Sacred Art
&
The Symbolic Photograph
~ In the age of Kali Yuga ~
Symmetrical Photograph from my project The Pandemic Inkjet Prints
Introduction
According to Hindu traditions, we are living in the fourth and darkest of the four "world ages" (Yugas) in the Yuga Cycle. The fourth Yuga, known as Kali Yuga, is characterized by "strife," "discord," "quarrel," "contention;" it is an age "full of conflict and sin."
In the past few weeks (March, 2022) hospitalizations had been steadily going down in the United States . . . then Putin initiated his atrocious invasion of Ukraine. The entire world watched as savagely attacked many major cities, and targeted civilians, including mothers and their children--even as they were trying to leave the country. Putin also terrorized Ukraine and nearby countries by attacking the larges nuclear power plant in all of Europe, located in Ukraine. And, to anyone who attempts to join Ukraine's surprisingly strong response to Putin's attacks, Putin has threatened nuclear retaliation. Many parts of the world are suffering serious economic and food rises thanks to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
In addition to all this, just recently at the end of March, 2022 a new and more contagious Omicran variant, "BA.2" has made its way into the United Stated and has become the dominant cause of escalating hospitalizations here (though surprisingly there have been no rapid rises anywhere, reports the NY Times). Many people in the United States (largely Republicans, and by choice, or by being intentionally misinformed) remain unvaccinated, and thus are among the most vulnerable to the new variant. Meanwhile Trump has continued to claim falsely that the vote in 2020 was a fraud, and his devoted followers continue to send him (lots) of money in support of his intention to run in the 2024 election . . . though evidence of his involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol Building is being gathered.
In the past few years we have watched a corrupted presidency emerge and fall and being supported by most Republicans; and we have watched the rise of White Suprematism; the proliferation of lying, misinformation and use of conspiracy theory, and blatent in-your-face acts of corruption, greed, meanness and violence . . . even among some of our country's top governmental officials. ~ This kind of behavior has become the norm; and autocracy seems preferable to democratic processes in many countries around the world and in places like Texas.
Perhaps the most dangerous thing of all in regards to life on this planet is Climate Change. There has been an inexcusable lack of attention given to the rapidly increasing dangers to our planet by many of our world's most powerful leaders . . . despite all the scientific warnings and statical data that have been voiced and presented. We have witnessed a continually growing number of extraordinarily devastating storms, floods, droughts, fires, the melting of glaciers and the rising of sea levels, the pollution and acidification of our oceans (and their dissolving coral reefs) . . . and much much more . . .
All these things, it seems to me, are clear signs of Kalie Yuga. What would it look like if it were to receive a face, or mask? In a recent project I was working on, entitled Maya's Veils of Illusion & The Truth Which Lies Behind a symmetrical photograph emerged spontaneously which is appropriately terrifying for the Age of Kali Yuga. Here is the image:
The Face, or ritual mask of Kali Yuga, from the project: Maya's Veils of Illusions
Kalie Yuga is our own creation; nothing but the consequences of our collective human folly, our entangled egos--that part of our psyches which is cut off from the Heart. The karma we are experiencing now could go back many many lifetimes ago, say the yogic sages.
If one were to look deeply into the "eyes" or "mouths" of Kali Yoga, what would one discover? If one were to look behind its veils, what Truth would one discover?
Despite all the darkness we have been experiencing, the feelings of danger, the possible losses of many more lives to war and epidemics, the devastating droughts and fires, floods and winds that are wounding our beautiful planet . . . the Sadgurus, the Siddhas, the poet-saints and other Great Beings which have existed in the past and exist in this present, such as Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, have told us: the Light of the Truth of the inner Self remains unchanged, alive and untouched, though, to most eyes that light is hidden by the mind, the ego, the intellect: Maya's Veils .
Symmetrical Photograph from the project "The Light of Memory"
Most of my photography over the past few years has been focused on finding the "interior light" that pervades the things of the world and the space of the human Heart, and giving that light its articulate grace-filled pictorial form. (See my Pandemic-inspired projects.) When that light emerges spontaneously in a photograph, through the grace of my Creative Process, an ineffable presence, a subtle kind of radiance or meaning may only be accessible to the "Eye of the Heart." It is an illumination which transcends the mind's limited intellectual capacity. I call those kinds of photographs True, living Symbols.
*
I became aware of a sacred presence that exits in things, places, and sometimes in people in the mid 1960's when I began to study photography in earnest at the Rochester Institute of Technology. As part of the photography curriculum, in my Freshman year I was required to take Beaumont Newhall's course, the History of Photography which he taught at the George Eastman House, in Rochester, New York. I became quite excited by the photographs he showed us by Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White, and by what they wrote about their photography: striving to make images which reveal "the inner essence" of things, the presence of "spirit" in photographic images, how an image could function as a visual "equivalent" for a lifetime of experiences and understandings.
It became clear to me in my first year studying photography that the fine art aspect of the medium (as opposed to commercial photography or photographic science) was the kind of photography I wanted to devote my life to. Every week, when I would walk to Eastman House for the history class, and then visit the museum's wonderful display of images representing the modern era of photography as a fine art, the museum became, for me, something like a holy shrine.
In the second year of my study at RIT, I was able to take a course with Minor White for one semester before he left to teach at MIT. Then, through some advanced level photography students I met, I was encouraged to take Nathan Lyons' Home Workshop. I studied with Nathan (in addition to continuing my course work at RIT) for the next two years. Nathan was Director of Exhibitions at Eastman House, and he produced some very important exhibitions of contemporary photography while I was a student in Rochester. His Home Workshop, which were profoundly important to me, was one of the ways he had begun preparing for what would later become a highly respected, accredited school in Rochester, known as the Visual Studies Workshop.
