Silent
Dialogues
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The universe is infinite and it is your own Self.
See the world as a form of the inner Self.
The world is not separate from you
and you are not separate from
the world . . . this is devotion,
and this is worship.
from the book Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri by Swami Muktananda
Introduction
This project includes 18 square images, and all exist as inkjet prints with an image size of 18x18" on a paper base 20x24." I have placed a title under each image and have written a brief commentary on each image in an attempt to explore the two primary themes of this project: Silence and Dialogue.
I believe, and more to the point, I have often experienced glimpses of the fact that everything in this universe is alive with some form of Consciousness, and when two things come in relation to each other they initiate a conversation that is continuous and ever changing. In other words, Everything, and every person is actively connected.
In this project I have sometimes imposed a relationship upon two separate images by placing them together within the square 18x18" format. And there are also images in this project in which I photographed two things which had fallen together into a meaningful relationship by some mysterious act of grace.
I have almost always allowed myself to be guided by the grace of my Creative Process--as to what, when and how to compose a photograph. Indeed I try very hard to avoid thinking before I take a photograph. I find the process yields the most interesting imagery when I stay open the gifts of grace of my Creative Process and patiently wait to see what It has provided me. I learn and gain the most from what I don't already know.
Inside this river there is a moon
which is not a reflection.
From the river bottom the moon speaks.
I travel in continuous conversation
with the river as it goes.
Whatever is above
and seemingly outside this river
is actually in it.
Merge with it, in here or out there,
as you please.
This is the river of rivers
and the beautiful silence of endless talking.
Rumi / trans. C Barks
The yogic sages say that everything in the outer world originates from within. I have had a direct experience of that teaching, and wrote about it, in an essay which is available on my blog. It is entitled Seeing the Grand Canyon and I invite you to take a look at it. That experience has had a profound impact on me and my photography to this very day.
The commentaries I have written on each of the Silent Dialogues photographs are my personal interpretations, projections, associations and Imaginal participations in each of the visual, silent conversations . . . dialogues in which no words were spoken. Indeed, what I am most interested in is the meaning, the understanding that emerges from seeing and listening to what occurs in the relationships within the image . . . meanings that are beyond the realm of language. This requires a silencing of the mind and a careful tuning into the interior realm of being where everything is related and shares the same essential nature: The Oneness of Being. This realm of Silence, this Unitary Reality is the origin of True, living Symbols. The yogic sages tell us, before God created the Universe nothing existed but Silence, and that God exists in the human Heart as the divine Self, and that the Silence of the Self exists in every created thing in the Universe.
You will notice that I used the word "contemplate" frequently in my commentaries, and I use this word in very specific terms. I will not try to explain here; rather, if you are interested or curious, I invite you to visit this my brief blog project on the subject: Contemplation. If I were to say what this word means to me, briefly, I would say it is something like a meditation on an image, in a Silent mode of being, in a very receptive mode of being that is as much about "listening" to the image, and feeling it, as it is about "seeing" the image.
To be clear, I need to emphasize the fact that my commentary on the photographs is not the fruit of my contemplations because the fruit of contemplation is essentially not sayable. I will write about the photograph in terms of how I see and feel about the image, what I understand about the image, now, and perhaps how it reflects something about me. I try to see the image not so much from the perspective of having been "the maker" of the image, but rather from the perspective of someone seeing the image with fresh eyes, an open mind. And in the spirit of full disclosure, because I have been practicing Siddha Yoga meditation for 36 years with a Meditation Master my commentaries will certainly include many of the yogic teachings that I have been actively contemplating. (Click here to see an image of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and read a little about her from the Siddha Yoga Website)
Regarding the Square Format
I have chose the square format for this project because of the way it concentrates and intensifies the interactive relationships between the things placed within that particular spatial field--a space in which all sides are equal. The center of that space is a most appropriate place to put a single object; and when I am faced with the challenge of placing two things together in a square, of course anything is possible but, again, the center is the place of Silence, the place of Stillness, the place of intense, direct seeing.
You will often be seeing two things suspended in black space. For me black space is a metaphor for silence. On the other hand, white space can be a metaphor for silence as well. In the realm of the True, living Symbol, which is the realm of the Oneness of Being, all tones, all colors are equally forms of grace. Welcome to the project.
