ago; and the third is a symmetrical photograph I made several years ago. (Click here to learn about straight and symmetrical photographs)
After completing my last Pandemic Inspired project Elegy, The Messenger, Finding Light in the Darkness, and after returning from our trip to Milwaukee, I felt practically no desire for making photographs. It's been a long time since I've experienced that lack of hunger to create. I'm not sure what that was all about, but I have learned to trust my Creative Process and be patient. Perhaps the problems I had been having with updating my Mac's Operating System, and all the software associated with it, dampened my spirits. I had to take out a subscription for the 2021 online Adobe Photoshop software because I could not use my old Adobe program with my new updated Mac Operating System. There have been a few stressful mishaps with learning to use the new Photoshop technology . . . The fact is, I am really out of touch with the digital-technical world. It's a matter of grace that my blog projects make it into published form.
After I got the technical problems sorted out (sort of) I did begin to feel a need to get back in touch with my Creative Process. So, as I often do after completing a project, I opened my digital folder in which I store images I like but which have not yet been used in a blog project. Sometimes I get ideas for new projects from looking at these images-in-limbo. Amongst the collection of images in my Unpublished folder, two were particularly attractive to me, and when I placed them next to each other within the folder and saw how they interacted with each other I began studying the pair of images frequently with growing fascinated interest.
Eventually I decided to create the one before you now--which is essentially a meditation* on those two images, both individually and as a pair in relation to some yogic teachings I had been reading at the time.
(*Note: I sometimes use the terms commentary, contemplation, and less often meditation interchangeably, however I do consider contemplation to be a very different process from what I often refer to as commentary. I use the term meditation here to indicate a process that falls somewhere in-between commentary and contemplation. Visit this link Contemplation to learn more.)
Following the presentation of the two straight photographs I will continue this Introduction, offer some Commentary on the two photographs, then I conclude the project with an Epilogue consisting of the symmetrical image and a closing statement.
The Two Straight Photographs
(Note: the two photographs below are rather dark, and are best seen viewed in
a darkened viewing space [without the surrounding white space]. If you are
viewing this project with a desk-top or lap-top computer, I encourage you
you to try clicking on each image to see if it becomes presented in an
alternate, darker viewing space. An additional click on the image
may enlarge it, allowing you to study details more closely.)
Image #1 Gloria in the Garden, seen through a veil of luminous pearls
Image #2 Sea Lion napping on a stone in luminous turbulent waters
Introduction (continued)
In the past few months I have been re-reading some published talks given in 1986 by my meditation teacher, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. They appear in a two volume set entitled Kindle My Heart (a Siddha Yoga publication). I will be sharing with you some quotes excerpted from the talks (that appear at the end of volume II) which I have found to be quite relevant to my creative process in photographic picture-making.
In her talk entitled "Complete Your Sadhana with a Brave Heart" Gurumayi explained that yogic practices (sadhana) are designed to purify the mind, the intellect, the ego and the body so that a seeker can gain access to "the space of God within." In Siddha Yoga the body is considered the Temple of God, and that the divine Self (God, supreme Consciousness) dwells within the Human Heart and in everything else in this Universe. In other words, there is nothing in this world that is not a form of one's own inner, divine Self. Everything that exists (and does not exist) constitutes what could be referred to as The Oneness of Being, a favorite term of mine that relates directly to my use of the word symbol and the symbolic photograph.
(Note: click here to learn more about my use of the word symbol and symbolic photograph. Also, regarding the ego, the mind, the intellect, and the physical body, the yogic teachings say that these aspects of the soul create the illusion [maya] that we humans are "different" from God. In Siddha Yoga, the teachings (which are based in actual human experience) tell us that the soul, the Self, God and Guru are one and the same. In order to have "right understanding" the yogic seeker must go through a series of purifications, accomplished by various yogic practices [sadhana] which are guided by the grace of a true meditation Master, or Sadguru, one who has achieved the goal of yoga: Union with God, the divine Self.)
