(This project was revised in April, May, 2023 )
Blue Angels
_____A Photography Project about Death, Angels & a Blue Pearl_____
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This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First to let go of life. Finally to take a step without feet.
Rumi, Sufi poet-saint (1207-1273)
~
Bardo is a Tibetan word that simply means a "transition" or a gap between
the completion of one situation and the onset of another.
Because life is nothing but a perpetual fluctuation of birth, death, and
transition, so bardo experiences are happening to us all the time
and are a basic part of our psychological makeup. Normally,
however, we are oblivious to the bardos and their gaps, as
our mind passes from one situation to the next.
Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying (1992)
~
In his contemporary masterpiece The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying,
Sogyal Rinpoche tells us that at the moment of death "the ordinary mind
and its delusions die, and in that gap the boundless sky-like nature of
our mind is uncovered. This essential nature of mind is the
back-ground to the whole of life and death, like the sky,
which folds the whole universe in its embrace."
Sushila Blackman, Graceful Exists : How Great Beings Die (1997)
(Part I)
Introduction
The meaning of the two photographs in the diptych above exists for me in the space between them, in the secret, silent dialogue that is continually unfolding between them. Both of these "Blue Angel" photographs, in their dynamic subtle interaction, succeeds in lifting those "veils" which can keep life's great secret, its essential nature, hidden from us. I experience in the two images and their silent dialogue a palpable living presence that, according to certain yogic traditions, is the divine source of all created things which is hidden deep within each and every human heart. The Yogis call it many things: The Supreme Soul, Citi Shakti, Divine Consciousness . . .
The top image, which belongs to the illuminate sky unites with the bottom photograph, which belongs to the dark, interior-subterranean realm, which Henry Corbin calls the Imaginal world, the place of origin of ineffable, True symbols. Together, the two images manifest for me a visionary continuum, a Unitary Reality in which these opposites meet and extend and merge into each other--black into black--in their shred transformations which manifest that Universal Truth: the Oneness of Being.
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This project explores three themes simultaneously--Angles, Death, and the Blue Pearl--themes which have recurred within my creative process multiple times over the years. I discovered the fascinating world of Angels in 2011 after I visited Turkey and experienced Islamic Sacred Art in many different, powerful, beautiful forms. (See my project "An Imaginary Book", especially the chapter entitled Prayer Stones.) A series of transformational experiences of Islamic sacred art created in me an insatiable desire to learn about the art and spiritual teachings of Islam, and most especially the mystical aspect of Islam, Sufism, the spiritual home of the great poet-saint, Rumi. My studies inevitably led me to the writings of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham both of whom write elegantly about the Angelic realm. (Note: click here to see a large sampling of their writings on Angels, & click here to see my collection of Angel-themed photography projects, and many others.)
I have made many Death-Themed photographs and projects over the years. In fact my most recently completed project, entitled Journey was completed in December, 2022, though I have not announced its availability to the general public on my blog's Welcome Page for reasons I am not at liberty to disclose. That project initiated for me a renewed interest in the theme of death and dying, and I feel strongly that these two projects should be seen in relation to each other. (Note: in this regard I have decided to make Journey available to you and others who have shown interest in this project. I invite you to visit this link.)
The Blue Pearl (a project I published in 2016 and which has undergone many revisions) has been a constant presence in my consciousness and my creative process since I first read Swami Muktananda's spiritual autobiography The Play of Consciousness in the early summer of 1987. This great yogic master, through the grace of his teacher, experienced his own death in a deep state of meditation with resulted in his completion of the yogic process: to merge with the divine presence within himself and everything that exists in our created universe and live in the constant awareness of the Oneness of Being.
After reading The Play of Consciousness in the early summer of 1987, Gloria and I met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Muktananda's successor in the ancient lineage of Siddha Meditation Masters in August, 1987 when we took a two day meditation program with her, called an Intensive. Gloria and I received Gurumayi's initiating grace during that Intensive and from that moment on we have been practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation with Gurumayi's guidance to this very day. (See my project Photography and Yoga in which I write in detail about my personal experience of Gurumayi's initiating grace. I also invite you to see my collection of Sacred Art Photography Projects.)
The True, Living Symbol
& the Symmetrical Photograph
This diptych represents for me something like an alchemical marriage of opposites: "Above and Below," Heaven & Earth. Within the dynamic interaction between the two images there "flashes forth" through their echoing forms and their internal sense of light, a palpably alive Angelic presence. And in the way blue plays such a dominant role in the functioning of the images and their internal sense of light what Swami Muktananda refers to as "the light of the The Blue Pearl" which he has written about in astonishing detail in his spiritual autobiography, The Play of Consciousness.
