The Secret Cave
~ A Meditation on Photography & Meditation ~
Introduction
The 21 photographs in this project were made in three brief camerawork sessions: in the early mornings of May 21 & 22 and in the evening of May 23, just three days before the moon would officially reach its fullness and, during that same day, May 26, become fully eclipsed by the shadow
of the earth. Also, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac, on May 29 Mercury Retrograde would be kicking in, and it would be continuing through June 22.
Many believe (and have experienced) that full moons, eclipses, and Mercury Retrograde cause major shifts in human interactions, particularly in regards to communications. Since I will most likely be trying to complete the texts for this project during the rather long period of Retrograde I'll be curious to see if/how it impacts my writing and the other aspects of my Creative Process. From the looks of several of the images I've included in this project--those which were made on the mornings of May 21 and May 22 (before I actually became aware of the forthcoming celestial events and their officially scheduled dates) it seems possible my Creative Process had already tuned into these mysterious energies of the cosmos.
In any case, the images in this project have come as an unexpected blessing for me. Not only have the photographs--and the experience of making them--initiated this project, they also mark the end of a six week "pause" in my Creative Process that began in early April. (I wrote about this "pause" in my previous project, The Secret Eye : A Meditation On Three Photographs.)
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Each morning, around 6:45 am, after having completed a set of stretches and exercises, I sit on the floor by the right side of my bed near the back corner of the bedroom and read some yogic teachings by my meditation teacher, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, or Swami Muktananda, Gurumayi's teacher.
I read by the light of a lamp that sits on the bedside table. After the readings I meditate. ~ I like to think of this space as my "meditation cave."
After finishing with my readings and turning off my reading light on the morning of May 21, just before closing my eyes to begin meditation I happened to look up at the side of my bed, directly in front of me, and I saw this gentle, elegant image in the soft morning light that was coming through
the shaded, lace-curtained window behind me:
I felt a strong impulse to make a photograph, so I got up and fetched my camera from the chest of drawers next to the other side of the bed, returned to my meditation "cave," sat down on the floor
and made this image--the first photograph I had made in the past six weeks, or so.
After that initial exposure, many more photographs followed before I felt ready to sit back down to meditate. The feeling of seeing and creating photographic images once again was both gratifying and reassuring. And the same thing happened the next morning, May 22, before I meditated. Both sets of Morning photographs have been collected and presented together as Part I of the three-part sequence of images for this project.
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On May 23, my wife Gloria and I heard about the the forthcoming total Lunar Eclipse that would be occurring on May 26. So that evening, around 9:30 pm, we decided to go outside and try to see the moon for it would be very near its luminous fullness.
As we ventured out into the evening darkness through our front door, we were surprised to see the moon suspended in the sky directly before us. We stood on our front porch and admired the moon's golden, mysterious beauty. The atmosphere was a bit hazy, and a few thin clouds were veiling the moon just enough to give the moon a magical glow that extended beyond its edges. The moon's appearance seemed more real than the subdued landscape below which contained soft rolling hills, trees and houses. Though I knew the moon had not yet reached its official fullness, it did look full, perhaps because of the atmospheric haze because the moon's edges did appear blurred. Seeing the moon that night was very special for me, perhaps because I was thinking how odd it was that the moon would be eclipsed on the same day that it would be shinning at its fullest.
When we went back inside the house, as we passed through the short hallway into the living room area, for some reason I felt compelled to look up at the vaulted ceiling. For the first time that I can remember, I saw a circle of light that was being projected up onto the ceiling from a table lamp below. The circle was glowing with a softness and a golden color that was remarkably similar to what we had seen moments earlier when we were outside admiring the beauty of the moon. ~ I went to my bedroom, got my camera out of the chest of drawers, and made this photograph:
After making the exposure I looked around our living room and kitchen areas to see if there were other things I could photograph. And a series of exposures followed: I photographed the living room lamp as it was reflected in the window that overlooked our back yard and the meadow beyond; I photographed the plant that was sitting on the table, in front of the lamp, and then I photographed the "spider plants" that were sitting on a ledge behind and above the lamp. I also photographed the night light in the hallway by our front door, and I made one image in the kitchen area, of a glass that had been left on the side of the dish drainer. All of these Night photographs, which are presented in Part II-A of this three part collection of images.