*
I met Gurumayi for the first time in August, 1987 and experienced her initiating grace in a two day meditation program. My experience consisted of a vision in which she was pushing on the "doors of my heart" had become "rusted shut." When the doors opened by entire being was flooded with a loving energy. After that experience, to my great surprise I felt a great desire to do the yogic practices, such as meditation, japa, chanting, studying the yogic teachings and traditional scriptures, contemplation, and (when possible) spending time with Gurumayi at her ashram in NY state.
As I continued doing the practices with great commitment, I also continued with my Creative Process in photographic picture-making. After some time I gradually began observing various kinds of subtle changes both within myself and in my relation to photography; photography was becoming an integral part of my sadhana, my yogic practices, and my yogic practices were becoming an integral part of my Creative Process.
Photography gradually became for me a form of "open-eyed meditation" or "meditation-in-action," and a means by which I could contemplate and integrate the yogic teachings. Photography also became a means by which I could recognize and visually acknowledge the divine presence both within myself and in the people, things and places I was photographing.
I noticed that the yoga (grace) inspired photographs seemed pervaded by a special radiance or presence, an interior sense of light and meaning, and that the images were less personal and more mysterious. The best of my photographs, those which functioned for me as true, living Symbols, contained that feeling of grace which I associated with my experiences of Gurumayi's shakti.
(Note: in Siddha Yoga Shakti means the Creative Power of the Universe, the divine energy (grace) by which all things in this Universe have come into existence. An "enlightened" being, a True Guru or Sadguru radiates this shakti continually from within his or her innermost being. When I am physically near Gurumayi, I can experience that energy coming from her directly; and I can often sense it quite palpably in some of her video programs and written words as well.)
*
In her talk "Complete Your Sadhana with a Brave Heart" Gurumayi stated that the yogic practices are designed . . .
. . . to overcome the obstacles that prevent us from going
deeper than our body, our mind and our intellect,
into the space of God within.
We need to purify our body, we need to purify our mind, our intellect, our
subconscious mind, and our ego. It is a lot of work! As long as we try
to do it on our own, it is a long haul, strenuous and tedious, but when
we learn to take the help of grace, it is much, much easier.
Photography, and the contemplation of images which function for me as True, living symbols, have become for me a means of staying connected to grace and Gurumayi's extraordinary state of Being, her Union with the divine Self, with supreme Consciousness. The grace within images that function for me as symbols have the extraordinary potential of opening my Heart and inviting me into "the space of God within."
*
In the same talk, Guruamyi quotes from a poem by the great Sufi poet-saint Rumi. Here are two verses from Rumi's poem, and then Gurumayi will comment on the verses:
Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.
~
If you want a secret eye,
then shut your eyes.
Rumi
Gurumayi comments:
There is an eye in the space between the eyebrows, there is an eye
in the heart, there is an eye in the palm of your hand, there is
am eye in every pore of your body. When you loose
yourself in meditation, every eye in every pore
of your body opens and is awakened.
In the history of photography as a fine art there is a term "seeing photographically" (which I believe was coined by Edward Weston) that has come to mean, for me, seeing the "inner essence" of things with "The Secret Eye." It is a kind of intuitive "meditative" vision; a seeing inwardly of outward things in which I sense intuitively an interior world that exists in the things of the outer world. This kind of seeing, which is initiated by grace, is then channeled through the Eye of the Heart and the photographic medium.
Gurumayi explains further that "The Secret Eye" is "God's Eye." Thus, when I am seeing photographically with the Eye of the Heart it is God, the divine Self, who is actually doing the seeing. In yoga there is a term, Shiva Drishti, the "Outlook of Shiva," which means seeing through God's eye, seeing through God's understanding. When I experience photographs that are functioning for me as true, living symbols I am experiencing "seeing" God's Creation through the "eye of God," the eye of the Heart, the Eye of Shiva. I am seeing my own inner Self though God's perception of the Created world that God has manifested through "divine will" or "divine thought" or "divine imagination." The true, living symbol provides a visual manifestation of grace, an image which conjoins inner and outer corresponding images which form a bridge between a human being's Creative Process and God's Creative Process.