1. Silent Dialogues : A figure standing next to a tree, both in silent dialogue with each other
The figure in this photograph appears to be having a conversation with the tree. This image turns the "outer world" inside-out. That is to say, this is an inversed photograph; what before was an image of a figure standing next to a dark tree and its dark shadow in an otherwise all white space, now the image presents the figure in an all black space; the tree and its shadow have become all white, the source of illumination for the silent drama that was being portrayed before me and my camera at the moment of the exposure.
It has been my experience that things, people, and photographs too, have a great longing to be seen and heard; they long for others to participate in their conversation. And I have found that to merely witness and listen to a conversation between things within a photographic image can be a meaningful form of participation in the image. Over a series of visits, viewings, contemplations, the content of this "conversation" will always be new, different and enlightening. Wouldn't you like to know what the tree in this image has to say to you? And what is the figure saying to the tree?
2. Silent Dialogues : Basketball hoop & net suspended in a starry sky
Inside water, a waterwheel turns.
A star circulates with the moon.
We live in the night ocean wondering,
What are these lights?
Rumi, trans: Coleman Barks
What are those lights in this photograph? Road salt. I saw a constellation of road salt lying on a black paved road one early sunlit winter morning, and each piece of salt glowed with its own internal light. The act of making that photograph was an act of affirmation, a way of acknowledging a mystery of that light that pervades very thing in this Universe.
The photograph of the basketball hoop & net was made separately from the road salt image. I conjoined the two images especially for this project.
I played basketball in high school; I still love watching the NBA Finals. When a basketball falls through a hoop in the most perfect way it "cuts" through the net silently. The net might shudder slightly, as if it had been made unexpectedly alive and ecstatic with the graceful energy of the ball passing effortlessly through the very center of the round hoop-space and then through the deeper round space of the net. Such a cosmic play must occur in that silence which manifests within those of us who are looking up and holding our breath . . . waiting for that next timeless moment to manifest for us . . .
There is a yogic teaching which, to compliment Rumi's poem, goes something like this: We (humans beings) are like fish swimming in water searching for something that will quench our thirst. Even though we live in nothing but the silence of grace we have to pay close attention, look and listen carefully, because the Truth is timeless, invisible, still and silent.
3. Silent Dialogue : Man looking up at a suspended Christmas Bell
Yes, white can be a metaphor for Silence. One cannot limit Silence to anything. There are several images in this project in which figures or things are presented in white space. Images which are functioning for me as True, Living Symbols cannot be limited in meaning, therefore I consider black and white as nothing less than "flip sides" of the same One "coin." All tones can be equally radiant with grace; it sort of depends on how we see the image. Everything that exists, everything that happens . . . owes its existence, its meaning, to grace and yet images that are functioning for us as True living symbols . . . they need our prayers, our grace, our silent listening and active participation.
Things are not what they appear to be.
Therefore . . . No; there is no dog in this photograph . . . but there is a question or two that could be asked:
"What is it I am looking at?" and, perhaps, it should be asked: "Who is asking the question?"
What appears to be a dog in the lower left corner of the image is the "bill" of a young boy's baseball cap. He was waiting for the next sea lion to round the bend at an underground pool built for the sea lions at the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, NY.
A word of warning: Don't depend on titles or what others say about art objects; and most especially don't listen to what artists say their works mean. They are often the last to know what is True in their own work. There is a yogic teaching that states:
One who (thinks he/she) knows not, knows;
one who (thinks he/she) knows, knows not.
5. Silent Dialogue : Two figures standing, in silence, in a "Departing Landscape"
I suspect these two figures, standing before the mountain, are not talking to each other. They are instead standing still and in total silence. Each is grieving; each is sending blessings to to the mountain and its burnt trees, consoling the mountain (and themselves) for all that was lost in an all consuming wildfire.
This is an image of "The Departing Landscape." I titled a multi-chaptered project "The Departing Landscape" and I titled my photography blog The Departing Landscape. I borrowed that phrase from American Composer Morton Feldman who used the phrase to describe the dissolution of sound . . . that sound which leaves us in our hearing.
(Note: In 2010, when I first initiated my blog, I also associated the phrase to the growing threats of Climate Change to our entire planet, and the growing threats of the fossil fuel industry to hydrofrack the Meadow behind or back yard in Canandaigua, New York and pollute New York State's famous fresh water in the Finger Lakes region.)