When I went back to my bedroom to return my camera to it is rightful place in the drawer, once again I felt inspired to make some additional photographs in my bedroom. Each of those night bedroom photographs were made by the light of the lamp near the corner of my room where I meditate each morning. I have presented this third collection of images below as Part II-B, the second set of Night Photographs made on the evening of May 23. Both collections of night photographs seem connected to each other visually in the way they reflect both what I had seen and felt while outside viewing the moon just minutes before.
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The title of this project The Secret Cave : A Meditation On Photography & Meditation, and the title of the project before it, The Secret Eye : A Meditation On Three Photographs, both contain the words "meditation" and "secret." This was not intended consciously; indeed, this project came spontaneously, without warning or preparation. On the other hand, the two projects do inform and and extend each other in ways I could not have anticipated, in ways only the grace of my Creative Process could have manifested.
Following the presentation of the photographs, below, I will continue this Introduction and then I will offer some commentary on several of the project's images. ~ I have concluded the project with an Epilogue which consists of one symmetrical photograph and an additional brief story about seeing the moon. Welcome to "The Secrete Cave."
(Note, because many of the images in this project are dark and contain soft gray tonalities, I encourage you to view each image in a darkened viewing environment. If your computer will allow you to "click" on the images, you may be able to see them in an alternate viewing mode--with the first click--in which the white borders surrounding the images become black borders. An additional click should enlarge the image.)
Part I
Morning Photographs
made in my bedroom just before meditation
May 21 and May 22, 2021
Image #1 Chest of Drawers, detail
Image #2 Still Life, top of chest of drawers
Image #3 Top of Chest of Drawers, with mirror reflection of one-half of the curtained, shaded bedroom window
Image #4 Pad of Paper on chest of drawers, with a decorative circular detail of the stereo in the background
Image #5 Carpet, slippers, air vent
Image #6 My 75 year old bare feet as seen before meditation in the subdued light of early morning
Image #7 Two tissue boxes
Image #8 Night light (shaded with aluminum foil) & charging cord
Image #9 View of my bed from where I meditate, sitting on the floor
Part II-A
Night Photographs
May 23, 2021
Made in our living room just after looking at the moon
which would become full and eclipsed on May 26
Image #10 A circle of golden light, projected upon our living room's vaulted ceiling from a table lamp below
Image #11 The Table Lamp, reflected in a living room window that looks out toward our backyard and the meadow
Image #12 Plants behind the living room lamp which can be seen reflected in the window in the background
Image #13 Night Light near the front door entrance
Image #14 A Glass on the dish drainer
Image #15 The Plant which sits on the table just next to the living room lamp
Part II-B
Night Photographs
May 23, 2021
Made in my bedroom after looking at the moon
and making the photographs in Part II-A
Image #16 The Back Corner of my bedroom, next to where I meditate
Image #17 A Framed photograph, pillow, bed post detail, and light coming from the bedside lamp
Image #18 Electric cords under the bed, along the back wall illuminated by the bedside lamp
Image #19 Half of a framed symmetrical photograph with a reflection of my bed and half of the bedside lamp
Image #20 Stereo, detail : Hommage to the full moon
Introduction (continued)
The title of this project, The Secret Cave : A Meditation on Photography & Meditation was inspired by the book I was reading each morning just before meditating. From the Finite To The Infinite is a two volume set of spontaneous teachings Swami Muktananda gave during his two world tours through the West: March 1974 -- October 1976, and August 1978--November 1981. This great modern day saint would conclude his meditation programs by inviting questions from those in the attendance. The editors of the volumes organized the questions and answers thematically; for example, Meditation is a major theme in Volume I; and in the second volume the Heart and Love are major themes, among others.
(Note: Swami Muktanana (1908 - 1982) founded the Siddha Yoga Path upon the command of his meditation Master, Bhagavan Nityananda. Before Muktananda died he passed the shakti or creative power of the Siddha Lineage to his disciple Gurumayi Chidvilasananda who had served as his translator during his live talks for many years.)