Several of the images presented in this project have been borrowed from my Blue Pearl Project and many new images have been added to this project since I first published the Blue Angel Photographs project it in February, 2023. With the exception of the top image of the diptych, "The Sky Blue Angel" which is a "straight photograph," all of the other images in this project are what I call symmetrical photographs, constructed images using the "two-fold" or the "four-fold" symmetrical process. (For a full, detailed explanation of the "straight" photograph and the construction processes I use for the symmetrical photographs, please visit this link.)
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The ancient yogic teachings say that it is maya, that aspect of the mind which we in the west have called the ego, which creates the appearance or illusion of a separated-dualistic, reality and which keeps us separated from our True divine nature. The True, living Symbol is an image which gives visual form to the Truth of the Oneness of Being, and the Symbolic Photograph can serve as a means to the actual experience of that Truth. True, living Symbols conjoin outer-world forms with their corresponding inner-world Imaginal-essential archetypal counterparts. This conjunction of inner and outer images is made possible only through a spontaneous manifestation of grace; and, as such, True Symbolic photographs are simultaneously containers of grace, and they actively radiate grace outward from within the center of their own essential living Being. Symmetrical photographs are literally images which give form to the idea of the Oneness of Being. If the image has been made with grace, there is a good chance that the image will function for other viewers as a True living Symbol if they can open their hearts to that possibility.
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At the center of each symmetrical photograph there is an invisible point where the two or four mirroring images meet and become conjoined as an integrated whole. In their grace-full state of two-fold or four-fold unity, the images that were used in their symmetrical construction become transformed from mere photographic descriptions of outer-world appearances (images which serve to strengthen the illusionary nature of maya, duality) and become raised to a new level of transcendent visual life which unveils and celebrates life's essential divine nature.
When an image is functioning for its contemplator as a True, living Symbol, that invisible point where inner and outer images conjoin, corresponds to what Swami Muktananda has called The Blue Pearl, a subtle, ineffable sacred space, the "size of a sesame seed" which nonetheless contains everything in this created universe and all other created universes.
Henry Corbin calls that invisible sacred space the Imaginal World, the "place of origin" of all True, living symbols. In Siddha Yoga, the place of origin of True symbols is called the Heart, the dwelling place--in every human being--of the Supreme Soul, the inner divine Self, the Absolute, Paramashiva. And, according to Swami Muktananda, the Heart is the place where the "extremely secret Blue Person of the Blue Pearl" is waiting to be recognized and experienced by us in its fullness.
"The Fall Upwards"
A Personal Story
I want to share a personal story that (for me) relates to this bottom image of the diptych which I have entitled Subterranean Blue Angel. ~ In the early fall of 2014 Gloria and I visited some relatives who lived in Vermont. During our stay I accidentally fell backwards down a short flight of wood stairs, banged my head and received a concussion. I was working, at the time, on a project entitled The Angels, inspired by some drawings by Paul Klee and the writings about Angels and the Angelic World by Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham.
The day after the fall I was feeling very discombobulated, and a young woman who practiced CranioSacral message therapy, who also was visiting in Vermont at that time, offered to give me a treatment to help get my disoriented state of being back into alignment. During the session I had a rather remarkable visionary experience which Henry Corbin would call a theophonic experience, a "rupture" or "opening" into the Imaginal World. He said the scenes and actions of extraordinary Imaginal experiences occur "neither in the sensible nor the intelligible worlds, but in the intermediate [in-between] world," in other words, in the Imaginal World, the world of True, living symbols and archetypal images . . . images "in which spirits are corporealized and bodies are spiritualized." Such personal stories, he insisted, should be told only in the first person because they are about the "soul's own personal journey."
I first wrote about my personal story, the inner experience with which I was graced during that message session, in Part III of The Angle Project. Here is an abbreviated version of that story:
As I was laying on the massage table, the therapist very carefully lifted my arm ever so slowly upwards. As she did this I could feel a huge space inside my being open wider and wider. The vastness of the space was filled with a dark light, a living presence, a sacred feeling of the fullness of Being. Then, spontaneously, my arm began transmuting into an image of a bird's . . . or angel's . . . WING. My entire being continued to open, ever wider and wider, into an unsayable, unimaginable vastness of space . . .