Later, in graduate school (1969-72 at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque) I discovered the writings of C. G. Jung. His theories about Synchronicity, the Symbol, and the Self, and his writings about Medieval Alchemy, the Philosopher's Stone and Self-Knowledge became the foundation of my MFA written thesis requirement. I also discovered in the early 1970's the writings of Gaston Bachelard. His book The Poetics of Space was for me a wonderful compliment to Jung's ideas.
In 1984 I read Robert Bly's wonderful book News of the Universe. Through a careful selection of poems and a series of insightful introductions he wrote for each chapter of the book, he demonstrated the evolution of human consciousness which included the poems of the poet-saints, such as Rumi. Bly's chapter on the Object Poem was particularly inspiring to me. The poems he presented convinced me that Things are alive with a consciousness that perhaps was very much like my own. The poems by the poet-saints sparked something something very exciting in me that I could not understand.
Then, in 1987 I met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, a yogic saint, or Sadguru (True Guru) and spent two days with her in a Siddha Yoga meditation program known as an Intensive. Through her transmission of grace I experienced the Sacred Presence, the divine Self which dwells in the very depths of my being. That very powerful experience (known as Shaktipat) transformed me, my way of life, my relationship with photography. Making photographs gradually became an extension of my yoga meditation practice, and a way of giving visual form to both my contemplations of the yogic teachings and the sacred presence which I was experiencing equally within myself and in the things I was photographing.
*
Some time after I met Gurumayi and received her grace, I felt compelled to look back at the events in my life that had led up to that most auspicious of all meetings. I recognized an interconnected web of events and friendships that eventually had brought me to Gurumayi, and in that recognition I gained a palpable awareness of the presence of her grace in my life that I had never before been aware of. I came to realize that everything that had happened to me that was of any real significance, was in some inexplicable way intended to prepare me for that destined 1987 meeting with a True Teacher or Sadguru. Since that first meeting with the physical embodiment of the Guru Principle, and to this very day, Gurumayi's presence in my life, her teachings--and the teachings of her beloved Guru, Swami Muktananda, who founded the Siddha Yoga Path--have been my constant companion and a very real source of grace in my life and in my photography. The grace of the Siddha Yoga Path has turned my Creative Process in photography into a vital, living, integrated aspect of my yogic process, a process of unveiling the True, Sacred Knowledge of the Self which exists within me and in the things of the world.
An ancient yogic text known as Shri Guru Gita says:
I honor the Guru who is the highest being and who is of the
form of this world, from Brahma to a blade of grass,
everything moveable and immovable.
The Guru principle moves and moves not. It is far
as well as near. It is inside everything
as well as outside everything.
The English translation of the original Sanskrit text is from the SYDA Foundation publication: The Nectar of Chanting.
I have also learned to appreciate the grace of my Creative Process in the way that it, as a form of Sacred Art, constantly reminds me this. It is, however, amazing to me that it took twenty-seven years . . . after I met Gurumayi and began practicing Siddha Yoga . . . to come to the realization that my photography had evolved into a form of Sacred Art.
The realization came to me very dramatically in 2o11 after my wife Gloria and I traveled for two weeks through Turkey, and I was graced with a series of experiences there of Islamic Sacred Art. I had been totally ignorant of the True idea of Sacred Art and those experiences in Turkey insisted that I being to consciously come to a right understanding of its power and meaning. I will write more about this, further, below.
Symmetrical Photograph from the project "Prayer and the Nature of Things"
The Oneness of Being
Sacred Art & The Symbolic Photograph
The foundational teaching in Siddha Yoga is this: God, the SadGuru, the Guru Principle, and the divine Self are One. And that the Formless, Supreme Being, the Atman, the Absolute, Brahman, Shiva, Consciousness, the Truth . . . all these ways of naming the un-nameable has become the outer form of the created world. Everything, including my own Self, is pervaded by Shakti, grace, the Creative Power of the Universe, and thus everything is Sacred, everything is alive and illuminated with that subtle interior light which is the Self.
Swami Muktananda taught:
If you wish to describe the subtlety of the Self, then
you have to discard language all together and
become silent. It is so vast that it stretches
from east to west and from north to south
and above and below. It also lies beyond.
It is both immanent and transcendent.
from Satsang with Baba, Vol. II
The Oneness of Being can be given an Imaginal photographic form that, with grace, becomes alive with the Creative Power of the Universe, with the light of the divine inner Self. I have named that kind of photograph a True, living Symbol. Indeed, Symbolic Photographs are radiantly, pulsatingly alive with Sacred Knowledge, that ineffable, unknowable (to the human intellect) Self-Knowledge.
True, living Symbols are the visual embodiment of a Unitary Reality, the Oneness of Being; they hold within their pictorial form the conjunction of the corresponding aspects of the dualistic world--the corresponding forms of the visible and invisible, inner and the outer, physical and the spiritual worlds. Jung defined this psycho-physical phenomenon "the Alchemical Marriage." True, living Symbols transcend the ordinary dualistic appearance of the outer world by unveiling, through the creative power of grace, the light of the Self which exists within or beyond the outer surface appearances of things.
Thus Symbolic Photographs are Sacred Spaces, Imaginal equivalents of the most sacred of all spaces, the space of the Heart, the luminous dwelling place of the Self of all beings, God, Supreme Consciousness, Sri Guru:
The Guru's Self is the Self of all beings.
Shri Guru is seated in the center of the space
of the heart, shining like a pure crystal . . .
The English translation of the original Sanskrit text is from the SYDA Foundation publication: The Nectar of Chanting.
When I enter imaginatively into the sacred space of a True living symbol and become absorbed in its creative energy, it's grace, through a process of contemplation my mind become silent, as if time has come to a standstill; I am immersed in a self-luminous field of unbounded Sacred space, the space of the Heart, the space of my own inner Self. Here, I experience an ineffable kind of meaning or knowledge which is beyond the limitations of my mind, its intellect, its ego. And it feels as if this meaning always existed, hidden, deep within me.
