As Above, So Below
The Water Mirror In the Temple
& The Inner Voyage
A 12x12" Inject Print PROJECT March, 2024
The Vaulted Ceiling Dome of Heaven (12x12" Symmetrical Photograph)
The Intermediate Imaginal World (12x12" Symmetrical Photograph)
The Water Mirror (12x12" Symmetrical Photograph)
That which is Below corresponds
to that which is Above,
and that which is Above corresponds
to that which is Below,
to accomplish the miracle of
the "One Thing"
_____
The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
Alchemical Treatise
Introduction
Because we live in a dualistic world essentially everything has its corresponding opposite, for example: Inner & Outer; Light & Dark; Good & Evil; Heaven & Earth; Male & Female; the invisible God & God's visible form: the Created Universe . . . To understand the real significance of duality it is essential to see and understand one's life as a Voyage, a spiritual journey, an archetypal process that will allow us as individuals to return to our "Origin of Origins" in which we can live in the full, conscious awareness of Truth: The Oneness of Being. This journey is probably not possible without a divine Guide.
I have been reading a collection of essays by Henry Corbin entitled The Voyage and The Messenger (North Atlantic Books) which inspired me to embark upon this project's textual journey which is a re-vision of my 2015 project originally entitled simply As Above, So Below. This 2024 version of the earlier project conjoins its original title with The Water Mirror* In the Temple, a theme which Corbin explored in a fascinating way in his essay "Emblematic Cities" (which is not included in the Voyage-Messenger book, but it is available, free, online), and the interior voyage which Corbin writes about in his essay "The Voyage and The Messenger."
(*The mirror, in a dualistic world, is the means my which we are constantly running into one's Self as it is reflected out in everything we see. The spiritual Voyage is about becoming conscious of an ineffable Truth which turns the world inside-out. More to follow later on this.)
This blog project includes three 12x12" inkjet print versions of the images I presented in the 2015 project. Thus I have identified this project as a 2024 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT.
*
I want to begin this Introduction with some quotes by the French poet Paul Claudel which Gaston Bachelard included and commented upon in his wonderful book Water and Dreams. Claudel writes about an "underground lake" which exists in the innermost part of the Earth and lays at the "bottom of a sacred basin." This lake, comments Bachelard, will result in a "subterranean sky." Then Bachelard presents us with this quote from Claudel:
The bottom of the sacred basin, around which would crowd row upon row of thirsty souls, would be filled [with an essential water] . . . This not the place to elaborate upon the immense symbolism of water, which chiefly signifies the Sky . . .
Similarly, Henry Corbin, in his essay "Emblematic Cities" refers to a "water-mirror" which conjoins earth and sky (or, in alchemical terms, "accomplishes the miracle of the 'One Thing.'") With this poetic kind of imagery we enter into the very presence of what Corbin calls the Imaginal world, the origin of all True, living symbolic images, images radiant with the interior light of Unitary Reality, the Oneness of Being.
The Water in Claudel's interior lake is feminine and maternal, for the "sacred basin" he writes about is a Womb about to give birth to something wholly Sacred : perhaps an Angel or a Prophet; perhaps Sophia or Beatrice . . . a Messenger who will provide those of us who live in the outer world with "news from the interior," "Earth Light," "Water Wisdom," . . . Sacred Knowledge.
In response to Claudel's statement regarding the "immense symbolism of Water," Bachelard comments: "Water in its symbolism can bring everything together."
*
Henry Corbin's "Mirror in the Temple" is a basin of water located in the center, the Heart of a profoundly sacred architectural space in Isfahan, Iran: the Great Mosque of Shah. The reflected image which manifests in the water mirror, is for Corbin "the real Heavenly Dome" which conjoins the Earthly reality of the mosque with its corresponding, sacred, Heavenly reality. This Imaginal image is, for Corbin, the Origin-point from which--he asserts--all True, living Symbols emerge. Corbin names this most sacred of all spaces the "mundus Imaginalis," the Imaginal world, an Intermediate world that exists, says Corbin, "between the outer-sensory world and the inner-sacred world." For Corbin this interior space, the mundus Imaginalis, is identical with the inner space of the human Heart.
