Seeing Things (4 photographs w commentary)

 Seeing Things

~  Four New Inkjet printed photographs, with Commentary  ~ 

An Inkjet Print Project, mid-June, 2026

Quirky Photograph (Propane tank with a bird dropping on it, and a fantasy garden below)

_________________________________________________________________

If you are viewing this project on a desktop or laptop computer, please

click on the image once, then once again to place the image in

an alternative (dark) viewing space which provides you with

superior image quality & resolution. You can then further

control the image size by zooming-in or zooming-out

with your keyboard controls or File menu options.

You can also adjust your screen's brightness

according to your personal preferences.

click here for more details

Introduction  

There are lots of things to see in this straight but "slightly crooked" photograph.  I took the picture with my digital camera just a few days ago at a construction site that was on the grounds of an amazingly beautiful flower garden that was part of a family business that specializes in growing and selling the beautiful flowers called Irises.  While my wife Gloria was looking for flowers to bring back home with her, I wandered around the many beautiful garden spaces created for their customers to simply enjoy, and I came upon the back of the owners' house which was an old refurbished farm house undergoing yet another additional modification.  It looked like they were expanding the house by adding a new wing with a walkout basement.  

I took two photographs at the construction site which I like very much, and both are included in this project: 1) the white metal tank picture above, and the picture of a ball of tree roots that had been recently pulled out of the ground and was just sitting in the bright sunlight near a pile of freshly dug earth.

I will comment first on the image above.  

(Note: I hope you will take a close look at the photo by clicking on the image once, then once again, and--if necessary--you can then zoom-in on the image further to better see details.  

When I first looked at this image file and decided to make a print of it, I was first drawn to the yellow cord that's in the center of the image with a pine needle caught behind the yellow wire against the white metallic tank.  I think the tank is for storing liquid propane fuel.  Above the yellow wire, I was fascinated by the blue metallic cover on the top of the tank which looks to me like some kind of helmet.  The yellow wire appears to be either emerging from under the helmet and moving down toward the ground, or it is trying to hide under the helmet after having gotten itself up to the top of the tank. 

To the left of the helmet there is a ladder lying on the ground next to the new concrete foundation wall for the basement being added to the house.  To the right of the helmet, and on the very top edge of the tank, there is what appears to be a ring on a chain that is hanging down the side of the tank.   

Below the tank, there is a "fantasy" miniature garden with repeating, green, straight & curving lines, and green triangular & oval shapes which have been constructed with grasses, etc. Toward the right side of the garden, under the green shapes, the yellow cord makes another surprising appearance in the way that the cord makes an inexplicable sharp, right-angle turn and then it leaps up and toward the right edge of the lite-gray matte surrounding the picture, and simultaneously as it also leaps down and to the right toward the bottom of the matte's edge. 

From the bottom left edge of the photograph a plant leans to the right towards  the center, at about the same angle as the yellow line that has sprung up from the "garden" and off to the right edge of the photo.  

Now . . .  I admit there is some pleasure in simply writing about what I see in a photograph, but there is an uneasy feeling that lies below the surface of my "seeing" this quirky image . . .  for I used a two-fold symmetrical construction* process to transform the bottom part of the original straight photograph into a "fantasy garden."   

(*Note: I duplicated the garden part of the image, flipped it upside down, and conjoined the copied image to the original bottom edge of the image of green plants.) 

I left a few things unmentioned, but I don't think it would help me understand the image any better.  Its not so much the things themselves that I enjoy seeing but the whole thing, as it is, the way all the things are conversing visually with each other.  The image--in total--is oddly humorous, or perhaps even irrational . . . but nonetheless enjoyably "quirky" for me.  

(See my 2024 project Quirky Photos)   

I usually take pictures on impulse and figure it out later after I can see the picture and what I had been seeing before I made an exposure with my camera.  I know there are two kinds of seeing that go on when I am making a photographs like this:  I am imagining what I am seeing as a possible photograph; and then I later see what is actually happening in the picture itself.  In other words, first there is an intuitive kind of seeing (seeing photographically, or seeing inwardly--imaginatively--outward things), and then there is a more consciously mindful or intellectual processing of what I see in the picture itself.