As the title of this project suggests, the photographs and the texts together constitute something like a meditation on meditation, a meditation on photography, and a meditation on the relationship between meditation and my Creative Process in photographic picture-making. After I met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda in 1987, and experienced her initiating grace in a two-day meditation program I began meditating, reading yogic texts and teachings, and doing other yogic practices each day. At that time I had been teaching photography at the university level and exhibiting my photographs regularly, and as I continued making photographs and doing the yogic practices I gradually began to see how the two supported and inspired each other. Over time, it became clear to me that my photography and yoga had become inseparable.
I now consider making and contemplating photographs not only a form of meditation, but also a means of gaining access to Self-Knowledge. Photographs which function for me as True, living Symbols give visual form to the Invisible, Ineffable Truth or Knowledge that becomes accessible through a kind of "meditative seeing" that is channeled simultaneously through the camera, the photographic medium, and as I explained in my previous project, "The Eye of the Heart," a phrase Gurumayi has used frequently in her teachings which resonates for me in relation to my photographic practice in a very personal and profound way.
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Light, of course, is a major issue for any photographer. Many of the photographs I make are in direct response to the quality, mood and transforming power of the light illuminating the scene or the things I am photographing. Muktananda taught that the most effulgent light exists inside one's own being. He said interior light was a form of love, a form of grace, and that one must meditate to reach that center in one's Self where love exists. In this regard photography has been a means by which I have been able to give visual form to the light that exists within me. Similarly, what makes a symbol True and alive is the radiance of grace that pervades the image.
Muktananda said, in response to a question about "kindling the flame of love":
God is shining all the time.
He lives in the secret cave of the heart.
In ancient times yogis would meditate in caves. Muktananda, however, said it should be understood that the "cave" exists within everyone's own Self, in a secret space inside the Heart. He urged everyone to meditate because in deep meditation the senses, the intellect, and the ego become silent and stilled, and this in turn allows another alternate mode of being to become fully operative within one's self, a mode of being that does not depend on sense perception but instead a kind of seeing that becomes illuminated with the light "shining" within "the cave of the Heart."
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Swami Muktananda was asked: You say meditation should occur spontaneously. I have been attempting to meditate for a few years now, but it has been a big struggle. When will I meditate? ~ And Muktananda responded:
It is your great struggle that stands as an obstacle to your meditation. For a while you should give up struggling, and whatever you look at, regard that as an object of meditation; understand that everything is just meditation. All that you have to do is mediate on your own inner Self. So whatever you see outside, consider it as your inner Self.
In the Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, "O Arjuna, what can I say about this universe, that this is this or that is that, because everything is Me. I have become this whole universe. This whole universe is part of Me."
Muktananda's two primary teachings were: "God dwells within you, as you;" and "God, the True Guru (Sadguru) and the innermost Self are one and the same." In response to other questions about meditation Muktananda said:
God dwells within you, as you. As you meditate continually, there comes a point when you forget what is outside and what is inside. You also forget yourself completely. It is at this point that you are meditating on the formless One.
It is not true that there is one thing inside and something else outside. Nanakdev used to say that what is inside is also outside, what is outside is also inside; it is the same Principle [God, Guru, Self] which pervades everything. This is called knowledge -- the understanding that inside and outside are the same.
Muktananda also taught that if you meditate or perform any of the other yogic practices in your own home it will make your entire house a temple, a place of worship, of prayer:
It is not just temples and churches and mosques that should be places of prayer. Every place -- including your home -- should become a place for prayer. Your home should become a temple. Then in this very world you will perceive heaven; you won't need another heaven.
You will attain joy if you have the awareness that this whole world and all the people in it and all the actions [performed in it] belong to God. If you have the awareness that everything is God's, you will attain samadhi right then and there. If you consider that every work is a mode of worship, you will attain God even while you are sweeping the floor . . . It's not only that meditation is meditation -- every work is meditation. Every work contains shakti [grace, the divine Creative Energy or Power that manifested and pervades everything in the Universe].
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Through the grace of the yogic teachings and my inner connection with Gurumayi I have come to understand that every photograph that functions for me as a True, living symbol is a gift of grace, the spontaneous manifestation of seeing with the Eye of Meditation, the Eye of Worship, the Eye of Remembrance, the Eye of the Heart. Symbols are images which merge interior experience, inner feeling, inner vision with their corresponding outer-world counterparts. In other words, symbols
are images which give visual form to the Oneness of Being.