In the quote that follows, from Corbin's essay "Emblematic Cities," he refers to the mosque as a Templum which we will see later is both a place of visionary experience, the dwelling place of the divine, and the very organ of [a transcendent] vision. Corbin writes:
At the geometrical center of the enclosure [in the Great Mosque of Shah] we find a basin whose fresh water is perpetually renewed. This is a water-mirror, reflecting [. . . the architectural dome covered with its many-colored ceramic tiles . . . ] and at the same time the dome of heaven, which is the real dome of the Templum. It is by means of this mirror that the Templum brings about the meeting of heaven and earth. The mirror of the water here polarizes the symbol of the center. Now this phenomenon of the mirror at the centre of the structure of the Templum is also central to the metaphysics professed by a whole lineage of Iranian philosophers . . .
*
Tom Cheetham, author of an important series of (four) books about Corbin and his ideas, writes that Corbin's images of the temple--Imago Templi--should be understood as both physical-architectural spaces, and as symbolic images which invoke the internal, Imaginal temple, the sacred place within the human body: that is to say, the Heart, the Soul or Psyche.
I want to summarize Corbin's ideas here before we move on: all True Symbols originate from within the mundus Imaginalis, the Imaginal world--which is an "intermediate" ineffable "place" existing between the inner world and the outer sensible world of material substances. The Imaginal world, according to Corbin, is a"place" where heaven and earth merge; and it is the "place" where matter transforms into the spiritual, and where the spiritual transforms into matter.
*
The True, living symbol is at the very heart and center of my Creative Process in photography. Indeed, the symbolic photograph serves the same function (for me) as the water-mirror in the Temple: it is a sacred image--a pictorial space--into which I can Imaginally enter into the very center of my innermost Being, the infinite-timeless space of the Heart. In this most sacred of all spaces I can silently dialogue (contemplate, worship) with the divine presence which dwells within my own Heart, that which the great yogic sages have named the Supreme Self.
In this merging of Self and Image I can experience a personal-psychic-spiritual transformation in which an unveiling occurs of a Sacred Knowledge which transcends the limits of human language and understanding. This sacred knowledge, states Corbin, has pre-existed within me but of necessity became hidden and unconscious because of the separations created by the ego and its dualistic world. Corbin (an amazing and highly respected scholar, philosopher, teacher, author and--I believe--a True Mystic) has made it quite clear that until we, as individuals, embark on the required inner Journey with a highly qualified Messenger-Guide, this most sacred knowledge, the "Knowledge of the Heart" (the "Knowledge of the divine Self") will remain hidden from us and we will continue to live separated from our own True Nature.
*
True, living symbolic photographs are images radiant with the grace of my Creative Process, the same divine energy which creates our world and the entire Universe. It is the same divine energy which not only Creates, but also Holds together and Destroys the universe--over and over again--in a perpetual recurrence of Creation.
In the thirty-plus years my wife Gloria and I have been practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation, I have often heard our beloved teacher Gurumayi Chidilasananda, and her teacher Swami Muktananda, use the term Chiti Shakti interchangeably when speaking about grace, that divine Creative Energy which dwells within and flows through everything in the Created Universe including the Human Body, the Great Temple of the inner Self. The innermost part of the bodily temple is known as the Heart, which is the dwelling place of God, the inner Self.
Here are two quotes, the first by Gurumayi, the second by her teacher, Swami Muktananda:
Do not see your body just from the outside. Go within and experience the energy which flows through the body and allows every cell to pulsate, to live, the energy which allows every thought and emotion to fructify, which is also the energy which holds the universe together. Swami Chidvilasananda, Darshan #23 (a SYDA publication)
The body has been man's companion and friend through many births, through many different journeys of pain and happiness. . . . It is the ladder to the city of liberation; it is the great temple of the inner Self. In the innermost part of this bodily temple, God, the Lord of love, lives as the inner Self. Swami Muktananda, Darshan #23
The human mind often finds it difficult to absorb these kinds of ancient teachings; we feel more at home in physical-sensible forms of the Temple such as a forest, a church, a Great Mosque. When we find a way of entering into the Heart--perhaps through some form of spiritual practice, perhaps by entering a church or temple, perhaps through some unexpected showering of grace, perhaps through the contemplation of True, living symbolic images or Icons, from within the Heart a silent dialogue can begin to occur between our individual self and our True Self. In the mystical timeless events which occur in any form of the Templum, this interior dialogue is essentially "God seeking God;" "God discovering God" "God speaking with God" . . . accomplishing "the miracle of the One Thing."