Later I remembered reading something Corbin had written about the angel Gabriel:
Gabriel . . . is the Angel of the theophanies that were given to the prophet Mohammed. The Koran verses 53:3-4 & 81:18-29 preserve the memory of the first grandiose visions when the Prophet, emerging from his tent, contemplated the majesty of the Angel whose outspread wings covered the whole horizon. (click here the see the entire quote by Corbin, #54 which is from Corbin's collection of essays published under the title Cyclic Time and Ismaili Gnosis)
Tom Cheetham, a wonderful writer who has published four excellent books about Corbin and his ideas (1. The World Turned Inside Out ~ 2. Green Man, Earth Angle ~ 3. After Prophesy ~ 4. All the World An Icon) wrote the following in his book After Prophesy:
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. Tom Cheetham: After Prophecy
Also worth noting here, because of my experience of the fall, is a passage from Cheetham's book, The World Turned Inside Out, in which he begins with these words by Corbin:
"The personal God is . . . encountered at the end of a Quest (as of that for the Holy Grail)." The endpoint of this search is not an idol, not a thing at all, and therefore not an end but a beginning . . . the Emptiness, the Unknown, and the Unknowable into which one falls upward in an unending series of theophanies. Tom Cheetham: The World Turned Inside Out
Life & Death / Guides & Angels
According to Sogyal Rimpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying, the stakes are very high at the time of death and thus a guide is required to help the soul traverse the many bardos (transitional spaces) it will experience in its otherworldly journey after it leaves the body. If one is prepared, Rimpoche tells us, the opportunity to end the otherwise infinitely repeating cycles of birth & death can easily be missed. Tibetan Spiritual Masters are traditionally called by a dying person to give instructions and blessings so that they will be properly informed, reminded, prepared and protected by the Master's knowledge and grace when the soul leaves their body and begins its death journey though a series of bardos, as described in the ancient text The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Rimpoche tells us that the bardos and their sequence manifest in a unique way for each soul according to its various karmas accumulated from both its most recent past life and all other lives that preceded it.
Sogyal Rimpoche also emphases that one's guide is always within us, but it takes much spiritual practice, perhaps an entire lifetime, to develop the sensibility to recognize this hidden secret. According to Henry Corbin, who has a profound, in-depth understanding of the Islamic traditions, it is the Angel of the Face that will always be one's guide. And, he says, it must be so, because "The Angel is the Face that God takes for us, and each of us finds his God only when he recognizes that Face . . ." because "God knows himself in and through us."
Tom Cheetham adds: ". . . The Angel Holy Spirit is, as we know, in each case unique. Corbin's [ancient] Sufi 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." Tom Cheetham: After Prophecy
As I was working on the Blue Angel project I also read about a doctor's research on near-death experiences associated with young children. Many of the children Dr. Melvin Morse talked to for his important book Closer to the Light talked about their experience of the presence of a "Guide" who showed them many other-worldly life-changing and loving places, and beings that the children would referred to as "Angels," as "Jesus," and as a "relative" the child had known while the relative was alive. ~ I will write more about this later.
~
All of the photographs in this project exist as inkjet prints varying in size from 16x20" to 18x21".
There are eight (VIII) parts to this project, some of which include both texts and additional images. But it is now time to look at the Blue Angel photographs, twenty-one images in total, to be exact. Part II contains the first 17 images, the other four will be presented in the parts that follow. I imaginatively associate several of the "Blue Angel" photographs with Swami Muktananda's visionary experiences of the "Blue Person" of the "The Blue Pearl" thus after the presentation of the photographs I will write more about the "Blue Person" in Part V. I will also include sections on the other major themes of this project, Angels and Death. I have included some additional photographs that relate to the core images you are about to see now in some of the later parts of the project.
If you are new to viewing my blog projects, I suggest you visit this link for my suggestions regarding how best to view my photographs individually at maximum image quality possible via my blog. Thank you for visiting this project.
(Part II)
Blue Angel
Photographs
Note: All of the images below exist as inkjet prints, 16x20" or larger
Diptych - Top Image #1 Sky Blue Angel ("straight" photograph; the North Meadow, Pond & Sky behind our house)
Diptych - Bottom Image #2 Subterranean Blue Angel (Inversed, two-fold symmetrical snow photograph) both 16x20"
Blue Angel image #3 Blue Angel (Inversed symmetrical snow photograph)
Blue Angel Image #4 "The Angel of Tears" (a Four-fold symmetrical snow photograph)
Blue Angel image #5 Blue Angel of a small water fall (Broad Brook Falls, Vermont. Four-fold Symmetrical Photograph)
Blue Angel image #6 "Blue Angel of the Face' (Broad Brook, Vermont. Four-fold Symmetrical Photograph)
Blue Angel image #10 Blue Angel (Inversed two-fold symmetrical snow photograph)
Blue Angel image #12 Blue Snow Angel (Inversed four-fold symmetrical snow photograph)
Blue Angel image #13 Blue Snow Angel (w luminous eyes)
Blue Angel Image #14 Blue Water Bubbles Angel (Four-fold symmetrical water photograph)
Blue Angel image #15 The Blue Angel of a burst of snow-light (symmetrical photograph)
Blue Angel image #16 Blue Angel ICON (symmetrical snow photograph)
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Blue Angel image #17 "Blue Angel of the Blue Pearl"
(Part III)
Death & Angels
the Blue Pearl &
the Blue Person
As stated earlier, the photographs I have included in this project represent in part my Imaginal associations to Swami Muktananda's visionary experiences of the "Blue Person" of the "Blue Pearl" which he writes about in great detail in his spiritual autobiography, The Play of Consciousness. The photographs also represent some of my Imaginal responses to the fascinating writings I have read by both Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham regarding the Islamic-Sufic traditions associated with Angels and the Angelic World. Thirdly, this project has also been influenced by Sogyal Rinpoche's explanations, in his The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, regarding the traditional Tibetan bardos one should be prepared to encounter after death. The bardos, which will vary in content according to each individual soul's past-life accumulated karmas, and could be inhabited by "good" or "bad," "beautiful" or "frightful" creatures, places and people, are, as Sogyal Rinpoche reminds his readers frequently, the Imaginal "energy" creations of an individual soul's mind. He writes, that after we humans enters the mode of being we call "death" . . .