There is a Sanskrit word, darshan, which literally means "viewing" or "seeing." However in Siddha Yoga the word is most often used to refer to an extraordinary experience of the sacred, of seeing or being in the presence of a holy being or saint, or perhaps a spontaneous interior-visionary experience of God. When I contemplate True living symbols I am willfully opening myself to the feeling experience of grace, the feeling experience of darshan, the experience of the innermost divine Self which lives within me, in the Secret Cave of the Heart.
Swami Muktananda was asked: Will I be able to have your darshan after you have left your body and merged into the Absolute? And here is his response:
Yes, yes, you will keep having darshan. It is your own feeling that takes on different forms. Even now many people have the darshan of saints who have merged into the ocean [of Consciousness]. It is your feeling that manifests forms. A saint is the Self, supreme Consciousness, and it is that supreme Consciousness that takes on different roles and dances in different forms. The Self wears different costumes; it plays different roles. Then it gets rid of those costumes and puts on other costumes.
Commentary
On Selected Photographs
I will begin with a few general observations about the three sequences of photographs I have presented above. It seems to me each sequence forms something like a poetic topographical survey of the things, spaces and light I photographed in my bedroom, our living room and the kitchen area. Though the images "describe" in some way, they are also "illuminated" with the grace of my Creative Process, the deep feeling of the divine which dwells within the things photographed and within the Secret Cave of the Heart. In other words, the images which function for me as symbols have the potential to unveil some essential Truth that lies behind, within or below the surfaces of the things and spaces I have photographed, which exists simultaneously within me, in the center of my innermost being. Gaston Bachelard, the great French philosopher and phenomenologist has referred to the "center of being" as the soul.
In Bachelard's excellent book The Poetics of Space (1958) he writes about images which provide us with a "topography of the soul," images of feeling and insight that unveil meanings that are as much about the inner Self as they are about the things and places in the outer physical world.
There is a phrase I love from Bachelard's book that resonates for me in relation to my concept of the True, living symbol and the Oneness of Being. He says:
Space --or a thing-- inhabited intensely,
imaginatively, becomes the center of all space.
And what is that "center of all space"? It is the Secret Cave of the Heart, the dwelling place of the soul. The yogic sages tell us everything in the created world originates from that innermost center of being, and without exception, that Secret Cave exists in every human Heart, though it remains hidden from view from most people because of maya, illusion, the power of the mind, the intellect and the ego to veil or obstruct one's vision and understanding of the Truth.
The experience of the Truth is essentially unsayable because Truth is a reality that is beyond the reach of the mind, the intellect, the ego. And, this brings me to the point I wanted to get at: there is a significant difference for me between Commentary (perceptions seated mostly in the mind), and my process of Contemplating photographs (the experience of seeing images with the inner vision of meditation, taking images inside the the Cave of the Heart and perceiving them with the Eye of the Heart). Sometimes my commentary can become centered in a space that exists between commentary and contemplation, and, as I have explained in my blog essay entitled Contemplation I sometimes refer to that in-between place as meditation.
I will now proceed with my commentary on a selection of the images in this project.
Image #4 (Morning of May, 21, 2021)
Image #18 (Evening of May 23, 2021)
These two photographs form a pair in the way that they share certain formal characteristics, but equally important to me, the two images are related directly to my experience of seeing the moon in the night sky on May 23, suspended above horizontal, rolling land forms, trees, and houses situated within the land. Image #4, made on the morning of May 21, seems to have anticipated what I would be seeing on May 23; and Image #18, made on the evening of May 23, just minutes after I saw the moon in the evening sky, seems like a visual metaphor for what I had just seen and experienced.
The glowing circular form in Image #4, slightly out of focus--like the moon I would see a few days later through the veil of thin clouds--is a silver decorative detail on the otherwise black facade of my stereo which sits on top of my chest of drawers just next to the bed. The ring is reflecting the soft morning light coming through the bedroom's shaded, lace-curtained window (which can also be seen in Image #3, reflected in a mirror which sits atop the chest of drawers.)
I keep the pad the paper on the top of the chest of drawers in case I want to write down something I remember from a dream, or perhaps an idea that pops into my head spontaneously as I am slowly waking up in the morning.
