Mystery
~ New Work 2023 ~
12x12 Studies project
Introduction
In mid-August I began re-reading (for perhaps the seventh or eighth+ time) a book entitled The Splendor of Recognition : An Exploration of the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam, a Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul. The author of the book, Swami Shantananda, one of the Siddha Yoga teaching swamis, offers a contemporary interpretation of the 11th century Kashmir Saivism text, written by a sage named Kshmaraja. The text consists of 20 very brief, concentrated sutras or teachings, often quite cryptic in meaning to the uninitiated. Swami Muktananda's commentaries are an excellent way into the meaning of these ancient teachings.
The first sutra addresses the Mystery of life; it asks to know the nature of this created world which is so often referred to as "Reality." The second sutra addresses the very nature of Creation. In the quote that follows, Swami Shantananda presents some eleventh century musings on the two sutras by Kshmaraja's teacher, Abhinavagupta:
[Note: in the text below the word Citi is the active, feminine aspect of God, often referred to as Shakti or Citishakit; and Shiva is the passive masculine aspect of God. The two, in Truth, are inseparably One.]
"The creation of the universe is an expression of the svatantra-sakti, the power of freedom--the freedom to do or not to do. If Citi did not express herself in creation, how would she know herself as a conscious, vital, creative power? If God were only the Great Void, isolated in his unity with no worlds or sentient beings, how would he know that he possess the capacity to create? It is as a natural expression of this capacity that the ultimate Reality manifests the world of things. . . [thus] As an act of divine will, the universe appears."
*
My own personal Creative Process--the making of photographs, and blog projects containing both photographs and texts--have been for me a joy, a comfort and a source of revelation from very early in my life. In 1955, just a few weeks before I turned 1o years of age, and just weeks before and my dad died unexpectedly, I was initiated on this path of photographic creativity through a spontaneous epiphany which (in hindsight, I now understand) was indeed an act of divine will, an act of grace.
My cousin Bobby had just gotten back from a trip to the local drug store with his mom, my Aunt Lilly. When he saw me from a distance he ran up to me with great enthusiasm and thrust before my eyes a handful of little square snapshots that had just been processed. In that very moment I knew in no uncertain terms that I would spend the rest of my life involved with photography. ~ A few weeks later, after my dad died, photography became my sole passion and constant companion . . . and it has remained so to this very day!
Thirty-two years after that epiphany, in August, 1987, my wife Gloria and I met Gurumayi Chidvilasanada, the current spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga Path and a True Guru or Sadguaru.*
(*Note: a Sadguru is one who lives in the complete, unbroken and conscious awareness of his or her union or Oneness with God, Supreme Consciousness, the divine Self. To learn more about my early years in Siddha Yoga, visit my project Photography and Yoga.)
During the two day meditation intensive we took with Gurumayi, I experienced another epiphany--initiated by her grace--which revealed in no uncertain terms what I had been longing for (half-consciously) my entire life. That experience of Gurumayi's grace was the most important mysterious, life-changing event I have ever encountered. After that experience my photography began to gradually merge with my yogic practice until the two became inseparable for me. Making photographs became a means of looking deeper into the yogic teachings, and the yogic practices became a means of looking deeper into myself, my photographs and the mystery of life.
*
In Swamiji's commentary on the first sutra he shares an experience he had when he was ten years old that resonates deeply within me. As he was looking up at the black chasm of a night sky, the sight filled him with a "sense of the immensity" that lay before him. He found himself wondering "What is it that's out there? Is God looking at me from behind the sky?"
He then comments on this experience: "The finite mind glimpses infinity and, trying to encompass the experience with words, asks to know the nature of this numinous, mysterious Reality." Swmiji then goes on to explain how the first sutra of the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam deals with this mystery.
A few weeks after I had my epiphanic experience in response to seeing a handful of snapshots thrust before my eyes, I was graced with another inner-visionary experience: the very moment when my dad died; the very moment when his heart stopped beating. Earlier that day, it had been an extremely hot August day, I felt something very odd was happening to me; the feeling pervading everything I experienced. Despite the extreme heat I began shivering with a fever. I was so overwhelmed with what I was feeling that I even refused some of my most favorite ice cream. (For a full detailed account of my experience see story #5 in my essay Death, Art, Writing: Personal Stories.)