Oh, of course, I have not yet gotten around to mentioning the bird dropping which I included in the title under the image.  That bird dropping is the most understandable thing about the photograph, it seems to me.  It may have been the "thing" that inspired me to make the straight photo to begin with, but, then "Who really knows?" 

What I care about most is the unified whole of the image, its graceful play of the things within the picture's frame.  Deep down somewhere in the image, or in myself, there is a hidden meaning or understanding, some kind of knowledge lingering, waiting to be encountered and recognized:

It is said there are two kinds of knowledge.  One, the outer knowledge,

implies forgetfulness of one's nature, ignorance of inner realities, the

ego-sense of "I" and "mine."  The other kind of knowledge is that

of unity.  It arises by . . . grace . . . 

This knowledge takes one beyond the reach of death, time, and 

 limitation, to [supreme Consciousness], the supreme Self . . .  

Swami Muktananda, from the SYDA Foundation publication Resonate with Stillness  (July 8 contemplation)

*

Ignorance is the root cause of all suffering.  But when we know

subjective truth and objective truth, we rise above suffering.

Then we know that there is only one Truth; both the 

subject and the object, the seer and the seen, are  

one and the same.

When you experience the Truth, you realize there is no difference

between the seer and the seen; in fact they are one and the same.

Swami Chidvilasananda, from the SYDA Foundation publication Resonate with Stillness  (July 18 contemplation)

These two quotes are yogic teachings by two of the Sadgurus (True Gurus) of the Siddha Yoga Lineage, the yogic Path I have been practicing since 1987.  The Great Yogic Beings teach that what we see in the outer world have been projected out onto the screen of the mind from the inner world, which is often referred to as the Heart, the divine Self, God, or supreme Consciousness.

*     *

This project is the second in what I hope will be an ongoing series of new miniature projects--that consists of a small collection of newly printed inkjet print images accompanied by some written "commentary."  It Is Always ONE (dated June 6, 2026), the first project, included commentary based primarily in ideas and teachings central to my experience and practice of Siddha Yoga Meditation.  I have unexpectedly just added some additional yogic teachings to this second project from the Swami Chidvilasananda, the current, living head of the Siddha Lineage, and her teacher Swami Muktananda who passed away in 1982.  I read these two quotes the other day before I went into my morning meditation practice, and they fit so perfectly into what this project was headed toward that I decided to included them here and now.  Such is the workings of the grace of my Creative Process, and the grace of my yoga practice.

Both this second project, and It Is Always ONE, include images of recently made inkjet prints that I have been collecting under the blog title The 2026 Inkjet Print Digital Archive Project (22 images, March-June 2026)   However this present project differs from the first in that three of the four images you will be seeing here are all images made in the last few days with my digital camera (the one exception, I will explain later.)  I hope to see more of these mini projects emerge in the future, and preferably containing mostly new works.  It does seem like I am beginning to come out of what for me has been a longer than usual pause period in my Creative Process, waiting for the time when new work needed to once again emerge.   

*

The title of this second project Seeing Things came to me the other day after making the image of the tree roots (below) at the same construction site where I made the picture of the bird droppings on the propane tank.  

Seeing Things Image #1             Inkjet Print, Photograph                    18x18"

A Thing-Centered Photograph (Tree roots encountered at a construction site)

When I took this photograph, I was actually experiencing something like a figure-ground perceptional confusion.  "What am I looking at?  What am I seeing?"  Whatever it was, it looked very much alive to me . . . like a dark wild animal, with an abundance of visual energy that had somehow emerged from its intensely luminous and textured visual surroundings. 