(Note: especially when I am writing commentaries on photographs for a current project, ideas will often emerge into my awareness quite spontaneously, particularly in the morning as I am laying in bed in a half-awake/half-asleep mode of consciousness which is a state of open receptiveness similar to what I experience when I am making photographs with camera in hand.)
Image #18, was made about a half hour after making all the other photographs on May 23 in my living room, the kitchen and then my bedroom. Just before getting into bed I do a set of stretches and exercises on the floor by the foot of my bed similar to those I do in the morning. As I turned my body toward the bed to perform a leg stretch, I happened to look under the bed and saw this "nocturnal landscape" consisting of wavy wires and wood molding illuminated by the light of the lamp in my bedroom.
This is the one and only photograph I made in our kitchen area the evening of May 23. It is an image that seems to anticipate the eclipse of the moon that would occur on May 26. Just below the mouth of the glass that is facing down from the dish drainer, a white circular reflection of the mouth of the glass can be seen in the dark granite countertop upon which the drainer is sitting. If you follow the white line around and upward to the left, you will see how it turns dark as it intersects (eclipses) the edge of the disk of light. The dark line is a shadow of the rim of the glass; the disk of light is a reflection in the granite of a light in the kitchen ceiling.
This image, which approaches abstraction and at the same time provides a rather intimate view of a domestic "nocturnal" still life, invokes in me the vastness of the universe and its boundless darkness within which untold numbers of glints of light illuminate the heavens from both known and unknown, named and unnamed sources.
Image #6 : As I was in the midst of making the morning photographs presented in Part I, I happened to look down and see my feet. I had never seen my feet this way before: feet which were nearing 76 years of age, looking worn and vulnerable in the soft gray light coming from my shaded, lace covered curtains. And yet they also seemed to be lovingly, comfortably touching each other in a way that recalls to mind the mirroring forms of a yin-yang diagram.
As I looked at my feet in this concentrated, meditative way, I experienced heartfelt gratitude for all the years and miles we had traveled together through this life. We have wandered the world untold miles looking for things to photograph, looking for images that would bring me News of the Universe. Now, here they were, lovingly offering their image to me.
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In the past few years--but particularly during the global Pandemic--I have been most content with STAYING HOME and photographing inside my house, "my room," "my own back yard." As Dorothy said so simply and poignantly at the end of the Wizard of Oz to Antie Em and the others by her bedside:
"Toto, we're home. Home! And this is my room, and you're all here. . . . If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with . . ."
This quote is very much in alignment with the yogic teachings which say that everything in the outer world come from the inner world of the Self, the Secrete Cave of the Heart. The yogic sages also tell us that our perceptual process is a matter of projecting inner images outward.*
(* I invite you to visit my essay Seeing the Grand Canyon which tells, in detail, of a visionary experience I had while visiting the Grand Canyon. In a detailed way my experience reflects the yogic teaching that projection of inner content creates the apparent outer world.)
Related to the idea that perception is a process of projection, Swami Muktananda spoke about a yogic practice (in From the Finite to the Infinite) which consists of looking at a single, isolated thing for a long time. If one's concentration becomes unwavering, direct and pure enough . . . the object will at some point disappear. Regarding the image of my feet, in this regard, because they are similar in tonalities and textures as the rug, I can easily imagine my feet merging with the appearance of the rug, each (my feet and the space of the rug) becoming part of a greater unified visual field. (See Image 5, below.)
This image is essentially a "visual field" photograph. My attention was centered on the space between the foreground and the background of the picture, which includes my pair of house slippers. The yogic sages are always reminding us that after all is said and done, our bodies turn into dust and merge back into the earth from whence they came, however the soul continues to exist as part of supreme Consciousness, the divine Self, That which dwells in the Cave of the Heart of every human being. Such is the Truth, the nature of the Oneness of Being. What appears to be empty space is in fact filled with the fullness of the Creative Power of the Universe, known in Siddha Yoga as shakti, or grace.
Image #16 (immediately below) is a similar kind of photograph that focuses on the "space-between." I will now comment on this and the other four photographs which constitute the whole of Part II-B, images made in my bedroom on the night of May 23, after seeing the moon in its near fullness.