Alfred Stieglitz, the great photographer who coined the term Equivalent Photograph, which is very similar to what I have named the Symbolic Photograph, once defined his intention of getting at some ineffable sense of the Truth through making photographs, like this:
"It is not the mere hitting of the target that interests me.
But rather the hitting of the center of the bulls eye.
(This quote was published in Aperture 8:1 1960, an issue devoted to Alfred Stieglitz,
edited by Minor White and Dorthy Norman. Click here to read
Minor White's essay on the Equivalent)
from the project Circled Photographs, part of the Triadic Memories Project
Contemplation of a True, living Symbols is very similar to a meditative space. It involves the merging of one's mind with the image and in this way absorbing the grace, the knowledge that pervades the image. ~ Someone asked Swami Muktananda: "What is meditation? and what is its function?" and here are selected parts of his much longer response to those questions which can shed light on the Self Knowledge inherent in Sacred Art.
Meditation in its highest form is the complete merging of the mind . . . with its source. Meditation is that state . . . in which the mind becomes completely absorbed in the inner Self and no other thought or image flits across it. This total inner stillness is the goal. Whatever processes help to bring about this state are also included in meditation. / When the mind begins to experience the peace, joy and bliss which surround the Spirit, then it is in a state of meditation. / Through meditation a complete universe is brought into being. / It is meditation which makes us aware of the essence of life, its inner meaning . . . that our life has some purpose. (from Satsang with Baba, Vol. II)
(I invite you to click on this link The Sacred Art Photography Projects which contains a listing of hyperlinked photography project titles, each consisting of photographs and text, which hopefully work together to invoke some meaningful experience of the "essence of life, its inner meaning.")
From the project:
The Center of Being
Personal Stories
of Synchronicity, Grace & Destiny
I have come to understand that the grace which transforms photographs into living Symbols is also That which is at the very heart and center of every moment of my life . . . if I pay close attention. However there are moments that stand out, that insist on my being consciously aware of the moment and its unfolding of a deeply meaningful insight. And indeed I have been blessed with many of these moments of revelations . . . which Jung defined as moments of Synchronicity, moments in which acausal events fall together in unexpectedly meaningful ways, and in their conjunction have awakened me to the Sacred nature life, the sacred nature of my own inner Self.
My meeting with Gurumayi is a profoundly powerful example of how my life circumstances brought me to her one weekend and I received her Shakti, her grace. But, as I look back at some of my most profoundly meaningful experiences before I met Gurumayi, I now realize that those experiences too were experiences of grace, experiences that "had to happen" because of my destiny.
It is said, in some yogic traditions, that in order to fulfill certain aspects of one's destiny based on past actions (including actions which took place in past lives) we actually choose the family we will be born into so that we will have the experiences we need to move forward in our sadhana, our spiritual practices. Those experiences constitute parts of a necessary purification process that must occur, and which will help us reach our yogic goal: merging with the ocean of Consciousness, becoming One with God, the Guru Principle, the inner Self.
So I want to share with you, below, some personal stories that I think illustrate how interconnected our lives are with each other, how everything that happens is due to grace and a seamless unfolding of our own unique Sacred individual destinies.
My Dad's Death
My dad died in August, 1955 just a few weeks before I turned ten years old. I was staying with my cousin Bobby while my dad was in the hospital. The night he died it was a very hot so Aunt Lilly took us to an outdoor band concert in a nearby park. During the concert I came down with a fever and started shivering! I was so cold I had to be taken back to my cousin’s house and wrapped in blankets.
I woke myself up during the night feverishly, rhythmically pounding upon my pillow, harder and harder . . . faster and faster. . . This really upset my cousin who was sleeping in another bed in the same room. He ran downstairs to get my Uncle Bob. While my cousin was gone, the pounding upon the pillow stopped. I didn’t know how to explain to my uncle why I had been doing that.
A few hours later, at the crack of dawn, as I was listening to a bird crying out in the nearby woods, I heard my aunt Lilly coming up the stairs and into my cousin's attic bedroom. She asked me to go downstairs with her. She looked very sad, very concerned. As I was laying on a couch looking out their living room picture window at a telephone pole with many lines running from its arms, my Aunt told me that my dad had died in the hospital during the night. That image of the telephone haunted many of the photographs I was to make many years later.
I woke myself up during the night feverishly, rhythmically pounding upon my pillow, harder and harder . . . faster and faster. . . This really upset my cousin who was sleeping in another bed in the same room. He ran downstairs to get my Uncle Bob. While my cousin was gone, the pounding upon the pillow stopped. I didn’t know how to explain to my uncle why I had been doing that.
A few hours later, at the crack of dawn, as I was listening to a bird crying out in the nearby woods, I heard my aunt Lilly coming up the stairs and into my cousin's attic bedroom. She asked me to go downstairs with her. She looked very sad, very concerned. As I was laying on a couch looking out their living room picture window at a telephone pole with many lines running from its arms, my Aunt told me that my dad had died in the hospital during the night. That image of the telephone haunted many of the photographs I was to make many years later.
Epiphany of the Snapshots
A few weeks before my dad died (he was in the hospital at the time) I had this epiphany: my cousin Bobby came running up to me with a handful of small, black and white snapshots he had just gotten back from the drugstore. He excitedly placed them in my hand. When I looked down at them, I knew in that very moment that I would be a photographer. That's what I wanted to do. It felt as if my life depended on it. And from that moment on, photography was the primary focus and refuge of my life . . . until I met Gurumayi in 1987.
After my dad died, I became obsessed with my dream of making photographs. I began reading camera magazines and books about photography from the library. I studied the cameras and darkroom equipment in the Sears Roebuck Catalogue. That Christmas, the first one following my dad's death, I asked for a film developing & contact printing kit. ~ Before New Years Day, 1956 I had set up a make-shift darkroom in the basement, using the top of the washing machine as a table, and I developed my first roll of film. Shortly after, I made my first contact prints from the negatives I had shot and developed myself. (See my Essay: Death, Art, Writing.)