". . . we are no longer grounded or shielded by a physical body or world, the energies of the nature of mind released in the bardo state can look overwhelmingly real, and appear to take on an objective existence. They seem to inhabit the world outside of us. Without the stability of spiritual practice we have no knowledge of anything that is non-dual, that is not dependent on our own perception. Once we mistake the appearances as separate from us, as "external vision," we respond with fear or hope, which leads to delusion. . . . Through training . . . in the practice of visualization, he or she realizes that the mind that perceives . . . [is] not separate [from the perceived]." Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
In this regard I want to point out that the dark tonalities which pervade many of my Blue Angel photographs is the result of a visual transformation that I have manifested with a Photoshop editing tool which turns image tonalities "inside-out." The tonalities, in other words, are "inversed," given a "duality flip" from the tones that existed in the original "straight" photograph, and then further transformed by use of the two-fold or four-fold symmetrical construction process.
I want to point out that the darkness does of the image tonalities does not necessarily have to be perceived or interpreted as threatening or subterranean. For example, the Sufis have often referred to a transcendental "Black Light" which one encounters during their "spiritual travels," and they have referred to the Black Light as the "light of bewilderment," a sacred light that when it "fully appears in a traveler's consciousness" . . . "all things disappear instead of remaining visible." This experience is what the Sufis call fana, "a blackout of everything" until the mystic traveler perceives that the blackness is "in reality the very light of the Absolute-as-such." (Note: these last quoted passages are from the book Mystical Dimensions of Islam by Annemarie Schimmel.)
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(Note: I am not unaware of the disappointing things that have been published about Sogyal Rimpoche and his life that followed the publication of The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying in 1992. The book remains for me a real treasure despite his having fallen from grace. Perhaps we all must fall--as the ego must die--before we can truly become raised up by what grace has shown us is Truly possible and what has always existed within each of us.)
Swami Muktananda, the founder of the Siddha Yoga Path, experienced The Blue Pearl in its ultimate, most Luminous-fullness when in a series of deep meditation experiences he merged with the light of "millions of suns" radiating from the Blue Pearl, and the Blue Person--the Supreme-Universal Soul, the divine Self of all. (I will elaborate about this further below with images and text. ) Muktananda said his inner experience was like a death, and that the experience allowed him to live the rest of his life fearlessly. He understood that what he experienced was the death of his own ego, a death of purification that allowed his individual soul to open to the experience of the most complete Truth: his Oneness with God, his union with the Atman . . . the Absolute, the "unmanifest Light" that is each person's own divine Self. Muktananda's experience of the Blue Pearl marked the final stage of his lifelong disciplined approach to yogic meditation and his unwavering devotion to his beloved guru Bhagavan Nityananda who guided Muktananda through every stage, or bardo of his remarkable inner journey to the full realization of Self-Knowledge, of union with God.
(Part IV)
Regarding
Near-Death Experiences
Sogyal Rinpoche devoted an entire chapter in his book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying to the fascinating modern day medical-scientific research that was being done in the late 1960s and 1970's regarding the mystical phenomenon known as the "near-death experience," based on numerous reports of people who experienced death, clinically, and then lived to tell of their experiences during that space of time. Rinposhe discovered many parallels in the contemporary reports of near-death-experiences to the ancient Tibetan teachings about the bardos one would possibly experience during the soul's after-death journeys. One of the most important experiences they would face, and should be prepared for--he repeatedly stated--would involve a spontaneous encounter with an overwhelmingly bright supernatural divine light, something that most contemporary reports of near-death experiences mention in their reports.
Raymond Moody was the most well known author to define and outline patterns of experience he found regarding near-death experiences in his 1975 bestselling book Life After Life. In general, most people who experienced near-death experiences reported that they would see themselves lying, dead, on a hospital bed from the point of view of the ceiling above, and they could see and hear everything the doctors and nurses were doing and saying to each other. Their reports of their "near-death" experiences, which included those perceptions as seen separate and above the body, near the ceiling of the hospital room, were of such astounding detail after returning to their bodies that they could be verified with the doctors and nurses who were being perceived.