Do not see your body just from the outside. Go within and experience the energy which flows through the body and allows every cell to pulsate, to live, the energy which allows every thought and emotion to fructify, which is also the energy which holds the universe together. Swami Chidvilasananda, Darshan #23 (a SYDA publication)
The body has been man's companion and friend through many births, through many different journeys of pain and happiness. . . . It is the ladder to the city of liberation; it is the great temple of the inner Self. In the innermost part of this bodily temple, God, the Lord of love, lives as the inner Self. Swami Muktananda, Darshan #23
The human mind often finds it difficult to absorb these kinds of ancient teachings; we feel more at home in physical-sensible forms of the Temple such as a forest, a church, a Great Mosque. When we find a way of entering into the Heart--perhaps through some form of spiritual practice, perhaps by entering a church or temple, perhaps through some unexpected showering of grace, perhaps through the contemplation of True, living symbolic images or Icons, from within the Heart a silent dialogue can begin to occur between our individual self and our True Self. In the mystical timeless events which occur in any form of the Templum, this interior dialogue is essentially "God seeking God;" "God discovering God" "God speaking with God" . . . accomplishing "the miracle of the One Thing."
* * *
The three symmetrical photographs I have presented in this project are--for me--True living Symbols, images radiant with grace. The images are related in their form and character to many other kinds of Imago Templi which Corbin and Cheetham have written about, such as the mandala and the yantra, images which are typically symmetrical, circular or square in format, images that are the visual embodiment of the Oneness, the Unity of Being. Such images provide the contemplator with a visual "road map" that leads him or her into their own "Heart" which correspondingly "dwells within" the Imaginal center-point of the image.
This Imaginal movement within the visual image correspondingly transports the contemplator into the center of his or her own Being. The True experience of contemplation, the silent dialogue with an image functioning as a living Symbol, radiantly alive with grace, can have a profoundly healing affect upon what CG Jung has referred to as "modern-man's divided, fragmented psyche or soul."
*
The [Great Mosque's] four cardinal points (north, south, east and west) are given by the four iwans [vaulted portal openings onto the mosque's courtyard]. These remain horizontal; it is the mirror which gives the vertical dimension, from the nadir to the zenith. . .
Let us now transpose [the] idea of a virtual image to the plane of a mystical reflection. To transpose the image of virtuality into actuality is to accomplish the very operation which, for the metaphysicians of the school of Sohravardi, signifies penetration into the mundus Imaginalis [the Imaginal world] . . .
The phenomenon of the mirror enables us to understand the internal dimensions of an object or a building situated in the space of this world, because it leads us to grasp its spiritual dimension, the metaphysical image which precedes and shapes all empirical perception. . . To see things in the mirror is, as an Iranian Sheikh expressed it, 'to see things in Hurqalya, the highest of the mystic [Emblematic] cities of the mundus Imaginalis. The mirror simply shows us the way to enter [. . . the Imaginal world, the human Heart, the divine Self.] Excerpts from Henry Corbin's essay "Emblematic Cities"
*
After reading and contemplating Corbin's writings about the water-mirror I recognized a relationship between his ideas and the four-fold symmetrical photographs I have presented in this project and which I have been making since 2011 after I returned from a two week tour of Turkey, during which I had a series of encounters, visionary experiences initiated by multiple forms of Islamic Sacred Art. (See my project "An Imaginary Book")
My symmetrical photographs consist of a single image (which I call a source image, or "straight photograph" ) duplicated four times and juxtaposed with each other such that each image is mirrored in itself above & below and left & right. The four images, which become conjoined to each other above & below, left & right, and at the very center of the symmetrical image, become transformed into an altogether new visual incarnation. With the support of grace a symmetrical image becomes the visual embodiment of grace; an image that unveils and makes palpable a divine Presence, the Oneness of Being.
The center-point of this kind of symmetrical photograph has become the origin-point of the visible image, the ineffable, invisible place from which the visible image has emerged into the outer Created World. It is the place which Corbin has named the mundus Imaginalis, the Imaginal world.