*
My mom found it very difficult to care for me and my sister alone in Piqua, a small town in Ohio, without a High School diploma. After trying to make it on her own doing laundry, ironing, working part time in a Doctor's office, working in my school's cafeteria, she married a charming meat salesman who lived 60 miles away, in Portland, Indiana. He was a great dancer (my mom loved to dance) and, it turned out, he was also addicted to gambling and alcohol.
My mom (and I) became very depressed after moving to Portland, Indiana and began dealing with my step-father's dysfunctional behaviors. I took refuge in photography, read books about Michelangelo and Van Gogh, and began planning ways I could get myself out of Portland.
I was determined to go to college and study photography. Of the three schools I applied to, I was accepted, for the fall of 1963, at only one of the schools: the photography program at the Rochester Institute of Technology . . . which, as it turned out, was the most ideal place I could ever have gone in the early 1960's to study photography. As I have already mentioned, I had the great fortune to have been able to study the History of Photography with Beaumont Newhall at George Eastman House in my Freshman year, and study with Minor White one semester, and study with Nathan Lyons two years. After my third year I transferred to the Institute of Design, in Chicago, to complete my undergrad studies with Aaron Siskind.
My mom paid for my first year at RIT with money from my dad's social security death benefit and the money I had earned that previous summer working for a roofing company owned by my friend's dad. And I was able to work my way through college the next four years of undergrad school at the RIT bookstore where I met a serious advanced photography student who told me about Nathan Lyons' home workshop. After my first year's study with Nathan he got me a summer job at Eastman House in the darkroom there.
Dream of the "Wise Old Man"
My best friend, Jim Erwin, took Nathan's home workshop with me, then he got married and moved to Chicago to study with Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design. I decided I had gotten everything I could from in Rochester and moved to Chicago at the same time as Jim and his wife Phyllis.
My wife to be, Gloria, was Phyllis's sister. We had met briefly in Rochester, then became quite close in Chicago when she came to visit Phyllis and Jim. After I finished my undergraduate degree work in Chicago in the spring of 1968, I moved to New York City because Gloria had been admitted to Pratt, in Brooklyn, to begin studying art in the fall, and I wanted to be near her to see if our relationship would blossom further.
After more than a year of living in New York City, where I was working for a commercial photographer and seeing Gloria during the weekends, we became very close as a couple. And yet, I ban feeling like I needed to move forward in my life. I had tired of working in commercial photography, and living in NY City was difficult on my income. So I was faced with the dilemma of what to do about Gloria: she had over two years left at Pratt before graduating.
My friend Gary Metz, from RIT days, was in NY City at that time working at the Museum of Modern Art in the Photography Department on a fellowship; he had seen a poster there announcing a full teaching Fellowship for the Graduate Photography Program at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He encouraged me to apply. I took his advice and applied and I was offered the Fellowship (!) which included full tuition and a stipend to cover living expenses in exchange for teaching two Intro to Photo photography classes each semester for three years.
I definitely wanted to go to New Mexico, but I didn't know what to do about Gloria. My desire to be with her was very strong. I wanted to ask her to come to New Mexico with me and suggest she continue her art studies at UNM. I was really struggling with what to do, how to ask her to leave Pratt . . . Then one night I had a dream:
I woke up, stunned, with the certainty that I should ask Gloria to come to New Mexico with me. But I was less certain about asking her to marry me.
The Wise Old Man is a familiar archetypal symbol in both classic literature and in the world of Jungian depth psychology. The old man's blindness may have been a reflection of my own confused state of mind, I'm not sure, but the communication from this deeper trans-conscious aspect of myself--which Henry Corbin would probably say was my Guide, Celestial Twin or Guardian Angel--was very clear about what I should do, and I really needed this direction.
The Wise Old Man is a familiar archetypal symbol in both classic literature and in the world of Jungian depth psychology. The old man's blindness may have been a reflection of my own confused state of mind, I'm not sure, but the communication from this deeper trans-conscious aspect of myself--which Henry Corbin would probably say was my Guide, Celestial Twin or Guardian Angel--was very clear about what I should do, and I really needed this direction.
So, I asked Gloria to come to New Mexico with me. She said she would come with me, but it would only be possible if we married. Her parents would be offended if we lived together, unmarried, and Gloria's dad was paying for her education.
The wise old man that appeared in my dream was, of course, right: "You have to ask her to marry you." So I asked Gloria to marry me and we did get married, in Rochester, NY with all of her family members present, including my friends Jim, Gary Metz and others.
Swami Muktananda, when asked about karma and destiny, would often say: "If it happened [or "If it happens"] it had to happen." It did seem to me later that when the "wise old man" said to me "you have to ask her to marry you" . . . it was as if he had already read what was written in my "Life's Book of Destiny."
The Gift : A Two Day Intensive With Gurumayi
As destiny would have it, I met Gurumayi in 1987 through Gloria's other, younger sister, Florence! who had been practicing Siddha Yoga since the late 1970's. She badly wanted us to meet Gurumayi and spend some time in the South Fallsburg, NY Ashram, so she and her husband offered us both a gift of a tw0-day meditation program, called an Intensive, with Gurumayi in August, 1987. My Shaktipat experience, of Gurumayi's initiating grace, took a classic form: the "opening of the heart." (I have written a full detailed account of this experience in my blog project: Photography and Yoga, part I)
from my project Photography and Yoga, part I
It's clear to me that we all have, very deep within us, forms of Knowledge that provides direction or guidance and subtle kinds of understandings in our lives . . . but it takes self-effort and grace to gain access to that knowledge, and listen to That which is trying to make communication with us. I would call those "forms of Knowledge" the exit within us the Guru Principle.