Then, a few months later, in the late fall, I had an experience very similar to the one Swami Shantananda wrote about when he was ten years old. ~ I had became increasingly distraught with fear by the stories I had been hearing about sightings of UFO's near Piqua, Ohio, where my mom, younger sister and I were living at the time. I was so upset by the fear I was feeling that my mom decided I should talk with our neighbor, Dale who lived just across the alley from us with his wife and young daughter. Indeed, she insisted that I walk over and talk with him "right now." ~ It was an unusually cold and clear fall evening, and as I was walking from our back door toward the alley, past the side of our garage with the basketball hoop above its door . . . I looked up at the sky and was stunned by what I saw: That immensity of space, That mysterious luminosity which had pervaded the darkness Swami Shantananda experienced as a young boy. Despite my fear of being abducted by aliens, and living my life without my dad, I was also deeply touched by the mystery I experienced that night. (See my blog publication Death, Art, Writing: Personal Stories, #6, 7, 8)
from my 2003 project; Silent Dialogues (Starry Sky, basketball hoop and net)
(Note : To enlarge the image, click on the image once or twice.)
When I contemplate these three experiences together, all within a few months of each other when I was ten years old, I recognize the creative workings of grace, "the hand of destiny" that had manifested itself in all three of those experiences, at such an early age in my life. And I feel a connection between these events and the grace I experienced later, when I met Gurumayi in August, 1987. Her grace was clearly part of a timeless continuum of blessings--or showerings of grace--that spontaneously emerged from within me, from within my own divine Self. The Siddha Yoga teachings say everything in the outer world originates from within one's own divine Heart.
*
As an emerging artist who had begun exhibiting my photographs in Chicago galleries and museums in the late 1970's, I once used the word "mystery" when I was talking with someone (a potential buyer) about my intentions as an artist. The person scoffed at my use of the word. After that experience I became very careful about where and to whom I would make mention of the mystery and the spiritual I experienced through my creative process.
At that time I had just begun writing about a Jewish concept, Makom (the Place) in relation to several of my newest photography projects; but after being scoffed at, I stopped writing or speaking publicly about my work in that way. I kept my experience of Makom a hidden secrete. I wrote very little about Makom again until 2019 when I created a special project that goes into full detain about the concept and how it relates to several of the photography projects I created while I was living and teaching in Milwaukee. I invite you to visit my blog project: Makom. Makom was not just an idea for me; it was a lived experience.
In Swami Shantananda's introduction to The Splendor of Recognition he writes:
"When I comment on a spiritual text like the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam, I naturally have a great deal to say about Siddha Yoga. This is the way I understand this scripture. I would never have thought to undertake such a bold enterprise had it not been for Gurumayi's invitation to do so. The credit for whatever is meritorious in this work must go to her unfailing grace."
Similarly, I have felt Gurumayi's grace directing my creative process in photography from the moment I saw that handfull of snapshots thrust in front of my eyes. I feel her presence in many of the images that have come through my photographic practice; and I have been blessed with numerous experiences of the numinous throughout my life; the majority of them associated with my practice of Siddha Yoga and Gurumayi. When I can succeed at getting my ego, my mind and my intellect out of the way, and allow my Creative Process to flow freely from within the greater depths of my Being . . . from the Heart, then I can say with real conviction and heartfelt gratitude, "The credit for whatever is most meritorious in this work must go to Gurumayi's unfailing grace."
*
The images I have made which are for me pervaded by the numinous, by a living radiance, by the mystery of grace . . . I call those particular images "True living Symbols." Symbolic Photographs unveil the kind of meaning that goes beyond the mind and the intellect, beyond the dualistic way of being and thinking in the world, because Symbols are images about the Oneness of Being. They are images which conjoin inner world images with their outer world corresponding counterparts.
The yogic practice of Contemplation has given me an important vehicle of accessing the ineffable meaning of those images functioning for me as True, living Symbols. The kind of vision that generates True, living symbols, and the kind of vision that allows me to become absorbed in contemplation of those images, I call "Seeing with the Eye of the Heart."
*
After I read the first chapter of The Splendor of Recognition, I decided to commit myself to creating a photography project (which is before you now) in which I would present my newest work, photographs made in early spring, 2023 and thereafter. This project is for me a celebration of the continuing ability to see and make photographs . . . after several months of real struggle with medical problems I had experienced with both my eyes.
Earlier on, I had scheduled cataract surgery on each of my eyes for January 17 and January 31, 2023. Then, shortly after the surgeries, I experienced a serious retinal tear in my left eye; and a few weeks later I experienced a much less serious retinal tear in my right eye. The tear in my left eye went straight through the center of the macula and permanently damaged my seeing in the left eye, creating a condition known as Aniseikonia, which in brief has to do with the disparity of vision between my left and right eyes. My left eye see's a smaller, darker and distorted image, compared to how my right eye sees, which, after the surgical repair to the torn retina, is now very close to normal.