*
I took the source photographs for all three symmetrical images in this project within minutes of each other in the summer of 2015. Though I don't consider the order in which I took the pictures of great importance, I do consider essential here the way the images are presented, the order in which they are presented, and the order in which I comment upon them. All three images were given birth with grace, without conscious intention, and, on the other hand, I feel fairly certain the images were inspired by the books I had been reading at the time: Tom Cheetham's books about Corbin's ideas, and Corbin's essay "Emblematic Cities. In this revised version of the earlier project, my commentary also reflects the essay by Corbin I read, recently, regarding the Voyage and the Messenger.
I definitely see my three commentaries as an important part of an inner journey I embarked on in 2015 and which continues today (late March, 2024) with this revision of the original project.
*
The three symmetrical photographs in this project must be presented vertically, suspended in space, one above the other, in this order:
The Vaulted Ceiling Dome of Heaven (top image)
The Intermediate Imaginal World (middle image)
The The Water Mirror (bottom image)
______________
____________________________
_____________________________________
Commentaries
on
the Three Symmetrical Photographs
The Water Mirror (12x12" Symmetrical Photograph)
I will begin my three commentaries, starting with the bottom image, then I'll journey upward through the Intermediate Imaginal World and then up and into The Dome of Heaven. ~ The Water Mirror, a four-fold symmetrical photograph, was constructed with a source image I took of a "water basin," a ceramic bird bath, which still remains in our front yard today.
In the process of photographing the bird bath I experienced a brief and fleeing moment of recognition in which I understood I was probably making the exposure because of the writings I had been reading by Corbin regarding the water basin in the temple which functioned (for him) as a "mirror." However, immediately after having that thought, I thought nothing more about it until much later, when I was experimenting with the image, applying the four-fold symmetrical construction process to it.
The resulting symmetrical image was quite a surprise for me. I find the letter-like forms under the water, on the basin's floor, strangely familiar and haunting. They remind me of the letters of the Arabic alphabet I saw in an exhibition of Illuminated Qur'ans in a museum in Istanbul when my wife and I visited Turkey in 2011. (While I was looking at one of the illuminated Qur'ans I experienced it "come to life;" it appeared "illuminated" from "within." See the "chapter" Prayer Stones in my multi-chaptered project "An Imaginary Book." )
The basin, as it appears in the symmetrical image, is suspended in a pictorial space which I experience as disorienting and, for lack of another word, irrational. The sense of distance between the basin and the background (green grass and white clover blossoms illuminated in direct sunlight) makes no sense to me, and at the same time a feeling of numinosity pervades that space.
The four suns I saw reflected in the basin's water surprised me when I first saw the symmetrical photograph, and sometime later I understood that the suns related to the bird-like shadows above and below the basin--shadows which appeared to me as if totem figures providing some otherworldly protection for the "sacred font." Similarly, I had expected to see a shadow of the basin's column on the grass, and then realized it's not there, its not visible! The basin appears suspended in the picture space . . . As I contemplated this image further I realized I too felt suspended over the basin in a way that made me feel quite uncomfortable.
The resulting symmetrical image was quite a surprise for me. I find the letter-like forms under the water, on the basin's floor, strangely familiar and haunting. They remind me of the letters of the Arabic alphabet I saw in an exhibition of Illuminated Qur'ans in a museum in Istanbul when my wife and I visited Turkey in 2011. (While I was looking at one of the illuminated Qur'ans I experienced it "come to life;" it appeared "illuminated" from "within." See the "chapter" Prayer Stones in my multi-chaptered project "An Imaginary Book." )
The basin, as it appears in the symmetrical image, is suspended in a pictorial space which I experience as disorienting and, for lack of another word, irrational. The sense of distance between the basin and the background (green grass and white clover blossoms illuminated in direct sunlight) makes no sense to me, and at the same time a feeling of numinosity pervades that space.
The four suns I saw reflected in the basin's water surprised me when I first saw the symmetrical photograph, and sometime later I understood that the suns related to the bird-like shadows above and below the basin--shadows which appeared to me as if totem figures providing some otherworldly protection for the "sacred font." Similarly, I had expected to see a shadow of the basin's column on the grass, and then realized it's not there, its not visible! The basin appears suspended in the picture space . . . As I contemplated this image further I realized I too felt suspended over the basin in a way that made me feel quite uncomfortable.