Understood in this way, images functioning as true living symbols for a contemplator offer the experience of the Oneness of Being, and with that a kind of knowledge which is essentially transcendent, ineffable, and impersonal. Depth Psychologist Carl Jung has called this kind of knowledge Self-Knowledge; the poet Robert Bly calls it News of the Universe.
When one imbibes and integrates these extraordinary kinds of images, luminous with grace and Self-Knowledge, one experiences--in the depths of the Soul, in the depths of the Heart--God's secret, God's mystery. Gurumayi concludes her talk like this:
We must learn to look for God's mystery in everything and at all times . . .
If you see your whole life through the secret eye inside yourself, you
recognize, you understand, and you experience the mystery. . .
You see then that whatever happens is grace . . .
(Kindle My Heart, Vol II, "Complete Your Sadhana with a Brave Heart")
_____________________________
Commentary
on the two photographs
Regarding the Background
Both images I am commenting on here were initially based in a very simple compositional strategy: the juxtaposition of a primary dominant foreground subject with its more generalized background. In the first image my focus was placed on the luminous raindrops that had collected on the spiderweb and the surrounding area of the window screen; in the second image I focused on the sea lion napping on the stone. In both photographs the backgrounds--at the time I was photographing--simply fell into place without much conscious intention or awareness on my part.
However, just before I took the first picture, my wife Gloria unexpectedly entered the background of the composition. She had been walking in our backyard filling the bird feeders and was not aware that I was in the house, about to take a photograph through one of our living room windows. Though her appearance surprised me, I didn't hesitate to take the photograph for I have learned from many past experiences that unexpected events which occur while I am photographing can provide auspicious meanings to an image I was otherwise intending to make. I attribute such surprise events to such things as the workings of grace, what some have called the Creative Unconscious, or what Carl Jung has referred to as synchronicity.
When the impersonal aspect of my Creative Process takes control of a situation and overrides "my" personal picture-making agenda, not only do I unhesitatingly allow it to take over, indeed I welcome it! (I trust and respect my Creative Process much more than my mind, my intellect, my ego.) Indeed, after making the exposure with Gloria in the background I felt excited about seeing how the photograph would look with Gloria in it! The feeling I have after making a photograph is often like that of a child who has become excited about seeing what is inside a present he or she had just been given.
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There are several echoing formal relationships within each of the two pictures, some of which are also shared between them. In the first photograph, the shape of Gloria's hair echos the shape of the bucket she is holding; the two wavy cloths lines in the back yard running horizontally across the picture plane are echoed in the horizontal lines of the spiderwebs inside the window. ~ The top spiderweb, and the window screen immediately surrounding the spiderweb, are covered by raindrops glowing with interior light; the other spiderwebs, further below, are less noticeable because they do not have raindrops on them, nonetheless they have wave-like shapes that are similar to both the spiderweb above and the two cloths lines. Further below, in the shadowed area of the window sill, there is a diagonal line that runs parallel to the all the other lines above.
The raindrops glowing with their own interior light, reflecting the light of the heavens above, form a "necklace of pearls." With Gloria's spontaneous appearance on the scene, I imagine them adorning her presence with an otherworldly beauty.
Gloria and I have been married for over fifty-two years and we have shared so many profound experiences together, including Siddha Yoga. We were married in August, 1969; and it was in August, 1987 that we met Gurumayi, together, for the first time, in the two day meditation program I mentioned earlier. During the program Gloria and I each had life-transforming experiences of Gurumayi's initiating grace, and immediately afterward we started doing the yogic practices together . . . and we have continued this sharing of our sadhana for the past 34 years! Indeed, it is said that marriage is a sadhana in itself! And I certainly understand that.