(Note: I have presented a more complete and detailed account of my five surgical "eye experiences" -- which occurred through the first five months of 2023 -- in the introductory text for my project The Pandemic Inkjet Prints).
From mid January through May 9, 2023 I was not able to see well enough to feel compelled to make many photographs because first a gas bubble was placed in my left eye and then second an oil bubble was placed in my right eye to help facilitate the healing process of the torn, repaired retinas. The bubbles distorted my vision, however I discovered that some reading glasses in combination with the use of a large magnifying glass could help me see well enough to make prints for The Pandemic Inkjet Prints project with the new printer I had to purchase in mid January.
I made a few new photographs in early spring after a late snowfall as an experiment to see if there really was something to photograph "out there." Gary Winogrand used to say he made photographs to see what things he photographed looked like as photographs. There is some real wisdom in this statement. When I am photographing the experience is so intuitive, so inward looking, that I really don't know for sure what I am seeing. I surrender all that to the grace of my Creative Process. Here are the two earliest photographs I made in 2023. These and all of the photographs you will be seeing below were first made into inkjet prints, and then from those digital files I made the 12x12" files used to publish the images in this blog project.
Mystery -- image #1 12x12 Birds, back deck, north meadow & pond, early spring 2023
Mystery -- image #2 12x12 Snow mound, early spring 2023
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Though my seeing has been somewhat compromised by the damage that occurred to the macula in my left eye, my brain is working very very hard to adapt to the size differences between the images I am seeing with my two eyes. The extra brain activity makes me feel very tired (all the time) and a little dizzy (some of the time) . . . but my vision (thanks to my brain adapting) seems to be getting better, little-by-little as the weeks pass by. I have been able to see things I have wanted to photograph--despite the eye problems--and I am very happy with the recent new images that have ". . . wanted to come through me now."*
(*Note: the phrase in quotes is a reference to a wonderful book of poems by the Bengali poet Tagore entitled What Wants To Come Through Me Now, translations by Coleman Barks).
The year 2023 began with my eyes shrouded in veiled cataract vision; and then they became veiled by bubbles that were placed in my eyes to help heal my two torn retinas; now, nine moths later, I am back to celebrating the mystery of seeing, the beauty of the world, and the grace of my Creative Process. Making photographs which are radiant with the Light of grace is what I love doing most of all. Such images are really "gifts" that come through through both my self-effort and the grace of my Creative Process. Those images which function for me as True, living Symbols, images which really wanted to come through me, are manifestations of the kind I vision which I like to call Seeing With the Eye of the Heart.
* * *
There have been many things happening in my life which have delayed my working on this project, including an important trip to Memphis I made to visit my dear friend, and photographer par excellence, Larry McPherson. I have just published a small blog project entitled 2023 Return Visit to Memphis which includes 12 photographs I took in Larry's house between August 31 and September 3. I have selected seven of those images for inclusion in this project (see below images #3 thru #9).
All of the square photographs you will be seeing in this project exists as 12x12" inkjet prints. The image size is approximately 8x8" and they are surrounding by tonal "mattes" which are approximately two inches on each side. I consider the mattes to be an integral part of each 12x12" Study image. I have been using this presentation format for all of the photographs I have included in a growing project entitled 12x12" Studies. So far there are four published@ Books of the 12x12" Studies, and some of the images in this project will be included in a forthcoming Book Five.
After the presentation of the photographs below, I have added an Afterword to the project. ~ And, because I am concerned that you view my photographs presented at their very best, technically, I encourage you to read the brief note immediately below, plus the longer more detailed explanation available at the "click here" blog link I have provided.
Note: enlarge the images below by clicking on them once, then once again;
and you can also zoom-in- and zoom-out. To learn more about how to
get the highest viewing quality for my bog images click here.
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Three Related
Meadow Photographs
I made the photographs on three different mornings, in June and July 2023. The middle image was made from inside our house looking out through our picture window, and the set of three images appear to present a sequence that moves from earliest in the morning with heavy fog (top image) to near sun-rise with a thin low-lying bit of fog with an nearly illuminated sky by the rising sun (the bottom image). The triad of images feel united by their blue tones, fog, and in general a deep feeling of interiority. The dark mats surrounding the first and third images suggests a window framing the "outside" world, witnessing this world of mystery, this world of fog and changing transforming light. ~ I tried making 12x12 versions of these three images, but they simply refused to be any other way than they are, here, as inkjet prints 16" hight and 20" wide, including the dark surrounding mattes. ~ I have written about fog, which is a recurring theme in my landscape photography, in an earlier blog project: I invite you to visit this link: Death & Water : Fog, Snow, Creation-Dissolution.