This symmetrical image presents an extraordinary object that has undergone a surprising, "otherworldly"-"mythic" transformation. The image unveils a mysterious "spiritual dimension" hidden both within the object and within the Place (or space) in which the object is situated--none of which I experienced when I made the exposure with my camera, but which emerged after I had I created the four-fold symmetrical version of the source photograph. I mention this here because of a quote I had presented earlier by Corbin and which is certainly worthy of being repeated once again:
The phenomenon of the mirror enables us to understand the internal dimensions of an object or a building situated in the space of this world, because it leads us to grasp its spiritual dimension, the metaphysical image which precedes and shapes all empirical perception . . .
The "phenomenon of the mirror" Corbin is referring to is the reflected image of the mosque's dome he experienced in the water-mirror, an image which Imaginally reveals the "dome of heaven," the "real dome" says Cobin, of the Templum. Corbin tells us: "to see things in the mirror" is to enter the "intermediary" Imaginal world where "physical things become spiritual, and where spiritual things become physical."
(I invite you to visit two projects that are related to the above commentaries: Thing-centered photographs and The Center of Being : Thing Centered Symmetrical photographs)
The Intermediate Imaginal World (12x12" Symmetrical Photograph)
Unlike the other two images, I don't remember taking the source photograph for this symmetrical image entitled The Intermediate Imaginal World symmetrical. I took the basin photo and the vaulted Dome of Heaven photo within minutes of each other. This of course adds a bit of mystery for me to an image which is already mysterious in its abstract nature and in the way the internal shimmering blue light seems to illuminate the entire image.
In all these respects, the image is for me a visual explication upon Corbin's statement I provided earlier regarding the "vertical dimension of a space" and the "plane of a mystical reflection," that which gives us entrance into the "in-between, Intermediate World" of "the mundus Imaginalis," the Imaginal world, "the place of origin of True symbolic images."
I have placed this image in the center position of my vertical Triptych because of the way its central column, a "ladder of light," or perhaps a "spinal column," serves as a connecting link between the other two--top & bottom--images. The blue color of the light, which is especially concentrated in the two horizontal diamond shapes, directly relates to the blue color in the third, top Dome of Heaven image of my Triptych. I also want to mention how the light from the column seems to illuminate the entire central horizontal section of the symmetrical image which, it seems to me, has the character of a "wind-blown" landscape especially on that section's red-ish-brown top and bottom edges.
When I enter into the space of this symmetrical image I feel as though I am inhabiting not only a sacred space, but in Corbin's words, "the infinite, pre-eternal space of the Imaginal world," which I cannot help but identify with the yogic teachings I have heard so often regarding the "infinite, timeless space of the Heart."
The shimmering, vibrating, pulsating qualities of the vertical ladder of light in this image gives me the feeling I am face-to-face with an "Angelic presence."* Indeed what appears to me as both a "ladder of light" and the "spine of a human being," suggests to me a vertical assent by which I can leave the Intermediate world and continue on and into Paradise or the Dome of Heaven.
The phrase "ladder of light" also returns me to Corbin's "Emblematic Cities" and his discussion regarding the Templum in his lecture series "Temple and Contemplation," and Swami Muktananda's statement (repeated below) regarding the human body as a temple and as a ladder:
The body has been man's companion and friend through many births, through many different journeys of pain and happiness. . . . It is the ladder to the city of liberation; it is the great temple of the inner Self. In the innermost part of this bodily temple, God, the Lord of love, lives as the inner Self.
(*Note: regarding the term Angelic Presence I used above, see my multi-chaptered project The Angels, and in particular the "chapter" Text Excerpts regarding Angels in which I provide many quoted writings by Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham about angels and the Angelic World. I am fascinated by their writings about angels and have as a result have become sensitive to what I refer to as an "Angelic presence" I have experienced in several of my photographs in the past few years.)
As I consider further the shimmering "ladder" of light in the image, I notice the way it connects the two corresponding, mirroring blue-illuminated diamond shapes at the top and bottom of the image. These shapes could be interpreted as a reference to the alchemical statement I have quoted above which refers to the correspondence between that which is Above and that which is Below, (Heaven and Earth).