Feldman created many beautiful contemplative piano compositions in which he suspended sounds in a musical space (which Feldman named a chromatic field), using the piano's sustaining pedal, which allowed sounds to naturally decay into silence as other sounds, being created by the piano, were simultaneously emerging from silence. In the yoga that I practice, the ancient sages say the created world originated as sound vibrations, the first being the primordial sound OM. (See my blog project entitled The Departing Landscape Project.)
6. Silent Dialogue : The falling Man and the empty suspended ladder
This image poses a series of questions for me: Is the ladder in the background the same ladder that the Man in the foreground has fallen off of? Why is the Man falling? The ladder in the background is suspended by a rope or wire . . . What is the rope or wire connected to? What happened to the Man? Why is this "falling event" taking place in a starry sky?
These questions suggest any number of conversations I could have with myself in relation to the image. It is an image worth contemplating. The "fall of Man" is no small subject. Just imaginatively entering the space of the photograph could be a fascinating contemplation in itself. The yogic practice known as contemplation is essentially a silent dialogue with one's own Self. (Again, I invite you to visit my contemplation blog link. Its full title is: Self Knowledge : Contemplating Symbolic Photographs)
7. Silent Dialogue : The Chicken (timer) & the Blade
I saw a chicken get its head cut off once. I was a young child then. I never want to see that again. ~ When my Uncle Bob chopped off its head with a hatchet the chicken's body ran around and around in circles--with blood spurting up and outward--for an unbearable period of time. In this photograph there appears to be some dialogue occurring between the chicken (timer) and the blade of my paper cutter. ~ When you wind up the top part of the chicken it starts running in a circular fashion upon a stable base for however many minutes one chooses on the dial (up to 60 minutes).
Most of us don't know the True nature of time and we don't know when our time will come to pass on to another body, another reality, another . . . who knows what (?), really, after our existing body dies. Death may be different for each of us in ways we can't begin to imagine now. In death, some people say (those who have had certified Near Death Experiences), time "up there" does not exist as we know it "down here" on Earth.
The yogic saints say "Time is God." They also say our time of death is appointed at the time of our birth. Many saints, when their time to die is nearing, become aware of the time of their death, and they use that time to be fully prepared for the death experience. Most forms of yoga are considered a process of preparing for death, that most ineffable, mysterious experience. Yoga, essentially, is a silent dialogue with one's own divine Self, the Supreme Soul, Universal Consciousness. When I contemplate a photograph that functions for me as a True living Symbol, I am essentially having a dialogue with my own divine Self.
8. Silent Dialogue : A man standing in a box contemplating the suspended circle before him
The suspended circle in the image above could represent many things: Life, Death, Completion, Perfection, Union; the Opening of the birth canal. Circles are often used to signify the Oneness of Being . . . The man, who appears to be standing in his own coffin, as if it were an extension of being, may be looking through the circle rather than at it. He may not be seeing what we are seeing.
This photograph is one of many cartoon-like images I have put together using several (often three) separate images suspended together in black space. The interaction between these kinds of images generate for me an open-ended "poetic" narrative. I call these triadic images Visual Poems.
Contemplating one's death requires a stilled, silent mind, a mode of being in which words are not permitted to obstruct access to a kind of knowledge that is, essentially, unsayable but nonetheless essential. The black space in the "poems" is a metaphor for a sustained moment of stillness (timelessness) as well as a metaphor for silence. The yogic sages who talk about "Time is God" also talk about the Eternal Moment. That's all there Truly is, they say.
9. Silent Dialogue : An old man and a young woman sitting, separately, silently before a red horizon line
This is an enigmatic image, for me. I don't know what it means . . . and--I must say this--I don't much care for images if I can understand them when I see them. I consider those kinds of images a waste of my valuable time.
Regarding the red horizon line that appears in this image, perhaps it represents some kind of threshold such as Time (the future or the past?) or perhaps Death. The implied narrative is fascinatingly cryptic with its many juxtaposed pairings: Youth & Old Age; Male & Female; an old man, wearing a hat and winter coat, sitting on a dark blue block & a young woman, sitting on a plank, no hat, her hand holding on to the plank. Above her head there are two dark blue blocks, suspended in space--the same dark blue color of the block the man is sitting on. (Are the block on this side of the red line, or on "the other side?" And, what about those decorative organic forms below the two blocks? The red "berries" remind me of Christmas Holly, hanging overhead, waiting for two people to stand under it and kiss each other.