The Guru Principle, the living shakti, is at work at all times for each of us, I believe, even if we have never meet a True Guru in his or her physical form in this lifetime. I certainly have felt the destiny in my life moving me forward through untold numbers of connections, inspirations, people, events . . . as I have tried to show in my stories about the death of my dad at an early age; my career as a photographer being literally handed to me in the form of some snapshots my cousin had showed me; an opportunity to study with some of the most important teachers in the history of photography in Rochester, NY; and my meeting Gloria through my friend who had married her older sister Phyllis; and while living in New York City, having a friend that told me about the Fellowship in New Mexico. ~ In Siddha Yoga, there is no such thing as "luck." Every thing happens for the best, for the graceful unfolding of one's destiny. ~ Finally, Gloria's younger sister Florence led us--and paid our way--to meet Gurumayi.
There is so much more . . . but all of these meaningful events in my life would qualify as examples of what Jung defined as synchronicity. After having studied yoga with Gurumayi for 35 years, I have a strong feeling that synchronicity is simply another way of identifying revelatory moments of grace, moments perceived as particularly, personally meaningful based in our own, unique individual destinies.
Every meaningful photograph I have ever made, those that function for me as a True, living symbols, is nothing but an image which has given visual form to an experience of synchronicity, an experience of grace. I have felt for the past thirty-five years that Gurumayi's grace has been a constant presence, a constant companion, an ever-present guiding principle in my life and in my photography. It is her grace and the grace of my Creative Process that has allowed me to see my life in photography as a manifestation of the Sacredness of Life, and an integral part of my yogic practices. (Again, I invite you to visit my updated collection of photography projects which I have identified as Sacred Art Photography Projects.)
Sacred Art
&
The Grace of "my" Creative Process
I often write about "the grace of my Creative Process." That phrase is intentionally ambiguous, because as I have just said, I do see my entire life experience as a Sacred creative process, an unfolding of karma and destiny guided by the power of grace, and magical moments, gifts of insight that Jung termed synchronicity.* I see each photograph that functions for me as a True, living Symbol as a gift, a visual form of grace that helps me recognize the Sacredness of Life, the Oneness of Being.
(*Note: Synchronicity was one of the major themes I wrote about in New Mexico, in my Jungian inspired MFA Thesis entitled The Symbolic Photograph: A Means to Self-Knowledge.)
When I am photographing, if I "think" I know what I'm doing when I make a picture, that picture often ends up lacking sustained interest for me; they quickly become loose authentic meaning for me. So I have learned to have a profound respect for and trust in the grace of "my" Creative Process. I make a conscious effort to stay out of Its way and allow It to take the lead in my attitude and manor of making photographs. Those images that come to me spontaneously, without thinking, that look and feel radiant with grace, that invoke experiences of meaning that are beyond saying, beyond intellectual understanding . . . those kinds of images are the ones I long to see and contemplate, images which function for me as True, living symbols.
(Note: I have made many different kinds of photography projects since the mid-1960's when I began studying photography in Rochester, NY. I have listed over 100 titled projects on my blog's Welcome Page, and several of them contain multiple chapters. Certainly not all of the projects, function for me as Sacred Art projects, and certainly not all of the photographs in those projects function for me as True, living Symbols. ~ How the images and the projects function for you, is essentially really up to you. ~ I should add, here, that sometimes an image may function for me as a symbol, and then later it may loose its attraction for me. And perhaps that same image may become alive with meaning for me again, but a meaning that has changed in some way. This change in meaning probably is a reflection of how I have changed over time, for certainly the images has remained unchanged. ~ Also, sometimes I realize that a photograph has been way ahead of my ability to connect with it in a meaningful way, and then later it becomes charged with meaning for me for I finally became prepared to receive its gifts. ~ I have also observed that sometimes I probably have had expectations which got in the way of my being open and receptive to what an image actually had to offer me.)
*
The idea and true meaning of Sacred Art came to me surprisingly late in my life, twenty-seven years after I had met Gurumayi and began practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation. In 2011, while traveling for two weeks through Turkey, I experienced multiple Epiphanic encounters with many forms of Islamic Sacred Art. It was a deeply meaningful pilgrimage that made me hungry to know more and understand more deeply the nature of what I had experienced.
Symmetrical Photograph from the project "An Imaginary Book"
The Sacred Art of Islam
& "An Imaginary Book"
During the two week tour Gloria and I took together in Turkey, in the spring of 2011, the series of mystical or visionary experiences I encountered awoke me to the real power and mystery of Islamic Sacred Art. We visited mosques, the holy shrine of Rumi, the Sufic poet-saint, and we attended a concert of Sacred music and the whirling Sufi dervishes of Konya. We saw magnificent ancient prayer rugs, illuminated Qur'ans, and several times each day we heard . . . throughout the towns we visited and in the mountains we explored . . . the haunting sounds of longing of the Call to Prayer. These experiences were so intense, so palpably alive with grace for me that I became inspired to study the spiritual and sacred art Traditions of Islam and really try to come to a deep understanding and appreciation of Traditional Sacred Art.
The most powerful experience of them all occurred in an Islamic Museum of Art while I was looking at an exhibition of very old hand-made illuminated Qur'ans. I became enthralled by the visual graphics, the purity of the calligraphic writing. As I was looking at one of the illuminated pages . . . all of a sudden the graphic image came to life with a self-luminous glow, as if the light was coming from within or beneath the image. But perhaps that light was coming from within me and I was projecting it into the image (?). In any case it was especailly that visionary experience which stunned me and made me want to know as much as I could about the Traditional visual aspects of Qur'an illumination and Islamic Sacred Art in all its aspects.
Upon our return home from our travels, and over the next two years, I read and contemplated many books about Islamic Sacred Art; and I created a multi-chaptered blog project entitled "An Imaginary Book" (2011-2013) that was inspired by my experiences in Turkey and all that I had learned from my studies. It was in this "Book" project that I introduced for the first time in my Creative Process what I call the Symmetrical Photograph, a visual form which is the very embodiment of the concept, The Oneness of Being.