Mystery -- 16x20" image #3 North Meadow & Pond, early morning fog
Mystery -- 16x20" image #4 Meadow with early morning fog--viewed through our picture window
Mystery -- 16x20" image #5 South Meadow & Pond, thin layer of low lying early morning fog,
with a sky about to become fully illuminated by the sun
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Eight New
12x12" Studies
This last set of images below were made before I went to Memphis to see my friend Larry. I was saving them for the Fifth blog publication of the 12x12" Studies. When I have accumulated enough new images, I will include many of the images below and from of the Memphis project in the forthcoming Book Five.
Mystery -- image #6 Mr. Blue behind a window curtain (12x12" Studies project)
Mystery -- image #7 Night Storm Wind (12x12" Studies project)
Mystery -- image #8 Plant silhouetted agains an early evening sky (12x12" Studies project)
Mystery -- image #9 Plant and piece of granite by the basement window (12x12" Studies project)
Mystery -- image #10 Young boy sitting by a tree stump with a mobile phone (12x12" Studies project)
Mystery -- image #11 Spoon, desert plate, flash of light (12x12" Studies project)
Mystery -- image #12 A Snail's drawing on the mist-covered window (12x12" Studies project)
Mystery -- image #13 Little seeds and things in the space between two house planters (12x12" Studies)
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Afterword
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I am presenting below the words of Swami Muktananda, the modern day yogic saint and founder of the Siddha Yoga Path which my wife Gloria and I have been practicing since we met Gurumayi in August, 1987. The excerpt was published in Muktananda's book about his beloved guru; it is entitled Bhagavan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri. I have chosen this particular statement because of his explanation regarding "God's mysterious Creation." It should be understood that in Muktananda's experience, the words "God," "divine Consciousness" "(True) Guru" and "Self" refer to the same "One" divine Reality.
This entire world consists of different forms of God. Yogis who have attained complete knowledge [of the Self] say . . . [God] can be seen in every part of [the created world]. The world is not a solid substance, not the final reality; it is a form of the Self, a play of divine Consciousness . . . The delusions of maya, and maya herself, are also forms of the Lord. All this is [God's] amazing composition, His mysterious creation. . . . The only One dwelling in this entire world is God.
The word Mystery is associated--for me, in regards to photographic picture making--with Minor White's use of the word Spirit and Alfred Stieglitz's term Equivalence, the words they both used to define a new kind of photograph, one that is about "what's invisible." Minor White and Paul Caponigro followed Stieglitz in his conscious pursuit of the mystery of life as it can be revealed in photographic images. I honor all those who have had the courage to travel this artistic path which requires a willingness to be guided by their Heart rather than their head.
My path, The Symbolic Photograph, is essentially the same as the path of Equivalence. Perhaps the only difference is that I acknowledge quite openly that Symbols are radiant with grace, the mystery that manifested the entire universe--Creation Itself; and that Symbols emerge into being via a Creative Process that is seated in the center of the Human Heart.
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Question: if photographers make pictures that look "mysterious" or "spiritual" . . . is that enough to satisfy some deep desire to know the Truth: a meaning that is formless, eternal, unnameable, unknowable and beyond perception? Perhaps some images which look mysterious are but empty facades, products of the mind, the intellect or ego . . . ?
True, living Mystery--as it manifests in the form of a photographic image--cannot be based merely in subject matter, personal style, or intention. The kind of meaning that's not sayable, not knowable, cannot be "manufactured" merely by will alone. I have come to understand that longing for the Truth, which can be based only in the depths of the Human Heart or Soul of an individual, does attract grace; and it is grace which opens the Heart and intuitively direct acts of creativity which manifest Imaginal (visual) forms pervaded by and radiant with grace. I refer to these kinds of images as True, living Symbols.
It seems to me, before a photograph which functions for me as a True, living Symbol, can manifest there must be an alignment achieved between 1) my Heartfelt willingness to encounter the Mystery which lies behind or within appearances, and 2) the grace of my Creative Process. Symbols emerge from some inner necessity that arises from deep within my Being which the yogic saints often associate with the Human Heart. In other words, there is an "equivalence" between the pictorial space of a True, living Symbolic Photograph and the Human Heat, the most sacred space of all. Muktananda's teacher and beloved Guru, Bhagavan Nityananda once said:
"The Heart is the hub of all sacred places. Go there and roam."