Click twice on the image to enlarge it to better see details of the image
The stacked lines just above and below the two diamond shapes remind me of ripples on the surface of a pool or lake of water; and to the left and right sides of those blue-illuminated stacked lines there are similar stacked lines of a darker deep red color. The red lines remind me of a symmetrical water image I published in an earlier project:
(See Image #29 in my project The Brook and my "fourth reading" in the section
entitled "Readings of four selected photographs")
Returning to this project's middle image, The Intermediate Imaginal World, I wanted to make one last observation regarding the two intersecting lines of blue light--one vertical, one horizontal.
The two lines meet, cross, intersect at the very center-point of each line and at the very center point of the symmetrical image as a whole. This center point is the point-of-origin of the image, an image which has unfolded from within what Corbin terms the mundus Imaginalis, the Imaginal world, the origin of True, living Symbols.
Tom Cheetham has written a book entitled The World Turned Inside Out, and "turning inside-out" is what seems to happen when an image emerges from within the mundus Imaginalis, a transcendent, ineffable place, a "world" which exists between the inner and outer worlds, and into the pictorial space of symmetrical photograph. It is indeed a great mystery how a photographic image can give visual form to the interior world of visionary experience, the interior world of angels.
It also seems to me the two intersecting lines of light in the image also hold the image; and despite all of its vibrant energy, there is nonetheless for me a sense of stasis or suspension in the image as if this world of mystery exists in a condition of timelessness. I often feel that when I am encountering a powerful sculptural images of Christ on the Cross.
In Corbin's lecture series "Temple and Contemplation" he speaks about the sacred presence that pervades the Templum, a "place of vision," an "organ of vision" and a "dwelling-place of the divine." This symmetrical image I have entitled The Intermediate Imaginal World, and nearly all images which function for me as True, living Symbols, are (in my experience) radiant "spiritual bodies," sacred "vessels," the dwelling place of grace: that creative power of the universe which Creates the universe, holds the universe together, and dissolves the universe.
* * *
The Vaulted Ceiling Dome of Heaven (12x12" Symmetrical Photograph)
At last, we have arrived at the third, top image of my Triptych, The Vaulted Ceiling Dome of Heaven. I remember very clearly that the source image with which I constructed this four-fold symmetrical image was the first exposure I made in a series of exposures I had made that same day which provided the source images for the three symmetrical photographs I have presented in this project.
I remember, after I took the photograph of our vaulted ceiling I immediately went outside and took the photograph of the basin in our front yard. I had no intention of photographing the basin, I just wanted to see if the bird bath could have possibly been the source of the blue light that seemed to have been reflected up onto our vaulted ceiling.
I also remember when I did take the "basin photograph" I did have a fleeting moment in which I acknowledged to myself that I was taking the image because of the essay I had just read by Corbin, "Emblematic Cities" and his experience of the "water mirror" in the temple.
I don't know that any effort at trying to explain what may have created the mysterious presence of the blue light on our vaulted ceiling really matters. I know only that what I saw and experienced had created a strong impulse in me to make a photograph. And then photograph motivated me to make the "basin" photograph, and the four-fold-symmetrical construction process radically transformed those source images in ways I could never have imagined. I consider all three images in this project gifts of grace, and indeed each of the images are radiant with the grace of my Creative Process.
Its been nine years after I experienced that brief flourish of creative impulses to make some photographs. Now I have a more conscious awareness of the correspondence between my perception of the blue light on our vaulted ceiling that day and the essay I had read by Corbin in which he tells of his visionary experience of the dome of the Templum which he said in his essay is a place of visionary experience, the dwelling place of the divine, and the very organ of [a transcendent] vision.
The presence of the soft, round, blue corona in this symmetrical image gently, seductively invites me into its center space which is pervaded by a feeling of deep mysterious interiority. Although I was looking up when I took the picture, as I view the image, now, I feel suspended-over and looking-down into a deep, intimate body of water, perhaps a pond or a well* . . . I feel as though I want to give myself to the space, the light, its soft blue energy. I want to enter the blue round space and its eye-or-vulva-like elongated center point. The picture's blue space is, for me, essentially feminine in nature, and the color and feeling of the space invokes in me the remembrance of Swami Muktananda's experience of the Blue Pearl.