Of course, what is central to the picture--and what has been placed quite consciously in the center of the picture's frame-- is the roots of a tree that had probably had to be dug up for the construction of an addition to the old farm house I wrote about earlier.  If you enlarge this image and look at the roots close up, you will see ambient light in some of the shadow areas, and lots of green color in the background with a few spots of red here and there.

I have identified this image in my title as a "Thing-Centered Photograph" which has been a constantly recurring theme in my work going back to the mid-1980's when I read for the first time the American poet, Robert Bly's wonderful book, News of the Universe, which I have written about in several of my past blog projects including "Thing-Centered Photographs" (2022) and the earlier blog project entitled Poetry for The Departing Landscape (2007-2012).   

In News of the Universe Bly traces the idea of Consciousness as it evolved historically through poetry, and he concludes the book with poems written by saints from multiple traditions.  His chapter devoted to what he calls Object Poems or Thing Poems are about the way every thing or object is just as much alive with consciousness as we human beings are.  (Note: my link Poetry for the Departing Landscape contains several excellent Thing poems.)

I read News of the Universe 4o years ago, and it still is one of my most beloved books, one that has continued to inspire my Creative Process to this day.  The idea that all things's are pervaded by consciousness just thrilled me for it confirmed my own experience as a picture-maker.  And then, two years after I first read Bly's book I met Gurumayi and took my first meditation intensive with her, in which I actually experienced her grace and the kind of living Consciousness Bly had been writing about and sharing with us through his Introductions to his various thematic selections of poetry.

*     *

Seeing Things    Image #2              Inkjet Print, Photograph                    18x18"

Quirky Photograph (Propane tank with a bird dropping on it and a fantasy garden below)

I took the photograph of the tree roots first when I entered the construction site (situated in a beautiful farm with an extraordinary Flower Garden, and rows upon rows of blooming Irises).  After I took the tree roots photograph I turned around and there was the propane tank with the bird droppings on it, etc. . . . and the farm house, under construction and just barely visible in the background. 

Since I have already written earlier about this image, I just wanted to add, that this Quirky photograph is, in some ways, also a Thing-Centered photograph (I'm thinking here about the pine needle caught beneath the yellow cord against the metal tank).  It happens quite often that many of my photographs contain more than one of my recurring subject matter or conceptual themes.  (See this listing of many of my Theme-Related Projects.)  

In regards to the Quirky nature of the photography, back in the late 1990's I came upon the conscious realization that the six years long project entitled Studies (1994-2000) was largely inspired by the music of Thelonious Monk (a great jazz composer and pianist) whose compositions and solo piano improvisations were always playful, heartfelt and inventive in the most fascinating and quirky ways.  (He had an amazing ability to hit all the wrong notes--with the oddest spaces between them-- and yet it all came out sounding perfectly beautiful!)

*     *

  Seeing Things   Image #3              Symmetrical Inkjet Print, Photograph                              21x21"    
Hanging vine, curtains, screened window, deck rails, green woods, diamond of light

I printed this four-fold symmetrical photograph very recently, but its source image (see Fig. 1 below) was taken with a digital camera many years ago and though I tried several times to make it into a symmetrical image, I could never get a satisfying result (until just a few weeks ago, in May, 2026).  I happened to see a previous symmetrical version of the image one day while looking for something else, and I got the inner directive from my Creative Process to: ". . . play with it just one more time.  There's an interesting symmetrical photograph somewhere in there."

[Fig. 1] Source image for the symmetrical Image #3

If you know my work, you know that I have said--no doubt too often--that the four-fold symmetrical images are a perfect visual analogy for the concept of the Oneness of Being.  Essentially they are constructions of four identical photographs conjoined above & below and left & right.  If an attempt to created a four-fold symmetrical image gracefully transforms the four straight images into a completely new, transformed image that is alive with its own radiant invisible interior light, the image will often will invoke in me the distinct feeling that the image has emerged from the very center point of the image.  