Nearly every "near-death" report also included the encounter of an overwhelming bright, divine light, and the meeting with luminous beings (often in the form of friends or other loved ones they had known while still alive). These beings would come to serve the "dead person" as a guide or teacher through the various places (bardos) their death journey would take them. Of course these reports of near-death experiences strongly suggest that clinically dead people continue to live with a consciousness that exists outside of the physical body.
A fascinating book, Closer To The Light, published in 1990, authored by Melvin Morse, M.D., focuses on children's near-death-experiences. Dr. Morse was very careful to take a strict scientific approach to reporting his research, for his goal was to publish his research in medical journals. I was deeply moved my his compassion, depth of understanding, and his heartfelt sincerity and intention to learn in a respectful way from the children he interviewed.
Dr. Morse included in his book Closer To The Light the following, surprising statistic: "A poll conducted by the George Gallup organization found in an extensive survey an estimated eight million near-death-experiences in 1982." Medicine, after it had become armed with new technologies that could keep people alive, even though unconscious, has clearly made it possible for more and more reports of near-death-experiences to come to our attention.
As the data from these growing number of near-death experiences became available to DR. Morse, more patterns of experiences emerged, even in cases of near-death-experiences reported by children too young to have possibly known about near-death experiences. Indeed, Dr. Morse sights an amazing story about the near-death experience of a nine month old baby! And among the more familiar recurring motifs in the near-death-experience, even in children, there is the rushing sounds of being transported through a tunnel toward a brilliant light at its endpoint; and being greeted by luminous, "Angel-like" beings of light who were serving as guides and teachers for the person who had died. The angels would take the near-death experiencer to various other-worldly places and states of being, including "Heavenly" and "Hellish" places.
Some near-death experiencers were given the choice of going back to their bodies or staying in a particular after-death bardo, like Heaven, a pleasant, beautiful place, often pervaded by the presence of colorful rainbows. Many of the children wanted to return to their parents. Others who wanted to stay in a particular bardo were told they could not stay and had to go back to their bodies and their lives on earth to complete some important work.
Upon the soul's return to its body and regaining its living body-consciousness, the near-death experiencer often would speak of the overwhelming feeling of love and peace they felt while clinically dead, and of visiting beautiful places that seemed like heaven, places often with many rainbows present in the scene. Later the person who died clinically would tell how the experience transformed the remainder of their lives on earth, often because their experiences of death made them fearless in the face of their inevitable demise, and because their experiences gave these souls a transcendental appreciation and love of their human life, so much so that they became surprisingly motivated by an unexpected and uncharacteristic desire to actively help and serve others in the time that remained for them within their earthly, human realm of being.
Dr. Morse writes that children, as well as adults, also experienced "pre-death" visionary experiences, and that those visions when shared with others helped prepare not only the patient but also their entire family for the death that the patient would soon experience. I will have more to say about this later.
(Part V)
Swami Muktananda's
Near-Death Experience
of the Blue Pearl
Blue Angle image #18 Blue Pearl Angel "the size of a sesame seed" Symmetrical photograph from "The Blue Pearl" project
Swami Muktananda's account of his meditation experiences of the Blue Pearl moved through several stages, or bardos. At first he perceived the Blue Pearl as a small sesame seed . . . which though small in appearance contained an infinite number of universes. Then as his relationship to the Blue Pearl unfolded it eventually came closer to him, and then it would begin to grow: "It assumed the shape of an egg and continued to grow into a human shape . . . the luminous shape of a man" which Muktananda ofter referred to as "the Blue Person."
Blue Angel image #19 "The Blue Pearl Angel in the form of an Egg" (symmetrical photograph from "The Blue Pearl" project
Every day my conviction grew stronger: The Blue Person is truly my inner Self, whose
light is spread throughout the entire universe. . . . The Blue One was my own Self,
the One who lives within all, pervades the entire universe, and sets it in motion,
who is One without a second, nondual, and undifferentiated, and yet who is
always at play, becoming many from one and one from many. He is
Shri Krishna, the eternal blue of consciousness, the beloved
life-breath . . . the Self.
The Blue Person that I had seen is also known as the sphere of unmanifest light.
Yogis see Him who contains the entire world within Himself, within the
the Blue Pearl in meditation. ~ That supreme unmanifest Being
is extremely secret to seekers. He is the goal of
the Siddha path.