(To learn more about my experiences in Turkey visit "An Imaginary Book" especially the first chapter Prayer Stones, in which I write about several of my experiences of Islamic Sacred Art. If you want to explore Islamic Sacred Art I invite you to visit this link: Sacred Art, Sacred Knowledge and visit the many links I have provided there, and the list of books and authors I have recommended.)
Sacred Art, in every spiritual Tradition, is at its very best a True, living manifestation of grace. True, Sacred works of art transcend the limitations of an artist's ego, an individual's personality. The Traditional artist becomes the servant of a higher Ideal, a higher purpose, the highest Truth.
My understanding of what a True, living Symbolic Photograph could mean, and how it manifested, had found its equivalent in the Islamic Sacred Art I experienced inTurkey. The symmetrical photographs "I" had made, those which functioned for me as True, living Symbols, were I believe very much in alignment with the ideals of Traditional forms of art making. That is to say, a True living Symbol is not about me, my personal life, my personal feelings; and I do not consider the images "mine." I consider True Symbols to be gifts of grace, spontaneous creations that emerge from within a transcendent aspect of "my" Creative Process.
Because of my past study of other artists' work, the Sacred Art of Islam and other Traditions, the writings of Carl Jung, and practices of Siddha Yoga Meditation for the past thirty five years with Gurumayi . . . I understand that the source of True Symbols, the source of all True forms of Sacred Art, is the shakti or grace of inner divine Self, the Guru Principle, etc. The images emerge from the interior space of the Heart, though grace, because ". . . it needed to happen." Or, in the words of Wassily Kandinsky, because of "the innermost necessity of the soul." (See Kandinsky's book Concerning the Spiritual In Art)
My role within "my" Creative Process is something like a Messenger, one who delivers into the world, for myself and others, what the poet Robert Bly calls the News of the Universe. In the Traditional sense, I strive to get myself, my ego, out of the way so that the grace of a greater Creative Process can function through me, unobstructed, with the least amount of resistance or "baggage" carried over from my ego, intellect or personality. When I feel I am creating in alignment with grace, I become gratified in the possibility that perhaps I had momentarily joined in the great Tradition of many other artists who strived to serve the Highest: the inner Self, the Absolute, the Guru Principle, God.
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I wanted to share with you, below, some excerpts from the writings of three authors I respect very much who have a deep understanding about Sacred Art and its Traditional aspects. Following the collection of excerpts I will be present some images and texts regarding: the Symmetrical Photographs I have been presenting in the project then thematic sections regarding: The Photograph as ICON; Angels; and last, but not least: Death.
Writings on Sacred & Traditional Art
by Frithjof Schuon, Seyed Hossein Nasr & Tom Cheetham
from the project Symmetrical Snow Photographs
On Sacred Art's Essential Content
Frithjof Schuon Art from the Sacred to the Profane ~ East and West
A thing is true by its symbolism and holy by the depth of its beauty; all beauty is a cosmic mode of holiness.
No art in itself is a human creation; but sacred art has this particularity, that its essential content is a revelation, that it manifests a properly sacramental form of heavenly reality, such as the icon of the Holy Face . . . the statue of Shiva dancing . . . the carved images of the Buddhas . . . and in certain cases, the calligraphic copying--likewise ritual--of the sacred Books . . . Sacred art is first of all the visible and audible form of Revelation. . . The form must be an adequate expression of its content. . .
To say that one prefers the works of God to the works of man would be to simplify the problem unduly, given that in any art meriting the epithet "sacred" it is God who is the author; man is merely the instrument and what is human is merely the material. . . All things being interrelated, it goes without saying that aesthetic emotion may convey . . . a spiritual intuition or even a truth which the artist may not necessarily be conscious of, but which will be transmitted none the less.
No art in itself is a human creation; but sacred art has this particularity, that its essential content is a revelation, that it manifests a properly sacramental form of heavenly reality, such as the icon of the Holy Face . . . the statue of Shiva dancing . . . the carved images of the Buddhas . . . and in certain cases, the calligraphic copying--likewise ritual--of the sacred Books . . . Sacred art is first of all the visible and audible form of Revelation. . . The form must be an adequate expression of its content. . .
To say that one prefers the works of God to the works of man would be to simplify the problem unduly, given that in any art meriting the epithet "sacred" it is God who is the author; man is merely the instrument and what is human is merely the material. . . All things being interrelated, it goes without saying that aesthetic emotion may convey . . . a spiritual intuition or even a truth which the artist may not necessarily be conscious of, but which will be transmitted none the less.
On the Function of the Sacred Image
Frithjof Schuon: Language of the Self
What is the sacred in relation to the world? It is the interference of the uncreate in the created, of the eternal in time, of the infinite in space, of the Supra-formal in forms; it is the mysterious introduction into one realm of existence of a presence which in reality contains and transcends that realm and could cause it to burst asunder in a sort of divine explosion. The sacred is the incommensurable, the transcendent, hidden within a fragile form belonging to this world.
Art will be more inward and more profound than verbal expositions, and this explains the central function which a sacred image can assume.
It is necessary to relearn how to see and to look, and to understand that the sacred belongs to the field of the immutable, and not to that of change.
On Sacred Art, Sacred Knowledge & Grace; Truth & Presence
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred
Like the words of sacred scripture and the forms of nature, works of sacred or traditional art ultimately are a revelation from that Reality which is the source of both tradition and the cosmos. . . Traditional art is at once based upon and is a channel for both knowledge and grace or that sciential sacra which is both knowledge of a sacred character. Sacred art is at once truth and presence. . . Art reflects the truth to the extent that it is sacred, and it emanates the presence of the sacred to the extent that it is true.
Thanks to those sacred forms man is able to penetrate into the inner dimension of his own being and, by virtue of that process, gain a vision of the inner dimension of all forms. Only the sacred forms invested with the transforming power of the sacred through revelation and the Logos which is its instrument can enable man to see God everywhere.