Is the young woman waiting for someone to arrive? (She is not directly under the holly . . . )
What could all this possibly mean? Both figures seem to be silently thinking or remembering or feeling something . . . Perhaps each other? A father and his daughter? Perhaps they both are grieving because of the loss of someone they have loved.
The red line seems to connect them spatially though its hard to know where the red line is located in space. Also, the way their bodies are associated with the same colored blocks, that seems to signify that the man and the young woman are connected somehow.
The old man is closer to me, the viewer. In the foreground he appears larger than the young woman who appears smaller, further away, in the background. That spatial distance between them . . . it means something too . . . surely.
10. Silent Dialogue : A young man standing, a young woman sitting on a fence rail, both inside a squared circle.
The woman in the photograph above is the same figure which appeared in the previous image.
I took this photograph of a young man standing on a wooden bridge with a young woman sitting of a rail at a wedding reception back in the late 1960's. Perhaps these two wedding guests became lovers later that evening, just for one night before each had to return to their separate lives in other cities.
She is sitting on a fence, so perhaps she's not sure if she wants to submit to the man's advances. He has his right hand in his coat pocket, trying to look relaxed, but the top part of his image is about to blend into the background . . . and he is not looking at the young woman. Perhaps he's feeling shy, tentative. She is holding onto the railing.
They are talking, trying to break the ice, to get to know each other a little, and yet what they are saying to each other silently, perhaps when they actually look into each others' eyes, will finally make all the difference in ways neither they--nor we--could possibly understand.
They are making an effort to connect to each other; and that is signified by the fact that they are both inside the squared circle, an alchemical symbol representing wholeness. Perhaps one day they will become united in marriage. In the previous image the young woman was associated with a long, straight red line; in this image she is surrounded by a circular line, dark but not black. (There is a dialogue that is happening now between the two photographs.)
This entire image is luminous; there are no black tones in the image; the light seems to be coming from some other dimension of reality. The light gray tones of the young woman's arms, legs and the dress she is wearing . . . each is similar in tone to the luminous gray matte surrounding the squared circle image.
11. Silent Dialogue : Two Geckos
I took this photograph while Gloria and I were traveling in Costa Rica. These two Geckos were--as you can see--engaged in the act of intercourse. I was startled when I saw this on the side of a wall in a rather dark restaurant where we were eating. I felt (like a giddy tourist) who simply had to document this strange, unexpected private encounter in a public place. When I took the photograph my camera automatically set off its built-in flash. The surprising blast of bright light exposed me in the act of photographing, and it seems to have upset the female Gecko as well: she looks startled, vulnerable; the male looks annoyed. ~ I feel bad about taking the photograph. I wish I hadn't. The photograph, however, moves me now that I can see the undeniable feeling in those two sets of dark eyes within the brilliant tones of the flash-lit wall. The image is haunted with such a depth of feeling that I can empathize with these two beautiful creatures. Photographs like this has often helped me to see and feel what was before my eyes and within my heart and yet was invisible and unknown to me at the time the exposure was made in the camera.
During sexual intercourse, talking and bright flashing lights are the last things a loving couple are interested in. Silence and pure feeling allows for the kind of connection between two souls that bring them very close to the experience of The Oneness of Being, a feeling for which there are no words which can adequately express that experience of transcendence.
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12. Silent Dialogue : A glass of lemonade with ice in it; and a hand with a wristwatch on it.
I believe the relationship between any two things in any given moment, in any given environment can offer something interesting and worthy of consideration for someone with a propensity for contemplation. One of the yogic teaches says something like this: The essential nature of everything should be known. When the entire visual context around two things are removed or hidden--as in this image--the detailed relationships between things become more pronounced, more seeable and more inviting to look at carefully to better see what there is to see.
Here we have a tall glass of lemonade (with ice floating on top of the chilled glowing liquid) and a hand (strangely disembodied, wearing a wristwatch and a wedding ring). Some veins on the back of the hand are made dramatically visible by the crystalline light (which has no visible source). The light passing through the lemonade glows with an almost religious softness that creates an interesting counterpoint to the starkness of the light that is illuminating everything else.