Swami Muktananda ~ The Play of Consciousness
Blue Angel Image #20 "The Angelic Figure of the Blue Pearl" or "The Blue Person" from my project "The Blue Pearl"
Muktananda then experienced the Light of "millions of suns" and became overwhelmed by fear. He wrote: "The brilliance had drawn me toward itself, and as I gazed at it, I lost consciousness." ~ When he recovered from his loss of consciousness Muktananda realized that he had been harboring a tremendous fear of death, and then lost control once again: "Just as a dying man opens his mouth, spreads his arms, and makes a strange sound, so I fell down making this sort of noise."
("The Blue Pearl Exploding Into the Light of Millions of Suns" )
After laying in this unconscious state for some time Muktananda wrote: "I got up and laughed at myself, saying, 'I just died, but now I'm alive again.'" He felt "very much at peace, very happy, and very full of love." After that experience he said he understood death and no longer feared it. "I realized that death was nothing but that condition. Once I had seen that Sphere of Unmanifest Light I lost all fear. This is the state of liberation from individual existence . . ."
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Swami Muktananda had been preparing his entire life for these deep transformative meditation experiences through years of searching and years of yogic practices, a very disciplined life, and most importantly his intense devotion to and love of his guru, a born Siddha named Bhagavan Nityananda, who supported and guided his great disciple through each experience from within Muktananda's heart.
Muktananda taught that one cannot prepare for death at the last moment, by merely reading a book. The preparation is a life-long pursuit, and, most essentially, there must be the presence of grace and the guidance of a True Master of Yoga, a Siddha, one who has lived in the constant experience, the constant awareness of their Oneness with God, the Supreme Self. ~ Siddha Yoga, truly, is a yoga of grace.
(Note: the quoted passages in the above section were take from Swami Muktananda's spiritual autobiography, The Place of Consciousness. My photography project, The Blue Pearl, contains many additional text excerpts from The Play of Consciousness.)
(Part VI)
The Angel ICON
The Blue Angel ICON
Tom Cheetham, wrote in his book After Prophecy:
The meeting with the Angel is a release, an opening toward a life in sympathy with the world and its inhabitants. It is an initiation into a form of life dedicated to the transmutation of idols into icons. ~ The meeting with the Angel points the way towards an emptying and opening out of the habitual self-centered [ego-centered] human life to one of compassion and active love. . . . The Angel summons us to our true self, which is not an object, not an ego, not any kind of thing, but an opening and a process of continual undoing. Tom Cheetham: After Prophecy
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. Tom Cheetham: After Prophecy
The ICON is a sacred window onto the invisible world. ~ It is up to us to see the world with the eyes of prayer, the eyes that regard the icon. All things are images, and an image can be viewed as an icon only if we ourselves are transformed into imaginal persons--persons who can see imaginal realities. Tom Cheetham: All the World An Icon
(Note: See my multi-chaptered photography project The Photograph as ICON.)
(Part VII)
The Angel as Guide
In his book Green Man, Earth Angel Tom Cheetham writes:
Henry Corbin refers to "the secret of the secret." And the secret consists in this: . . . At the heart of the innermost consciousness is the Anthropos, Hermes, guide of souls, who for Islam is Gabriel the Angel of Revelation appearing to each individual in a form which is secret, absolutely unique, and Objective in the true sense.
Corbin's account of the turn inward toward the Darkness within reveals a dual challenge which can only be met if we are oriented initially in such a way that we cannot confuse the blackness of the abyss of evil . . . with the terrors of annihilation stemming from the encounter with the Hidden God. Without such orientation, without guidance, without an adequate psycho-cosmology and the help of a Guide, the individual seeker faces long odds indeed. Tom Cheetham: Green Man, Earth Angel
The gnostic journey is not without risk: it is easy to get lost in an infinite world. . . The closer to divinity, the more real and more individual the soul becomes. . . The ascent through the modes of being is the ascent of the self toward the Angel that defines its individuality. The status of personhood is not given: it must be won. We are born with the freedom to become demons or angels or anything in between. Our task is to travel toward the Light that emanates from our celestial counterpart, our Fravarti, our Angel, through whom the Light of the Divine is transmitted to us.
Tom Cheetham: Green Man, Earth Angel
. . . a guide is required [because] you cannot raise yourself: that is the reason for Revelation. That is why there are prophets. Tom Cheetham: Green Man, Earth Angel
(Part VIII)
Epilogue
Some Related Personal Stories of Death & Angels
Sushila Blackman, author and editor of the book Graceful Exists, How Great Beings Die, was a student of Siddha Yoga for many years, going back to the time (1982) when Swami Muktananda took mahasamahdi in his ashram in Ganeshpuri, India. (Note: the meaning of mahasamahdi is used when a realized being consciously leaves his or her body and merges with the Absolute.)
Blackman concludes her fascinating book with a remarkable "Afterword" in which she shares her own Personal Stories about death. She wrote, "With Baba's mahasamadhi I knew my life was beginning anew."