True, living Symbols have an innate power, a sacred energy, that can awaken into Conscious awareness That ineffable meaning which dwells within the Heart, the sacred space and meaning which dwells in every human being.
It seems to me, True Creativity requires that I surrender to the will of my Creative Process and allow grace to make those images which (as the great Bengali poet Tagore says) "Want To Come Through Me Now." What needs to be created will emerge naturally-spontaneously from the divine Self's "power of freedom" which is nothing less than God's free will, God's Shakti, the "creative power of the universe." When there is alignment between "my will" and "God's Will" the images will have the kind of inner radiance or presence that cannot be explained in words, a Luminous presence that is nothing but the Mystery of life, the mystery of the divine Self.
*
When I contemplate a photograph that is functioning for me as a True, living Symbol, it is God looking into a mirror and recognizing the essential, timeless, unsayable nature of Supreme Consciousness, the originating source of All Creation.
I have written about Symbols and Symbolic Photographs in just about every one of my photography blog projects. It is the most important thing I can say about my photographs and my Creative Process. When I experience a grace-filled photograph my whole being becomes silent; my mind becomes still; I am drawn inward and become absorbed in the image, absorbed in its radiance, its grace. In this meditative-like state of absorption I gain access to a kind of meaning that is beyond words. I invite you to visit my small blog project Contemplation which explains how to become absorbed in the experience of Symbolic Photographs.
~ Darshan ~
True, living Symbols are not "about" what was photographed, or "how" something was photographed. Perhaps the complex (structural) relationships between forms, spaces, qualities of light, tones and textures . . . provide a means of energetic communication or evocation which opens the Heart of the viewer-contemplator and allows him or her to receive what the American poet, Robert Bly has called News of the Universe. Bly writes about poems which are pervaded with "gott-natur." In yogic terms, when one experiences "gott-nature" in a visual image or a poem, or when one see's a saint, one who is absorbed in the highest yogic state, the Oneness of Being, That visionary experience is called Darshan. It is an inner vision of the divine; an inner experience of awakening to the Mystery of Consciousness, That which pervades everything, everywhere, all the time. Darshan is the experience of Seeing with the Eye of the Heart.
* * *
Swami Shantananda tells us in his book The Splendor of Recognition An Exploration of the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam, a Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul that most published commentaries on this eleventh century text is usually titled "The Heart of Recognition" because the sanskrit word hrdyam means "the heart" and the text is about the recognition of one's own deepest, divine nature, That which is seated in the Heart.
In his commentary on sutra 15 Swamiji tells use that the ancient Kashmiri sages--and in particular, Kshemaraja's teacher Abhinavagupta--understood that "all one perceives is, in totality, one's own being." And by allowing this universal view of our True nature to emerge, our identification with the body will be subsumed, our false sense of limitations eradicated, and then the resonance of recognition, the awareness "I am" emanates from the heart in an awesome splendor. When we align our attention and our acts with the spontaneous actions of Chitishaki--the creative energy of the Universe--we are led into cidanda, the love that brings everything in existence into the heart. . . .
Swamiji concludes his commentary on sutra 15 with the words of the great Kashmiri sage Abhinavagupta:
I make the universe manifest within myself
in the Sky of Consciousness.
I, who am the universe, am its creator!
~
The universe dissolves within me.
* * *
I am concluding the project with an offering of two poems by the Bengali poet Tagore from his collection of poems entitled Gitanjali (Song Offerings). I received Coleman Barks' new translation of Gitanjali just as I was beginning to prepare the text for this project. Barks chose to title his new translations What Wants To Come Through Me Now, which are the words from one of Tagore's Gitanjali songs. I love the book . . . so full with trembling longing.
Two Poems by Tagore
I have felt you always moving near,
But from what distant time,
I do not know.
The sun and the stars reveal you.
Morning and evening your messenger
speaks secretly inside my heart.
Now a trembling all through me today,
a joy, as though my time
were almost over, with your presence
lightly carried in the air.
*
Early in the day there was a feeling that you and I
would sail out in a boat
on a pilgrimage to nowhere on a shoreless ocean.
My poems would come to us there as free
as the waves, and as wordless as the waves.
Is it time now for that setting out,
or is there more to do here?
With evening shore birds flying to their nests
can we not like the sunset
vanish with them into the night?
*
This project was published and announced
on my blog's Welcome Page October 3, 2023
Related Blog Project Links
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.