A work of sacred art melts the hard shell of the human ego and leaves an indelible mark upon the soul. . . Sacred art is a means of remembrance of what man is and the celestial abode from which he has descended and which he carries still in the depth of his being.
On Beauty & Sacred Art
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Knowledge and the Sacred
Traditional [Sacred] art is concerned with beauty which is inseparable from reality and is related to the inner dimension of the Real as such . . . Ultimate Reality as being the Absolute, the Infinite, and Perfection or Goodness. Beauty reflects the Absolute in its regularity and order, infinity in its sense of inwardness and mystery, and demands perfection. A masterpiece of traditional art is at once perfect, orderly, and mysterious . . . the mystery and inwardness which open unto the Divine Infinitude itself. It is this interiorizing power of beauty that is emphasized and God is seen especially in His inward "dimension" which is beauty.
. . . beauty becomes a divine attraction rather than a seduction and is able to communicate something of the formless Essence in forms. In this sense beauty not only transmits knowledge but is inseparable from knowledge of the sacred and sacred knowledge.
Beauty is the Divine maya of the Real and the aura of the Absolute. All manifestations of the Ultimate Reality are accompanied by this aura which is beauty. One cannot speak of reality in the metaphysical sense without this splendor and radiance which surround it like a halo and which constitute beauty itself. That is why creation is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Beauty is the Divine maya of the Real and the aura of the Absolute. All manifestations of the Ultimate Reality are accompanied by this aura which is beauty. One cannot speak of reality in the metaphysical sense without this splendor and radiance which surround it like a halo and which constitute beauty itself. That is why creation is overwhelmingly beautiful.
Sacred art is a means of remembrance of what man is and the celestial abode from which he has descended and which he carries still in the depth of his being.
All sacred art has its Tao, its principle which is related to the principles which dominate the cosmos. To paint according to the Tao is not emulate the outward but the inner principles of things. The fruit of such an art is a beauty of celestial origin.
On the Necessity of Grace
Tom Cheetham After Prophecy
The process of creation is slow, halting, unpredictable, and full of doubts and uncertainties. Grace is necessary . . . The work of alchemy is an intercoursing with the entire world. It can be imagined as a kind of dialogue with a partner who is reticent, difficult, often absent, almost always obscure.
This form of dialogical life is profoundly physical. Our bodies are the world lived from the inside, and through them we experience all the elements of Creation. At the heart of existence, there is a dark unfathomable union of our own innermost substance with the elemental forces of nature. Earth, air, fire, and water are powerful symbols of our deepest being.
The Symmetrical Photograph
a form of Sacred Art
The photographs I have displayed in this project have been drawn from my growing collection of Sacred Art Photography Projects, and all of the images are examples of what I call Symmetrical Photographs. When a symmetrical photograph is functioning for me as a True, living Symbol, it is a Sacred Image, the par excellence visual embodiment of the concept: The Oneness of Being. The "point" at the very center of a symmetrical photograph, where the four repeated, mirroring images conjoin, shines like a pure crystal illuminating the entire image, because that point is, in its essential, innermost visual nature, represents the space of the center of the Heart where, the ancient yogic sages tell us, Shri Guru, God, the divine inner Self is seated.
Symmetrical photographs are quite often radically transformed versions of their original single "source" image, or straight photograph. In its symmetrical transformed state the image has become an impersonal, Sacred object pervaded by divine Presence, much like the ICONs of the Eastern Christian Tradition. In other words, the meaning of a symmetrical photograph is not based in artist, his or her personal expression of self (with a small s), but rather, in the Traditional sense of the word, its meaning is its Sacred Presence.
The Photograph as ICON
Symmetrical Photograph from the project The Photograph As ICON
In the Eastern Christian Tradition there is the ICON, a living image similar to what I have been calling a True, living Symbol. The following collection of quotes by Tom Cheetham and Pavel Florensky are taken from my project The Photograph As ICON which includes many Symmetrical Photographs, like the one above. Cheetham has written four books about the writings and ideas of Henry Corbin. He makes Corbin's ideas quite accessible, in a way that makes one want to read Corbin directly. I highly recommend that you read Cheetham's four excellent books first, in order of their publication, then Corbin's book about the Sufi mystic, Ibn 'Arabi, entitled Alone With the Alone.
We will begin with two excerpts from Tom Cheetham's book All the World An Icon:
Every creative act comes out of darkness and requires us to stand on the edge of the unknown . . . That place of unknowing is sacred . . . because it entails a willingness to sacrifice who we think we are and what we think we know . . . Every creative act is a prayer born of love and longing . . . Henry Corbin teaches us that "prayer is not a request for something: it is the expression of a mode of being, a means of existing and of causing to exist." It is the attempt to fill that pregnant darkness. Corbin says "Prayer is the highest form, the supreme act of the Creative Imagination." Longing and nostalgia are the energy of ta'wil, the energy of prayer--they draw the soul through the darkness and toward the flame. Tom Cheetham : All the World an Icon
In the Eastern Church . . . there long remained a tradition of the Icon as a sacred window onto the invisible world. The religious art of the West was about meaning. The Icon [of the Eastern Church] is about being. Corbin was deeply attached to this iconic interpretation of the Imagination. Cheetham: All the World an Icon
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The next three excerpts are by Pavel Florensky, from his book Iconostasis:
Within ourselves, life in the visible world alternates with life in the invisible, and thus we experience moments . . . when the two worlds grow so very near in us that we can see their intimate touching. At such fleeting moments in us, the veil of visibility is torn apart, and through that tear--that break we are still conscious of at that moment--we can sense that the invisible world (still unearthly, still invisible) is breathing; and that both this and another world are dissolving into each other. Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis
Icons remind those who pray of the icons' prototype . . . In one beholder . . . the icon will stir the dreams that lie deeper in the subconscious, awakening a perception of the spiritual that not only affirms that such seeing is possible but also brings the thing seen into immediately felt experience. Thus, at the highest flourishing of their prayer, the ancient ascetics found that their icons were not simply windows through which they could behold the holy countenances depicted on them, but were also doorways through which these countenances actually entered the empirical world. Florensky, Iconostasis
Experiences have occurred . . . to persons who were not following any ascetic practice of prayer at all: that is, a sharp penetration of a spiritual reality into the soul, a penetration almost like a physical blow or sudden burn that instantly shocks the viewer who is seeing, for the first time, one of the great works of sacred icon painting. . . Like light pouring forth light, the icon stands revealed. . . Our seeing rises above everything around us, for we recognize that we are, in this act of seeing, existing in the icon's space in eternity. "Yes" we say, ". . . my eyes cannot believe what they're seeing": such we testify to the icon's triumphant beauty overwhelming everything. Florensky, Iconostasis
The Angels
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from the project: The Angels
As I was reading Cheetham and Corbin I became exited by their writings about Angles. My interest in Angels originated in the art of Paul Klee, who made several wonderful drawings of Angles. My multi-chaptered photography project, entitled The Angels includes many "Angel" photographs, personal stories, an exploration of Paul Klee's work, and more. Here is another writing by Tom Cheetham which I included in The Angeles project:
When we encounter the mystery and depth of another person, whose Angel are we seeing? In Manichean legend, when, after death, on the Bridge to the other world, the soul meets its Angel in the figure of a beautiful woman, she says, "I am thyself."