(Note: just before Swami Muktananda died he passed the power of the Siddha Lineage on to his greatest disciple, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, and Blackman continued her practice of Siddha Yoga with Gurumayi as her meditation Master.)
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About ten years after Muktananda passed, Blackman experienced her mother's death. Shortly after her mother died Blackman had a "strong vision" of her mother standing next to Bhagavan Nityananda, Swami Muktanand's guru. Her mother was "ecstatically waving her arms with an expression of indescribable joy on her face." Her mother had always loved to look at the diamonds in the jewelry store windows during their walks together is a nearby mall. In Blackman's vision she noticed behind her mother something that looked like "a huge icicle." Then she heard her mother cry out, almost in a cheer: "'He gave me diamonds! He gave me diamonds.'"
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Two year's later Blackman experienced her father's death. In the last three hours before he died, he surprised his daughter by asking her about her involvement with Siddha Yoga, and about her gurus, Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi. ~ Her father had never before shown any interest in her yogic practices, though he did sometimes enjoy hearing the tapes his daughter played of Baba[ Muktananda] singing the Siddha Yoga Mantra. ~ After she explained briefly some things to her father about Siddha Yoga and her two gurus she asked her father if he would like to hear Baba's tape recording. He responded with this surprising statement: "Just until he comes. Just until he comes." Blackman then wrote: "Being present at my dad's death was perhaps the most intimate experience I ever had with him."
Blackman points out in her book that in the ancient yogic teachings it is very clearly stated that the family members of a yogi who practices yoga with a Siddha Guru (a True, enlightened being, a meditation Master, one who lives in the constant, conscious awareness of their Oneness with God) those family members receive the benefits of that devotee's practice and the grace of his or her relationship with that Siddha.
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In Blackman's book Graceful Exits she explains that two years before her own death she had taken a course at Gurumayi's ashram in South Fallsburg, NY entitled "Does Death Really Exist" (the course title was based on the title of a small booklet Swami Muktananda had published a year before he died, in 1981). The course inspired Blackman to begin collecting stories about how Great Beings died. She did not know consciously at the time why she felt so compelled to read about the deaths of Great Beings, but then just weeks before she started writing the "Afterword" for her book Graceful Exits, she began feeling chest pains. After an emergency visit to the hospital she discovered she had "an advanced form of lung cancer metastasized to bone." She wrote: "The window on my life had become very short. I had, unknowingly, been busy compiling a training manual for my own 'graceful exit.'"
Blackman writes that she gleaned many new insights about her life as she neared her time of passing. And she tells how she had written Gurumayi about her illness, and how, a few weeks before she passed, she had a spontaneous vision in which Gurumayi smiled at her and told her "I am with you. Sushila, I am dying with you." As Blackman's dying process progressed, she became "as if catapulted into a state of simply being present in the heart. It was a fearless state, without desire."
Blackman's "Afterword" was dated September, 21, 1996. Following the "Afterword" the publisher added a footnote saying: ". . . she died peacefully and consciously on November 9, 1996. In the spiritual tradition she followed [Siddha Yoga] that day was celebrated as Diwali, the Festival of Lights, and the beginning of the New Year."
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Blackman's story about her experiences associated with both her parents' deaths is so closely related to some experiences that I and my wife had in relation to my mother's death and I must share these stories with you.
My mother passed away in a hospital room in Piqua, Ohio in 1992, five years after my wife Gloria and I began practicing Siddha Yoga. I know for certain that my mother (and I) received the blessings of Gurumayi, Swami Muktananda and Bhagavan Nityananda just before my mother passed away for I experienced the palpable, living presence of these three Great Beings in the hospital room my mom was occupying. On the day that preceded her death, as my mom lay unconscious in her room, and as I was in the room with her, the room became flooded with an inexplicable otherworldly kind of light . . . a light that seemed to come from within the walls of the room itself. I felt the distinct presence of each of the three great Siddhas in the room.
(Note: I have written in more detail about this experience in my essay Death, Art, Writing, story #19. Also, see story #5 in which I write in detail about my experience of my Dad's death in 1955, just days before my tenth birthday; and you may find it interesting to read my story #18 in which I write about my own personal near-death experience on the Wisconsin River during a camping trip with my two children--an experience that I believe related to my dad's early death.) [Also, my photography project Color Diptychs 1990-92 is related to my mother's death and the Tibetan concept of Bardos.]
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After my dad's unexpected early passing (in 1955, at the age of 39 years) my mother became quite depressed. She tried to find ways to make money to raise me and my sister but found it impossible. She often said to me, "All I want is to be with your dad." ~ A few years later she remarried to a charming dancer and meat salesman named "Blackie," sold her house in Piqua and moved to Portland, Indiana where Blackie lived and cared for his ailing mother. My stepfather turned out to be an addictive gambler and drinker. He died in 1968 from a unusual medical event which stopped his heart. Soon after his death my mom moved back to Piqua where she was born and raised and where she lived happily with my biological father until he died in 1955. ~ My mom died in 1992.