The image invokes several questions . . . but they do not need to be answered. It's enough to recognize that there is some extraordinary reality that I have been privileged to witness and manifest photographically. And, whatever meaning must be unveiled here is now available for a sustained period of study and contemplation, which will allow that meaning to emerge in the silence of my heart, a kind of meaning that will be more feeling based and probably to a degree that is beyond saying. The poet Robert Bly calls this kind of knowing or understanding News of the Universe.
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Imagine all that has occurred over a person's lifetime; those moments in which multiple things have unexpectedly fallen into meaningful (if ineffable) relationships with each other, most of which have gone un-noticed, unrecognized, and thus not considered or examined more carefully . . .
I believe one of the most essential characteristics of the photographic medium is its ability to manifest a detailed visual form to spontaneous, intuitive visionary revelations, momentary revelations of synchronicity that can later be examined more closely, more carefully . . . with the Eye of the Heart. See my MFA Written Thesis which is very much about C.G. Jung's ideas about synchronicity and the falling together of events in space-time that "mean" in ways that only a visual symbol can embrace in all its potential fullness.
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13. Silent Dialogue : Two Garages
These two garages are very similar in character. In fact, when I made these photographs in 1999-2000 as part of a large collection of garage photographs, I was thinking of the images as "character portraits," either of the object themselves, or perhaps the people who owned the garages. (Visit my blog project The Garage Series)
These two garages were originally photographed separately, and presented separately, each in their own square of black space. When, for this project, I paired then in this way I wondered if perhaps the two images could be different views of the same one building? They share the same light, tones and textures. At the very least the two garages certainly have a lot in common. Perhaps they are silently commiserating with each other about getting old, warped and neglected . . .
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The great French poet, Francis Ponge, gave "voice" to mute things. Ponge himself said "things are the ambassadors of the silent world." Through his prose poems he reveals, in a gentle way, his intensely introspective and compassionate encounter with things.
I was inspired by Ponge's poetry in the mid 1980's by the way the American poet, Robert Bly, wrote about Ponge and his poetry in a book Bly entitled News of the Universe (click here). I still love that book and continue to read it with great gratitude and appreciation. His chapter about the Object Poem inspired me to give visual "voice" to "silent things" through what has become an ongoing project I have entitled Thing Centered Photographs.
I consider my Garage Series photographs "thing centered" images, especially those in which I have isolated the garages in black space. I consider seeing things intensely and centering them in the square frame of my photographs a form of "listening" to things. I have gotten the very clear feeling that objects have important things to tell us. After 36 years of practicing Siddha Yoga I am certain that all created things, including mute, still things, are divine forms of Consciousness, and as such are pervaded by a meaning worthy of being recognized, known and "listened to"with respect.
The garage project was also inspired by the music of American composer Morten Feldman. I thought of the varying shapes and tones of the garages suspended in black space as musical notes representing sounds suspended in silence, resonating in stillness . . . until eventually the sounds would dissolve or decay back into the silence from which they emerged.
14. Silent Dialogue : Two images of Gloria; one bathing and perhaps dreaming in sunlight,
the other dark, perhaps an image of what she is dreaming
I took these two portraits of Gloria in New Mexico within a year or so after we had gotten married, in New York State in August, 1969 and then traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico where we both studied art at the University there for three years. It was one of the few schools in the nation at that time which offered an MFA in Photography, and I was fortunate enough to have been offered a full teaching scholarship there.
When I took both of these images Gloria was still experiencing periods of "blanking out" from a serious concussion she had received from a car accident that occurred early in the spring of 1969, a few months before we were married. For perhaps 18 months after the accident, I would often have the uncomfortable experience of watching Gloria "fade away" while we were in the midst of a conversation. She would become silent as she entered some other, interior realm of being.
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The accident occurred one Saturday morning in the spring of 1969. Gloria left her apartment in Brooklyn (where she was studying art at Pratt Institute) to get some groceries at the nearby corner store. When she did not return in a reasonable amount of time, Gloria's sister and I went looking for her (she lived in a pretty rough part of Brooklyn).
When we got to the corner store we saw a crowd of people standing around near the street. I worked my way into the crowd and finally was able to get sight of a drawing on the sidewalk, the outline of a human figure with pools of blood inside the drawing.
I talked to a policeman at the site and learned that Gloria had been sideswiped by a car (hit-and-run) as she was crossing the street and was knocked unconscious back onto the sidewalk. By the time I arrived on the scene an ambulance had already taken her to the nearest hospital. The policeman immediately rushed me and Gloria's sister to the hospital.