On the other hand, it always remains very difficult for me to comment on my symmetrical images.  However, and this is new to me, I must say that bringing the idea of the Center point in a symmetrical photographs into such close proximity to my previous discussion of my Thing Centered photographs has yielded a new understanding, a revelation through a kind of synchronistic experience that has occurred within my Creative Process.  

I think the difficulty in finding words for the meaning of symmetrical images lies in what I call their symbolic nature--that is to say, the images which are pervaded by the subtle light of grace.  The meaning of True, Living Symbols has to do with the ineffable nature of its conjunction of visual form and content, its transcendent Unitary Reality, its  Oneness of Being, which essentially is ineffable, timeless and unchanging.   In Siddha Yoga the Oneness of Being is equivalent to the concepts: the divine Self, the Heart, and supreme Consciousness. 

*     *

    Seeing Things    Image #4               Inkjet Print, Photograph                         18x18"

   A houseplant, in a vase, in bright sunlight & shadows on folded sheets of cardboard

This last image has, for me--at first glance--a striking, nearly black&white, nearly abstract appearance . . . until the greens eventually show up in the plants, followed by the blue and yellow colors on the cardboard at the bottom edge of the frame.  The shadows of leaves have for me a powerful, magical transforming visual presence, as does the long vertical and horizontal shadows that run up and along the left side of the plant and across the image just above and behind the top of the plant.  

The image at first invoked in me a slightly intimidating feeling of mystery and spatial disorientation; then as I looked closer, and saw a masked face peeping out at me from the leaf shadows on the right side of the image, a transformation occurred.  "Another world" made its presence known to me, one that in some ways echoed my experience of the tree roots photograph.   

This image has what I like to call an Angelic presence, and it is centered mostly in the dark space between the leaves of the plant and their shadows cast upon the foreground cardboard.  I also feel that presence in the leaf shadows on the right side of the image, which became all the more intriguing to me when I noted that the source of those leaf shadows is invisible.  

The picture as a whole looks and feels like a ritual space to me, and certainly this supports my feeling that the image is "not of this world," but rather the transcendent world of what Henry Corbin called the Imaginal World.

*

Just a few nights after I printed this image and looked closely at it . . . I had a dream in which I saw--or experienced-- the image in a way that startled and fascinated me.  I don't remember ever having any other dream about a photograph I had just made:  

I was looking down at the image as if I were suspended in the air or sky above; the light and darks formed a kind of visual gestalt that reminded me of luminous scientific images I have seen of outer space (as in Fig. 2, below).  The mystery that pervaded my dream impressed me very much, in a very enjoyable way, and the experience has made me respect and appreciate my fourth photograph in this project even more, now.

[Fig. 2]  Hubble Telescope photo of the cosmos

*

Henry Corbin was a wonderful scholar, mystic, and student of Sufism; his writing is ultimately rewarding, but it is not easy reading.  Thank goodness for Tom Cheetham and his four books that placed Corbin's ideas in a more understandable context and in a manner that makes me feel grateful . . . beyond words!  

I will conclude this project, then, with a few brief text excerpts from Tom Cheetham's book Green Man, Earth Angel The Prophetic Tradition and the Battle for the Soul of the World.   My selections of texts focuses on Angels which I feel are relevant to my personal experiences of the #4 image in this project:

The Turn Inward, the Guide & the Angel of Revelation

      Corbin's account of the turn inward toward the Darkness within reveals a dual challenge which can only be met if we are oriented initially in such a way that we cannot confuse the blackness of the abyss of evil . . . with the terrors of annihilation stemming from the encounter with the Hidden God.  

The Angelic Heavenly Twin 

     Every being . . .  has a Fravarti, a celestial counterpart, in the world of Light.  And so every being has a dual structure that defines its orientation in the struggle toward the Light.  The quest to unveil this heavenly twin defines the moral and spiritual destiny of the soul of every human being, and of the soul of the world itself.

The Alchemical Task & Imagination   

     The task is to actualize, on this earth, the "Energy of sacral Light" that transforms, transfigures, and glorifies the soul of all beings.  This transformation is an alchemical process: . . . the goal is the transmutation of each being into a more subtle, more definite, more real state.