Image #16 and the others in Part II-B were illuminated by the one bedside lamp which is pictured,
in complementary "halves," in the two images below, #16 & #19.
Image #16
Image #19
Image #16 focuses on the gentle play of light upon the surfaces of the two walls which conjoin in the vertical line near the center of the image. On the upper part of the left edge of the photograph there is a wonderful play of radiant light and shadow above the halved lampshade; and on the the right edge of the photograph there is a subdued hint of the lace curtain which covers a drop-down shade that is covering the rather large double bedroom window. In the morning, the light that comes through that shaded-curtained window has a very quiet, gentle glow which helps ease me into meditation. (See Image #3)
Though Image #16 is quite literally an image of the back right corner of the bedroom, it's abstract spatial quality and its subtle presence of light invokes a feeling that I directly associate with my experience of meditation. The goal of meditation is stilling and silencing the mind. When the mind is not thinking, not chattering to itself, not creating images from the past or some imagined future, one can come very closes to the Truth that pervades the silent, still, sacredness of the cave of the heart. Image #16 is, for me, radiant with these interior, meditative qualities of being.
Also, the light and tonalities that pervades the two conjoined planes have the gentle rhythm of breathing-in and breathing-out, which naturally becomes balanced as one enters deep into a meditative state. The line in which the two planes of the walls meet represents that unknown space between the two breaths, an abstract space that can be explored. imaginatively, as a space of "immense intimacy" to borrow another poetic phrase from Gaston Bachelard. In his book The Poetics of Space he devotes an entire chapter to Intimate Immensity, and another chapter to Corners.
A Corner is the most transcendent of spaces in a house or room, says Bachelard, and, like the Secret Cave of the Heart, it is the most secluded and intimate of spaces in which one longs to withdraw, hide, curl up and merge with the feeling of solitude, merge with one's own being. Bachelard writes:
Every corner of a house, every angle in a room, every inch of secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination. . . A corner that is [intensely, imaginatively] "lived in" tends to reject and restrain, even to hide, life. . . . A corner is a sort of half-box, part walls, part door. It will serve as an illustration for the dialectics of inside and outside . . . [A corner is] the space of our being. Noel Aranude writes:
I am the space where I am.
The five images in Part II-B share a similar degree of pictorial abstraction, and they share a similar feeling-tone that is based at least in part in the one source of light that pervades each of the images. And, there is at least one other subtle factor which is relevant, especially in regards to the theme of this project, and that is the meditation energy that pervades my bedroom, and particularly the secluded space which I call my "Meditation Cave."
Each morning, when I meditate in the back corner of my bedroom, next to the lamp on the bedside table, I generate a subtle kind of energy that builds up in that space. and the entire bedroom. That meditation energy, which is called shakti, becomes absorbed by all the walls and curtains and all the objects in the bedroom. And that energy, also known as grace and the creative power of the universe, actually supports the process of meditation; it allows me to enter the meditative state with more ease, and it helps me go deeply into meditation more quickly.
It is this shakti, this grace which transforms an image into a symbol and gives the symbol its inner radiance, its living presence. I sense that energy especially in Image #16.
Image #17
Image #19
There are two framed photographs hanging on my bedroom walls, and they can be seen in images #17 & 19. The photograph hanging over my bed is from a large multi-chaptered project entitled The Departing Landscape, the chapter entitled Abstract Photographs. The light from the bedside lamp has become a glowing presence on the right edge of the photograph and behind the round decorative form on top of the wood bedpost. The round form reminds me of images I have seen of planets being illuminated by a nearby sun. ~ I also enjoy the way the light from the lamp bounces off the right edge of the picture frame. It's warm glow reminds me of the golden moon Gloria and I saw, suspended in the dark sky just minutes before I made this photograph.
The other framed photograph appears in Image #19. Actually only one-half of the symmetrical image, from my project Field of Vision, can be seen. That's because the frame hangs on a short wall close to the bedroom door. When the door is open, as it was in Image #19, half of the symmetrical image becomes hidden (eclipsed) by the edge of the door. "Behind" or layered over the half of the symmetrical image, we can see in the reflection on the frame's glass part of the bed and one-half of the bedside lamp in the back corner of the bedroom. The lamp, too, has been eclipsed by the door.