The self-luminous raindrops, or "pearls" in the photograph invoke a teaching that Gurumayi has given over and over again: that those who on the Siddha Yoga Path are being continually blessed by the "rain of grace." And Gurumayi's teacher, Swami Muktananda, the founder of the Siddha Yoga Path, experienced, as the culmination of his sadhana, a vision of what he called the "light of the Blue Pearl," the light of the divine Self, the light of the inner Guru. He wrote, in his spiritual autobiography Play of Consciousness: "Within [the light of the Blue Pearl] you see your own Guru . . . you realize that the Guru's real abode has existed within you all the time."
(Note: To learn more about the significance of the the Blue Pearl, see my project The Blue Pearl which contains several other quotes from Play of Consciousness. ~ I have written in detail about my first meeting with Gurumayi in my project Yoga and Photography.)
*
Regarding the second image, I of course focused on the sea lion napping on the stone. I had no conscious aesthetic or conceptual idea in mind when I took the picture over a year ago when Gloria and I and our grandchild, Claire visited the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, NY. I suspect I was simply wanting to take a snapshot in appreciation of this gentle, charming moment we were privileged to have witnessed at that time.
The water in the background of the photograph was (as I remember) of no conscious pictorial concern to me. But, as you will learn, the the way the background appears in the photograph now is quite different from the way the background appeared in the original "snapshot" version.
When I placed the image of the sea lion in my Unpublished folder I did get the feeling there was something about the image worth studying. Because I thought the image was too low in contrast I made some initial Photoshop adjustments to the image in advance preparation for its possible use in some future, unknown blog project. After making the image a little more contrasty I noticed that the water shapes in the background gained some unexpected pictorial interest in terms of luminosity and color saturation. With the added contrast, strange slightly surreal luminous shapes emerged from within the choppy waves of the water, and the dark background shapes surrounding the lighter tones and textures of the water gained a more pronounced and rather "fantastic" presence as well. ~ After increasing the contrast, I decided to try saturating the colors of the water a little more, just to see how that would look.
These graphic changes to the background animated that part of the image in ways I could never had imagined, and the background seemed to "move" forward spatially toward me with a surprising graphic impact. Indeed, the background had gained an entirely new visual life because of the technical adjustments (transformations) I had made to the image. The water took on a visual-emotionally charged "voice" relative to the rest of the image (the sea lion napping on the stone). The relationship between the napping sea lion and the water in the background became changed with unexpected drama. It occurred to me the water might be representing, in an abstract metaphorical way, some internal experience the sea lion was having while napping on the stone.
*
The two images share a similar kind of dark tonal atmosphere, with brilliant glints of internal light. Both share the presence of wavy repeated lines--the sea lion's body is echoed in the curving line of the stone, and those curves are echoed in the lines of the spiderwebs and the two cloths lines. And, importantly, both images share the presence of water* which seem illuminated from its own internal source. Each glowing raindrop, each modulation of light on the water's turbulent surfaces appear to contain a "circle of love," a "secret eye," the "Eye the Heart," "God's mystery within." And both images share an unexpected transformation of their background spaces. Somehow, through the grace of the Creative Process, those spaces gained a vital new visual life that was not visible in the moments I initially felt the impulse to make the photographs.
(*Note: Click here to visit a collection of my water-themed photography projects.)
*
The idea of a spiritual presence existing behind or within the things of the physical world has held a deep attraction for me from the time I was first introduced to the photographs and writings of Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White (among others) in my second year as an undergraduate photography student at RIT (1963/4-66/7). Later, in Graduate School (1969-72) I discovered the work of Depth Psychologist Carl Jung who wrote about Self-Knowledge. When I met Gurumayi in 1987, and became familiar with the yogic teachings and was experiencing grace in a more conscious way and with some understanding, I realized my attractions to the spiritual were not based merely in intellectual curiosity. Indeed I was experiencing grace, and it was guiding my creative process, but in a way that I could not yet grasp. My inclination to make photographs which, in the words of Alfred Stieglitz, "made the invisible visible" was my way of actually experiencing the spiritual within myself through the photographic medium.