     Corbin discovered this ancient cosmology imagined anew . . . in the work of the twelfth-century Persian mystic . . .  al-Suhrawardi.   Suhrawardi's project was to fuse Zoroastrian angeology with Platonic and Neoplatonic cosmology and the prophetic revelation of Islam.  It was Suhrawardi who first articulated a clear grasp of the world of the Imagination, the world intermediary between sensation and intellect that Corbin was to call the Imaginal world.  . . .  the place of the visions of the prophets.  

     All of us, however dimly, perceive events in the imaginal world, and the task of transformation requires the development of the senses that open into that world.

 (Note: this quoted material ins from my blog project The Angels, part IV: Text Excerpts from the writings of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham.  Also, you can see a collection of my Angle projects here.)  

*

This project was published on my blog's

Welcome Page on June 17, 2026

Here is the list of the 2026 mini Inkjet Print Thematic projects published so far:

"It Is Always ONE"  June 5, 2026

"Seeing Things"  June 19, 2026 =

~ The Spark ~ "A Flashing Forth! July 1, 2026

Seven Windswept Symmetrical Photographs" July 19, 2026

"Nine Quirky Photographs" July 23, 2026

"Six Thing-Centered Photographs" with An Exercise in Reading Image Juxtapositions  August 11, 2026

"Ten New Inkjet Prints, August 2026: a MAKOM project"  August 24, 2026

Other Related Projects:

It Is Always ONE (four photographs with commentary, June 6, 2026).

The Complete 2023-2026 Inkjet Print Project

The 2026 Inkjet Print Digital Archive Project (22 images, March-June 2026)

Straight & Symmetrical Photographs

Quirky Photos

The Angels

Studies Projects  see especially the 1994-2000 Studies Project

Thing-Centered Photographs

Poetry for The Departing Landscape  

Theme-Related Blog Projects

"An Imaginary Book"

Welcome Page  to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography blog projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, 

contact information, Introductory texts, and more.

It Is Always One (4 photographs with commentary)

         It Is 

  Always 

   ONE   

 Four Photographs With Commentary ~ A 2026 Inkjet Print Project  (6/2026)

 Image #1 Snow covered Tree limbs and red bush branches in the woods beyond the S meadow

                                     Symmetrical Photograph, 21x21" Inkjet Print                                   

In a kaleidoscope, loose pieces of colored glass are reflected by mirrors on all four sides.  

As the instrument is rotated, the glass pieces keep changing position, resulting in the 

appearance of new patterns, but each pattern contains the same pieces of glass.  

Nothing old has disappeared, nor has anything new been added. . . .  

The knowledge of God should be understood in the same way.  

It is always one; it always remains the same and 

it does not become more or less.

Swami Muktananda, from the SYDA Foundation publication:  Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri

 

I have been a student of Siddha Yoga Meditation since August, 1987, when my wife Gloria and I first met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, the living head of the modern day Siddha Yoga Lineage, and took a two-day Meditation Intensive led by Gurumayi, which was a gift to us from Gloria's sister who had been practicing Siddha Yoga for over five years at that time.

Gloria and I had very powerful Shaktipat initiation experiences of Gurumayi's divine creative energy--shakti (grace)--and, over the past 36 years we have practiced Siddha Yoga meditation with Gurumayi's guidance, her teachings and her grace.   Siddha Yoga is a Creative Process, and over they years it has become an integral aspect of my Creative Process as a photographer. At some point the two merged into One.

After I began practicing Siddha Yoga my photographs gained a new level of meaning for me; in my best work, the images emit (for me) a subtle kind of radiance . . . because of Gurumayi's grace which pervades all aspects of life as well as my practice of Siddha Yoga.  My photography has always been a way of looking deeper into the nature of reality, and now they have become for me a way of looking deeper into the yogic teachings and a way of looking deeper into my own, inner divine Self.  