Less than a year after my mother passed, my wife Gloria experienced an inner vision of my mother while performing a yogic ritual, called Arati, at the Milwaukee Siddha Yoga Meditation Center during a live satellite broadcast of a meditation Intensive with Gurumayi. While Gloria was waving the Arati tray with a candle on it before the pictures of Gurumayi, Baba Muktananda and Bhagavan Nityananda, she spontaneously "saw" an inner image of my mother in which she was looking rather young, in a flowered dress, smiling happily, and with her arm around a man that Gloria and I both believe was my dad. The vision stunned Gloria, for she and my mom did not get along well in life. The grace of that "after-death" visionary experience helped to liberate Gloria from the memories of those past experiences of disharmony with my mom. And I was blessed with the feeling that after such a difficult life, my mother's wish to be with my dad had been fulfilled.
Blue Angel image #21 "Blue & Golden Angel of Broad Brook" Vermont Woods, overlooking Broad Brook (Symmetrical Photograph)
"See, the Angels . . . "
After reading so much ab0ut angels and making photographs about angels their divine presence has been a constant companion in my daily life. It seems every thing, every place, every person has its angelic aspect in their very being, and of course that is the primary yogic teaching on the path I have been drawn to for so many years. In Image #21 above, though "blue" is not so much the dominant issue visually, the angelic presence is very strong in this issue.
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As a way of concluding this project I want to share a story about a "pre-death" visionary experience I read about in Closer To The Light by Melvin Morse, M.D. Dr. Morse did an important ten year study of near-death experiences with young children. He kept meticulous records of everything he had collected so that one day perhaps he could publish his findings in a respected, peer-reviewed medical journal. He had gained strong convictions--backed up by his respectable evidence--about the therapeutic good of "near-death" and "pre-death"experiences in children, experiences that had a healing affect not only upon the child but the child's family and close friends as well.
Dr. Morse did indeed succeed in getting his research published in an important medical journal, and that led to the development of his excellent book that followed, Closer To The Light. After his research began to get published he started receiving many unsolicited reports of "near-death" and "pre-death" experiences from other doctors--and even more stories from nurses--from all over the world. Dr. Morse believed that because nurses spend more quality, intimate time with their patients than doctors, the patients were more comfortable sharing their personal stories of visionary experiences with them rather than the doctors who were very busy, preferred to deal only medical issues, and tended to shy away from discussions of the spiritual.
(Dr. Morse wrote often about the research that came out that shows that doctors will spend less time with their patients, especially if they know they are dying, and become uncomfortable talking with their patients when they feel or know that the patient is dying. This is partly because they were never trained in medical school to deal with these issues, and thus tend not to know how to deal with the issues of death and dying. Their focus generally is fixed on keeping the patient alive and as comfortable as possible, as long as possible, even if the patient is unconscious and shows no signs of recovering.)
The Story
The following "pre-death" visionary story came to Dr. Morse from a nurse who was caring for a man, in his forties, at his deathbed in a room with several others present:
"He was unsedated, fully conscious, and had a low temperature. He was a rather religious person and believed in life after death. We expected him to die, and he probably did too, as he was asking us to pray for him. In the room where he was lying there was a staircase leading to the second floor. Suddenly he exclaimed: "See, the angels are coming down the stairs. The glass has fallen and broken." All of us in the room looked toward the staircase where a drinking glass had been placed on one of the steps. As we looked, we saw the glass break into a thousand pieces without any apparent cause. It did not fall; it simple exploded. The angels, of course, we did not see. A happy and peaceful expression came over the man's face, and the next moment he expired. Even after his death, the serene, peaceful expression remained on his face."
"The Blue Person of the Blue Pearl" from my project "The Blue Pearl"
"The Sphere of Unmanifest Light " from my project, "The Blue Pearl"
(Note: all of the images in this project exist as inkjet prints.
They were printed in April & May, 2023 and vary in size
from 16x20" to 18x21." For more information contact
the Alice Wilds Gallery.)
This project was published and announced
on my blog's Welcome Page February 15, 2023
and revised in April and May, 2023
Related Online Photography Projects
The Blue Pearl photography project
Death, Art, Writing (a collection of my personal stories about experiences associated with death)Color Diptychs 1990-92 (a series of photographic diptychs I made just before my mother's death)
The Photograph as ICON a multi-chaptered photography project
Photography and Yoga a multi-chaptered photography project
Please visit the Welcome Page to my blog The Departing Landscape. It 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.
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