As we sat in the waiting room I was overwhelmed by the fear that I was going to lose Gloria, my wife-to-be.
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The darker image of Gloria, taken during our first winter living together as a married couple in Albuquerque, remains for me something like a nightmare, or a death-mask. The highlights on her closed eyelids become strange luminous eyes looking out toward me. Another set of highlights, or eyes, can be seen between her slightly parted lips.
I took the other image of Gloria later the following summer while she was sun bathing on a large rock in a secluded New Mexico valley in which had set up camp. She had fallen asleep, warmed by the morning sun. Given that the images is out of focus, and placed under the darker image, it does appear that she may be dreaming the darker image.
I don't sense a conversation going on here between the two images. The dark image is about my experience of fear--fear of loss, fear of death, fear of evil in the world; and the luminous image represents Gloria's beautiful soul, though it was struggling at the time with the concussion. The black in this particular image does not represent silence, at least for me. I believe it is about the unconscious psyche. The yogic saints teach:
The world is not a solid substance, not the final reality; it is 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 . . .
I was about 25 years old at the time I made these two images. I had not yet become aware of the grace that pervaded my life. Seventeen years later, in 1987, Gloria and I would meet Gurumayi and receive her grace. Now, as I am nearing the age of 78 years, I feel an inexpressible feeling of gratitude for the grace, the good fortune, the constant flow of the mystery and generosity of creation that has pervaded my entire life. I understand now that if something happens, it had to happen, and it happened because of grace. And, if something does not happen, it does not happen because of grace.
15. Silent Dialogue : The embrace of two luminous leaves
This strangely beautiful image is from a project I completed in Georgia while I was experiencing my first teaching job at Georgia State University, Atlanta from 1972 to 1975. I was fascinated by the Georgia woods, especially the areas covered with Kudzu vines. I loved walking and photographing in that fantastical environment. I created a body of photographs in 1974 which I entitled The Georgia Woods Series.
Later, in 2008, after retiring from teaching in Milwaukee for 33 years, Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, NY. During a trip to Buffalo I fell in love with the Burchfield Penny Art Museum which is dedicated to presenting the paintings and drawings of the great American artist Charles Burchfield and the work of artists living and working in Western New York. When I revised and digitized the Georgia Woods project in 2010 for my large multi-chaptered blog project, The Departing Landscape Projects, I decided to re-title the Georgia Woods project to: In the Woods : Homage to Charles Burchfield.
Many of Burchfield's paintings of the natural world are alive and animated with magical pairs of eyes, similar to the ones you can see in this image, above the right leaf, consisting of two moon-like slivers, then directly blow the eyes there is a "nose," and then further down, a mouth. This "face" seems to be observing the private, mystical union happening between the two leaves which are connected to each other, suspended in black space, and illuminated from within by a sensuous, orgasmic kind of light. The intensity of the light, and the transformational affect of the solarization process I used locally in the image when I made the print, create the appearance that the two leaves are merging into one another.
This image and the light in this image represents, for me, the Unitary Reality that pervades the natural world and its ever changing, transforming mode of being. The light is the divine Self, That Universal Consciousness, that Truth which radiates from deep within everything that exists in our world despite the appearances which seem to suggest otherwise.
16. Silent Dialogue : Early Evening: the North Meadow & Pond
When we moved to Canandaigua, in 2008 I began what would become an ongoing photographic project, a "poetic document" of the meadow behind our house, with its two ponds (north and south), and the tapering woods that borders the Meadow's far (West) side. (Visit my project The Meadow Series.) It has been a joy to be able witness ,on a daily basis, all the changes of light in the sky above the meadow, and the way the light plays upon the ever-changing meadow and the ponds, below.
In this image, the illuminated shape of the North pond seems to be mirroring the clouds floating over the meadow and woods. The corresponding shapes in the sky and in the meadow-pond represents for me a kind of visual conversation going on between "what is above" and "what is below."
There is a well known saying from the alchemical Treatise, The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which states:
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."
(See me photography project dedicated
to this statement: "As Above, So Below.")
When I was in graduate school I studied Carl Jung's writings about Medieval Alchemy and how it relates to his theories about the human psyche. The alchemical theory of correspondence, and Jung's writings about synchronicity became the center of my ideas about The Symbolic Photograph. True, Living Symbols are the visual embodiment of alchemical "miracle of the 'One Thing" which is the union of interior psychic imagery with its corresponding physical, counterpart appearances.