The Siddha Yoga teachings say God dwells in all aspects of the created universe we live in, including the Heart of every human being.  In Siddha Yoga there is no distinction made between the terms Self, God, and Guru; all three are Always One.  I constantly aspire to making images which function for me as True, Living Symbols, images pervaded by grace, images that give visual form to the invisible yogic truth: the Oneness of Being. 

*

I often feel a strong desire to share how the yogic teachings that mean so much to me relate to my creative process in photography.  Making pictures and writing about my creative process has become an important means by which I come to better understand and integrate the yogic teachings; and most importantly, it helps me stay in touch with, and dive even more deeply into the grace of my Creative Process.  The four photographs I have written about in this project function for me as True Living Symbols.

*

In late May, 2026 I printed--for the first time--several digital images that I had not yet included in The Complete 2023-2026 Inkjet Print Project.  Over the past three and a half years I have been choosing images from my published blog projects and making prints of them for my Inkjet Print Project, images I consider to be my very best and most favorite photographs.  Now, to my surprise, I realized it was time to begin to look deeper into my huge archive of unprinted digital images to discover photographs that are important to me which I had so far overlooked.  The four images in this project have insisted on being included in my Inkjet Print Project!

I will be presenting here below two symmetrical photographs, and two straight photographs which have up to now appeared only as digital images published on my blog in different past theme-based projects.  

(Note: The four images in this project are being presented in their new 2026 inkjet print versions.  Most images I make for the Inkjet Print Project undergo various kinds of changes, some are minor changes, some are more noticeable.  The four images in this project were among a total of 18 images I have recently turned into paper and ink prints.  I have published the 18 images in a new blog project entitled The 2026 Inkjet Print Digital Archive Project.  I intend to continue to add to this collection of newly images through the remainder of this year.  ~  I think of the blog published inkjet printed images as my "digital archive" of my printed works.  The project before you now has been added to my digital archive--my blog version of The Complete 2023-26 Inkjet Print Project.)

*

The idea for this blog Inkjet Print project came to me in part through some of Swami Muktananda's writings that I had been reading recently, at about the same time I had made the four prints you will see in this project.  I was reading--for the second time this year--one of my favorite SYDA Foundation publications entitled Bhagawan Nityananda of Gansehpuri, a very carefully edited and beautifully sequenced collection of writings by Swami Muktananda, Gurumyi's teacher and the founder of the Siddha Yoga Path.  All of the writings in that collection are focused on Swamiji's beloved Guru, Bhagawan Nityananda, who had commanded his devotee Muktananda to create an ashram in Ganeshpuri, India, and bring Siddha Yoga to the Western world.  (Visit the Siddhayoga.org website for more information.)

*

      It Is Always ONE   

 Image #1  Snow covered Tree limbs and red bush branches in the woods beyond the S meadow

Symmetrical Photograph, 21x21" Inkjet Print

_____________________________________________________

If you are viewing this project on a desktop or laptop computer, please

click on the image once, then once again to place the image in

an alternative (dark) viewing space which provides you with

superior image quality & resolution. You can then further

control the image size by zooming-in or zooming-out

with your keyboard controls or File menu options.

You can also adjust your screen's brightness

according to your personal preferences.

click here for more details

This first image is what I call a four-fold symmetrical photograph; it is a constructed image which I made by conjoining four exact copies of the same one image such that each image is seen mirrored in itself above & below and left & right.  The inkjet printed image is 21x21" square (including the surrounding matte); this larger size of the print makes seeing the complex, intricately interwoven details in the image much more easily seen when viewed up close.  For blog viewing, the symmetrical images definitely will benefit improve the way you can see this image, simply by clicking on the images and enlarging them on your computer screen (as instructed in my note immediately above).  