Since that first meeting with Gurumayi her continual "rain of grace" has been the primary conscious force in the unfolding and flowering of my Creative Process, and its alignment with my yogic practices. The True, living symbol is not just a concept, it is a visual embodiment of grace. And the contemplation of symbols makes the experience of the inner Self all the more palpable and meaningful for me.
*
There is one other thing I want to try to write about regarding the two images. As I continued my meditation on the two images I became absorbed in an Imaginal world that exists in the space-between the images. I entered that space and at first became a witness to their silent dialogue, the grace of their visual interactions. Meanings were perpetually changing. Then at some point in my meditation the two images seemed to merge into each other. The experience was outside of time. I could not tell where the two images that had become One existed, where it began or ended, where my reality and Its reality began and left off. The Oneness of Being has no boundaries.
I experienced our shared Unitary Reality in silence, "with the eyes closed." "Seeing" became possible only with The Secret Eye, the "Eye of the Heart." The conjoined radiance of the two images that had become One expanded into a realm of unimaginable Knowledge that is beyond the limits of human intelligence and language.
Epilogue
__________________________________
Epilogue Image: The Secret Eye Symmetrical Photograph (stones, water, reflections of the sky)
After I concluded the last section of my commentary with an attempt to write about the merging of the two images, and my absorption in their (our?) Oneness of Being I felt a strong need to conclude the project with a visible image that would somehow summarize or provide a visual equivalent of my inner experience.
That image would have to be a four-fold symmetrical photograph, because it is for me the most literal, visual Imaginal embodiment of the The Oneness of Being. With grace such an image can deliver That very experience. The image would have to contain water, luminous water, water that manifested a sense of its own internal light; and the image would have to appropriately honor the title of this project, Rumi's poetic phrase, "The Secret Eye" and Gurumyi's reference to the Eye of the Heart.
*
I visited my blog link Collected Water Themed Projects, and when I saw, near the bottom of the long listing of project titles, the three Broad Brook projects, I knew immediately that the image I was looking for could be found in one of those projects.
Broad Brook flows down from the Vermont mountains through a wooded area in southern Vermont right past the house where my friend Jim and his wife Phyllis (Gloria's sister) live. I have photographed in that beautiful brook many many times and created some important photographs within just a small section of the brook that runs past their house. The symmetrical photograph above was constructed with a straight photograph made in Broad Brook.
When photographing in the brook I have especially enjoyed coming upon the still pools of water--often surrounded by rounded smooth stones. The pools form along the side of the brook next to the rapidly flowing and oftentimes loud, gushing waters. The pools and the stones are pervaded by silence, a sense of timelessness. The light in the water originates in some space where water and sky mirror each other. The pools can seem very much alive with consciousness, like wide opened eyes which are witnessing the play of the outer world even as they simultaneously appear to be looking deeply, silently within.
Though there are visual and subject matter relationships between the symmetrical photograph and the two straight images I have presented in this project, what is most important to me is that each of the three photographs function for me as true, living symbols, images pervaded by the Creative Power of the Universe, images radiant with the timeless knowledge of the inner Self, the Oneness of Being.
I have often thought of my symmetrical photographs as "round" or "circular" images; and in that regard this symmetrical image does pay hommage to the sacred teachings I quoted earlier by Rumi and Gurumyi:
Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.
~
If you want a secret eye,
then shut your eyes.
Rumi
There is an eye in the space between the eyebrows, there is an eye
in the heart . . . When you loose yourself in meditation, every
eye in every pore of your body opens and is awakened.
Gurumayi
May we, each one of us, experience the grace of seeing our world, our entire life, with the Eye of the Heart, for in such extraordinary moments the Oneness of Being becomes a lived reality, an experience of opening into the Truth of the divine Self; an understanding that "puzzles the intellect" and "makes the mind stop."
This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page June 3, 2021 and the
text has been revised several
times thereafter.
Related Project Links:
The Blue Pearl
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.