17. Silent Dialogue : Fisherman, enveloped in early morning sun-illuminated fog
I am closing this part of the project with an image of a fisherman. He appears to be dissolving into the early morning fog which was being illuminated by the sun rising over the Milwaukee shores of Lake Michigan.
I spent two years photographing Lake Michigan from the Milwaukee shores (1981-82), and for more than ten years I jogged next to the Lake several times a week. Through this sustained relationship with the vast spaces of the Lake--and the changing skies above it--I eventually became intimate friends with the Lake.
My first experience of Lake Michigan occurred in 1975 during a job interview with the Art Department at UW-Milwaukee. I was both startled and attracted by the vast space overlooking the Lake from a high bluff during a tour of the area surrounding the University. I made a promise to the Lake, that if I got the teaching job I would one day garner the courage to make a series of photographs of That which seemed to me at the time too vast to photograph.
I did get the teaching job, I created a very popular photography program for the Art Department, and I taught and photographed in Milwaukee for 33 years. During the fifth year of living and teaching in Milwaukee, I at last began the two year project: The Lake Series.
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Fishing, like photographing, can be a form of meditation. Perhaps when I took this photograph, the fisherman was no longer thinking about fish . . . or anything else for that matter. I imagine that his mind has become stilled and silent as he sat (with his pole in hand, his hook deep in the water) in the sun-illuminated fog which had enveloped him. Perhaps he was experiencing (conversing with) That which dwells within the depths of his own heart, the Light of his own inner Self . . . which thoughts cannot fathom.
Carl Jung has pointed out in his book Aion that fish served as the Christian archetypal symbol for Christ; and that fishing symbolized Man's search--in the depths of the soul--for the transcendent, divine Self.
Epilogue
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The secret you told, tell again.
There is always a secret that must be told,
and when it is, the two go wandering off
together. That wandering is the clearest direction.
The door that opens then is like "the night ocean
filled with glints of light." We are the space between fish
and the moon, while we sit here together.
This companionship opens them out of
quietness into "long stories and singing."
What is real is this friendship, and their voices
rising into the dome!
Rumi, from Coleman Barks book (of translations) "An Exalted Sky, Exulting"
18. Silent Dialogue : Fish, Footprint in coal dust, Starry Sky & Full Moon
I began this project with a quote from Swami Muktananda's book Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri, a biographical portrait of Muktananda's teacher, Bhagawan Nityananda, one of the greatest modern day saints of India. Just before Nityananda passed on, he initiated Muktananda with the Shakti, the divine power of the Siddha Lineage, and he commanded Muktananda to create what would become known as the Siddha Yoga Path. Then, just before Muktananda left his body, he passed the power of the Siddha Lineage on to his beloved disciple, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
After I met Gurumayi in August, 1987, and received her initiating grace, my Creative Process in photography gradually transitioned into a kind of yogic practice, something like meditation-in-action. Photography became for me a form of devotion or worship, a way of contemplating the yogic teachings and a way for me to sustain and maintain a conscious awareness of the Divine Presence in my daily life, and within my very own Self.
It is grace, and the ability of a photograph to become both a carrier of grace and an image radiant with grace, that together has manifested what I call a True, Living Symbol, an image which is the visual embodiment of The Oneness of Being.
My yogic practices, making and contemplating photographs which function for me as True, Living Symbols have together provided me with access to the sacred that dwells "within" me and "outside" me. In yoga, this experience of the sacred, is called Darshan: a glimpse of the divine, the Play of Supreme Consciousness.
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I will close this project with a few more words from Muktananda's book honoring his beloved Nityananda:
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 it [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.
Once a photographer asked [Nityananda] for permission to take his picture. "Take a picture of the world," replied Gurudev: "I am the world. Is there any place I don't exist? In everything, there is a glimpse of me."
The world is one with Nityananda, and Nityananda pervades the entire world . . . he was beyond all dualities, established in the state of supreme freedom. He was a Siddha. His nature was pure Consciousness, illumined by the light of the Self.
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This project was published and announced on my blog's Welcome Page June 6, 2023
Related Photography Blog 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.
This project was published and announced
on my blog's Welcome Page June 6, 2023
Related Photography Blog 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.
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