The Angel Holy Spirit is . . . in each case unique. Henry Corbin's mystic [Ibn 'Arabi] "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."
The person of the Angel is infinite and iconic--that is, the succession of transcendences never stops. . . The true self opens upwards, and forever.
The power of the creative imagination, the gift of Gabriel, the Angel Holy Spirit, enables each of us, if we consent, to give birth to the Angel, whose grace allows us to see all the world as an icon. For we give birth not only to God, but the world itself, transfigured in the light of a personal vision. Tom Cheetham: After Prophecy as quoted in my photography project The Angels
(If you would like to read more quotations like this, I recommend a project page from my Angle project which consists of quotes by Corbin and Cheetham: Text Excerpts from on the theme : Angels. I also suggest you look at my project Illuminations which juxtaposes selected photographs from my various blog projects with poetry excerpts from the poet-saints of many religious traditions, with an emphasis on the poetry of Hafiz.)
Death : a Meditation
Symmetrical Photograph from the project "Death : A Meditation"
I am concluding this project Sacred Art & The Symbolic Photograph In the Age of Kali Yuga with a brief introduction to the theme of Death. The constant presence of suffering in our lives, the fear many of us suffer when we consider Death, does have the potential to motivate us to live a more full and conscious life (though most of us try to avoid thinking about Death, deny its presence altogether). My experience has been that my life has been orchestrated to help me discover the Sacredness of life, the divine Presence that exists in all the things of the world, including my own Heart. Life, then, can be seen as a sustained experience of preparing for Death so that when the time comes, death is no longer something to fear.
The yogic saints and sages are quite clear that fear is based in ego, which makes us blind and forgetful. Fear is a state of being caught in Maya's Veils of Illusion. In this regard, I have created several photography projects that address the theme of Death. I had sone so with the conscious intention of keeping me keep focused on and ever mindful of the sacredness of life and death; and the sacredness of my own inner Self. (See my project: "Death : A Meditation")
The great Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes in his book The Garden of Truth about how we human beings have forgotten "who we really are." He states: "All we have to do is wake up and realize our primordial nature, which is always there, although buried deeply within many layers of the dross of forgetfulness. . . Since we all die, it is better to seek to wake up now, under conditions that involve our free will and intelligence rather than in a situation in which we are helpless."
Nasr says, "while we still can," we should "walk through the door that opens to the inner chamber of our heart . . . to the Divine Presence. Discovering who we really are requires a process of "piercing the walls of our ego to penetrate into our heart." To achieve this we must [in the Tradition of the Prophet] 'Die before we die,' we must purify the ego," and this is not possible, says Nasr, "without a spiritual master who already knows what it means to be fully human . . . "
Does Death Really Exist?
Swami Muktananda was such a Master. In the following excerpts selected from his little book Does Death Really Exist? which was published in 1981, just one year before he died, Muktananda provides an answer to the question he poses . . . and much, much more. Though brief, his book is alive with the grace of his own experience of the Self, the Universal Consciousness, and the grace of his meditation experience of Dying which he wrote about in his remarkable spiritual autobiography The Play of Consciousness.
Muktananda's words are to the point, and, in a certain respect they contain the entire universe. He wrote in Does Death Really Exist? :
If there is any truth in this world, if there is any greatness, then it lies within a human being. When God reveals Himself, He does so within the human heart.
No matter who a person is, death pursues him. / We take birth according to our actions. The circumstances of our present birth were determined by our actions in past lives. There are people who do not believe in rebirth, but whether or not they believe in it, they still have to suffer their actions.
The ego is the veil which hides the Self and keeps us bound to the body. The ego is nothing but our sense of limited individuality, our identification with the body and the mind, with our sex, our family, our country, our position.
Our ego brings us again and again to our death. In order to conquer death . . . we have to realize our identity with the Universal Consciousness. We have to merge with that Consciousness, just as a river merges with the ocean. When a being has attained this state of oneness, he has gone beyond death.
In this world, everything that comes also goes. But the Self does not die. The inner Self is ageless and unchanging. Death cannot reach it. Therefore, live with this awareness: "The Supreme Truth lies within me; the flame of Supreme Truth is shimmering and shining inside me." That light is the Self.
Through the fire of this knowledge, may death die for you. I wish this for you all.
This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page April 8, 2022
RELATED LINKS
Sacred Art, Sacred Knowledge a collection quotes on many themes pertaining to Sacred Art.
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