(*I remember as a young child on vacation with my family, when we went deep inside an illuminated cave, and I became attracted to a deep dark hole in the floor of the cave, and that the hole was filled with water, and its apparent depth was terrifying to me.)
Perhaps I imaginatively enter a maternal, womb-like space when I look deeply into this image. The horizontal shape that seems to be emerging from inside the center of the space . . . does look something like a vulva, but it looks more like an eye to me--an eye that is looking at me, looking back at me, reflecting my act of perception. In the yoga that I practice, there is a phrase for this kind of perceptual experience: The seer is the seen; the seen is the seer. Perception, in other words, is an act of projection out from within the interior space of one's own divine Self. (Visit my essay Seeing the Grand Canyon)
*
The gentle, round, pale blue space could be the soft light of a star, or perhaps a gem whose radiant light is being dimmed and softened by a veil. Perhaps the horizontal eye-vulva form is a bird . . . "whose wings were palest blue." ~ The images I have just mentioned were inspired by 1) a recording I own, Blue In Blue (by Patrick Hawes) in which the following poem by Mary Coleridge is put to music, a music pervaded with the deep feeling of an interior longing, and 2) a quote I read my Gurumayi. Here, first, is the poem by Mary Coleridge:
The lake lay blue below the hill.
O're it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.
The sky above was blue at last.
The sky beneath me, blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed.
It caught his image as he flew.
Mary Coleridge (1861-1907)
Now, here are the words of an unnamed yogic poet-saint, quoted by Gurumayi Chidvilasananda in one her published talks:
Look, the bliss I sought for years and years,
Now flashes upon my sight.
There in a temple wombed in earth,
I've seen a gem, and cast my past behind me forever.
Unnamed Poet Saint, quoted by Swami Chidvilasananda in Darshan #67 (a SYDA Foundation publication)
*
______________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
Henry Corbin's lecture series:
"Temple and Contemplation"
& the Sacred, Cosmic Temple
The deepest, the most ineffable kind of meaning an image can have for me is one that functions for me as a True, living symbol. Its meaning, its grace-full energy, can be absorbed and integrated into one's innermost Self when one Truly gives oneself to the image fully, in a meditative-like process called contemplation. The Contemplatio was an essential, integral part of the medieval alchemical process, and I believe it must be an essential part of any Creative Process, including the making of symbolic photographs.
Corbin elaborates upon the concept of Contemplation in his fifth "Temple and Contemplation" lecture. I will conclude this project with some quotations from that lecture.
The term [contemplate] was actually used above all to designate the field of Heaven, the expanse of the open Heaven where the flight of birds could be observed and interpreted.
. . . the Latin templum became the appropriate word with which to translate the Hebrew and Arabic expressions that . . . connote the idea of a divine dwelling-place; whereas, through its distant etymology, the word itself connotes the idea of a place of vision. The temple is the place, the organ, of vision. (See my blog project MAKOM, the Place)
In order for the material Temple and the immaterial Temple [Imago Templi] to symbolize with each other, both of them need to be lifted out of the isolation of a world without correspondence, and . . . perceived on the level "where bodies are spiritualized and where spirits take on body" . . . the level, that is, of the spiritual body. This in itself is the definition of the Imaginal world, the world where . . . the Imago Templi is made manifest.
Epilogue
_________________________________________
That which is Below corresponds
to that which is Above,
and that which is Above corresponds
to that which is Below,
to accomplish the miracle of
the "One Thing"
_____
The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
Alchemical Treatise
*
I first became motivated to create this revision of the earlier 2015 blog project when I made a 12x12" inkjet print version of the top, blue symmetrical image in the Triptych: The Vaulted Ceiling Dome of Heaven. At that time I had also come across a reference to the essay Henry Corbin had written, "The Voyage and The Messenger" in one of Tom Cheetham's books I was re-reading, The World Turned Inside Out. I felt compelled to read Corbin's essay and immediately purchased a book which contained the essay. (The book also contains an excellent introduction to Corbin, in all his amazing complexity.)