Image #18
Image #18 : The light from the bedside lamp flows down the wall behind the bed and illuminates a secret "nocturnal landscape" in the space beneath the bed where the vertical plane of the back wall meets the flat plane of the rug-covered floor. There, "rolling hills" of electric wires gracefully rise and fall along the luminous horizon line of some white painted wood molding. I see something similar to this scene every time I'm about to enter Chatham Lane from Middle Cheshire road in my automobile.
(Note: just as I make the turn into Chatham Lane I am greeted with a wonderful overview of the Bristol Hills rolling gracefully, silently in the distance. The Hills surround the town of Canandaigua and its Lake. Though I cannot see the lake from this vantage point in my car, I can sense the lake's presence. When the light is just right, atmospheric mist that rises up from the lake becomes subtly illuminated, giving the space surrounded by the hills some additional mystery. It is a view that changes constantly with the movements of the sun and the moon and atmospheric changes. I always look forward to seeing what the scene will be presenting me in any given moment just as I am arriving home.)
Image #20
Image #20 concludes the third sequence of five images, and it brings to a close the project as a whole. In this photograph we see for the third time in the project the circular moon-like disk that decorates the facade of my small stereo which sits on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. (The disk appears first in the project's Title image, then in Image 4 of Part I.) The shinny silvery circle, which is centered in the black space of this photograph, is reflecting the light from the bedroom lamp. That centered circle of light has become for me a metaphor which expresses my feeling of the visual unity, and the sense of the Oneness of Being that pervades each image, and each of the three sequences of photographs in the project, and the project as a whole.
Everyone exists because of his own feeling of what is real.
The whole world exists in feeling. It is your feeling that is your world . . .
Swami Muktananda, From the Finite To The Infinite
I want conclude my commentary section by bringing to your attention one last detail: the small, rather dimly lit ring just to the right of the large, luminous circle. The little ring is nearly hidden in the dark; its presence is being overwhelmed by the light from the larger ring. Nonetheless, this ring is important and it deserves our attention. The relationship between the two circles of light constellate an archetypal situation that exists in every aspect of human life, the natural world . . . and every created thing in the Universe.
But I will leave it to you to solve the riddle contained in this image. Meaning must be experienced within each contemplator's self in the way that is most appropriate to his or her innermost feelings, needs and capacities in any given moment.
Epilogue
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Image #21 Symmetrical Photograph
Make your very heart the temple of God.
In the heart there is love that is concealed.
It also appears in the form of scintillating light.
Swami Muktananda, From the Finite To The Infinite
Another story about the moon: About two weeks after Gloria and I had stepped outside onto our front porch to see the moon in its near fullness, Gloria brought my attention to the moon again: it was hovering over the meadow and woods behind our house. Its form, however, had changed quite dramatically; now it was a barely visible, thin, crescent-shaped sliver.
I stepped outside onto our back deck to have a better look, and after my eyes had a chance to adjust I was amazed at what I saw: the sliver of moonlight was suspended in an ocean of twinkling stars, and, just below, above the tops of the trees, there was a mysterious soft glow of white light; and, below the trees, in the darkness concealing the meadow and its two ponds, I saw scintillating sparks of light which seemed to be mirroring the starry sky above.
The lightning bugs were out! . . . They had made their appearance just as the moon was about to disappear!
It was a magical moment, a vision that communicated quite clearly (despite Mercury Retrograde) the message of the Oneness of Being. We had been privileged to witness the moon's journey around our house, from front to back, and its transformation: from its near fullness of illumination to its near dissolution into the unfathomable vastness of the Universe.
Later that night the moon would become invisible, and yet I knew the moon existed even if I could't see it with my eyes. And I felt certain I would be seeing it again, soon. And while the moon was hiding, its presence would remain fully and brilliantly alive in my remembrance and in the secret, most sacred space of my being:
God is shining all the time.
He lives in the secret cave of the heart.
Keep reminding yourself that you are a portion
of supreme Consciousness, which lives in its fullness
inside you. Remembrance will exist between you and me.
If we have good understanding . . . there is no separation.
. . . whenever you remember me, I'll be there.
Swami Muktananda, From the Finite To The Infinite
This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page July 3, 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.