After I read the Corbin's essay I understood that the earlier project-- As Above, So Below --was essentially about a spiritual journey, a mystic Voyage (i.e., my own) and that compelled me to review the project again. I then realized I needed to revise the project. I immediately made the 12x12" inkjet prints of the other two images in the project and began re-writing the text.
As I was nearing the conclusion of my revision, Gloria and I watched the new (2024) four-hour PBS documentary Dante : Inferno to Paradise on two consecutive nights. I was completely overwhelmed by the power of the film which successfully brings together many wonderful things at once: it's an excellent dramatized biography of Dante's life, including his relationship to his beloved Beatrice; it provided an excellent overview of Dante's Imaginal journey into Hell, Purgatory and Heaven (accompanied and Guided by his divine love, Beatrice who had died at the age of twenty-four, thirty years before Dante completed his epic literary journey.) I especially enjoyed the dramatized excerpts from Dante's Divine Comedy and all of the excellent, informed, insightful commentaries--on every aspect of the film--by many top scholars in the field of literature.
The fact that I had seen this film shortly after I had read Corbin's essay "The Voyage and the Messenger," and the fact that I was near the completion of my revision of this project, made the film's impact on me feel all the more powerful and personally meaningful. ~ This "coming together" in time of these three events which related to each other and to me personally in a profoundly meaningful way, is a perfect example of the mysterious phenomenon called synchronicity which CG Jung wrote about with great interest late in his life, and which was a central theme in my 1972 MFA written thesis : The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self-Knowledge.
I have written frequently about synchronicity in many of my blog projects, and it certainly has been part of my experience in writing this revision of the 2015 project As Above, So Below.
*
Gloria and I watched the final part of Dante : Inferno to Paradise on March 21, 2024, the part in which Beatrice and Dante merge with each other in the all-pervasive divine light of Paradise. Then, the next morning, March 22, I felt synchronicity operative yet again in the Creative Process--my life, when I read a poem by the great Sufi poet-saint, Rumi. ~ For over a year I have been reading a poem by Rumi each morning before I meditate. I love Coleman Barks' book A Year With Rumi. (Barks selected and translated all of the poems.) The poem I read that morning (for March 22), which I have included below, felt to me as if it had The Hand of Destiny in it. The poem felt deeply personal and meaningful to me, and particularly in the way that it seemed to relate in several ways to the concluding part of Dante's Divine Comedy which I had watched the night before, and the fact that I was nearing the conclusion of my process of revising this project.
In the poem Rumi speaks of "death" frequently: these references to death are, I believe, emblematic of the Sufic idea of the dissolution or purification of the ego, which is the goal of a Sufi's spiritual journey--which is the full realization (the 'full moon"), the completion ("speechless" "silence") of the journey: the unbroken fully conscious state of the Oneness of Being.
These words which appear in Rumi's poem: "Inside this new love" "be quiet" "The speechless full moon" and "silence" . . . are all emblematic of the mystic's Return (Home), the mystic's re-Union with God, the divine Self (and Dante's Union with Beatrice in The Divine Comedy).
The phrase "Become the sky" in the poem invokes the imagery that is directly related to this project which is at once a reference to "Heaven" (The Dome of Heaven, the blue Vaulted Ceiling), and it can also be understood as a metaphor for re-Union and Corbin's references to both the Templum ("a place of vision") and the Voyage (to "the Imaginal world, the world where . . . the Imago Templi is made manifest . . .).
Now, with great respect and gratitude, I conclude this project with Rumi's sacred words:
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an ax to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You are covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you have died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon
comes out now.
The March 22 poem, from: A Year With Rumi (ed. & trans. by Coleman Barks)
*
This blog version of the 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT
--and the revised version of the 2015 project "As Above, So Below"--
was announced on my blog's Welcome Page April 2, 2024
(with the revised title)
~
As Above, So Below
The Water Mirror in the Temple
& The Inner Voyage
~
Other Related Links
"An Imaginary Book" (2011-13)
The Angels (2014)
The Photograph As Icon (2014-15)
Photography and Yoga (2015)
Field of Vision (2015)
How to Best View My Online Blog Images with your desktop or laptop computer.
Symmetrical Photographs a collection of Images, Projects and Texts
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.