*

The symmetrical photographs are quite literally images which celebrate the yogic concept of the Oneness of Being.  Sometimes the source (or "straight") image used in the four-fold construction process becomes so radically transformed that it may appear--at first-- to be abstract.  I love the way the subject matter photographed sometimes becomes a powerful visual field that is at once a dramatic spectacle and a vehicle for the feeling of mystery of the all-pervasive divine presence.  Many of the symmetrical images appear to have eyes which seem to be looking out at me. 

Images which have this kind of transcendent presence, this sense of a Unitary Reality, invokes in me the feeling of mystery, a feeling of the unknown and the unsayable.  When I sense this feeling in the very depts of my being I know the image is functioning for me as a  "True, Living Symbol."   True symbols have the extraordinary power to transform, silent and still the mind.  

The yogic teachings tell us that when our dualistic mind becomes still, becomes silent . . .  it has become merged with the divine inner Self which dwells in the human Heart and pervades every created thing in the universe.  In Siddha Yoga, the words Heart, Self, God, and Guru share the same One identical meaning.  In this regard, one could say, True Living Symbols are not about the subject matter photographed, but rather, they are about what emerges from the grace-filled transformation of what the camera recorded at the time of exposure. 

*

 Silence 

Image #2   The South Meadow and pond at sunset

16x20" Inkjet Print

Silence is the root of all spiritual Practice.

Swami Muktananda  ~  Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri  

When I look deeply into this image in a contemplative state-of-mind I feel myself becoming more and more still . . .  more and more silent.  Contemplation is a meditation process by which my mind and Heart become One . . . with the support of the grace that pervades the image and the grace that pervades my Creative Process.  Contemplation is a state of mind that I often find myself spontaneously experiencing as I am  photographing with a camera, or preparing a digital image for printing:  I become fully absorbed in what I am seeing both in the world and as a picture possibility.  A subtle, intuitive feeling directs the act of photographing.  As soon as I begin thinking about what I am doing I risk loosing contact with the magic, the grace that pervades my Creative Process, and loosing what was at first was an opportunity of producing an image that will function for me as a True, Living Symbol.  

(Note: paradoxically, when I am photographing I see inner images perhaps more than I see what is in front of my eyes, in front of my camera.  I know photography helps me see outer things in a deeper way, and yet I often need to feel in some subtle sense what the photograph might look like as it emerges spontaneously from within my Creative Process.)

I am pretty certain that it is the grace of my Creative Process which transforms certain images into True, Living Symbols.  I know that grace is what opens my Heart as a contemplator.  Grace allows me to perceive and experience the invisible Unitary Reality to which True Symbols give an essential visible form.  Contemplating photographs is a way of becoming absorbed in the silence of an image--becoming absorbed in the grace that pervades the image.  Contemplating photographs that are functioning for me as True, living Symbols is a way of seeing the invisible with the inner eye: the Eye of the Heart. 

*

 Witness 

 the   

 Mind    

Image #3  The Thistle: looking at me, in the fog, in the N Meadow near the pond 

18x18" Inkjet Print, Photograph  

  

It is because of the duality of the mind that the world appears 

as a mere world. . . . This world is an illusion.  There is no

difference between the individual soul and the

supreme Soul [the inner, divine Self].  

They are one and the same.

 Swami Muktananda, Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri 

I was out in the Meadow behind our house looking for "fog pictures" one morning when I saw this Thistle standing near the pond.  It appeared to be very much alive and looking at me.  Perhaps it was waving, or needing to tell me something important. . .   The lines of duality-separation had become blurred for me (I love photographing in the fog, in the mystery that is fog!);  I could not tell ". . . who was looking at who?"  and . . . "Did it matter anyways?"  

I had never seen the Thistle in this way before.   It appeared to have a head, some hands, two eyes and a mouth.  The fog, the gray light, the space in which the Thistle was situated, it all seemed to support my sense of the Thistle's having an interior life of its own . . . an interior life very much like my own.  

Baba Muktananda tells the story of walking along the bank of a river with his beloved Guru, Bhagawan Nityananda.  When they came upon a huge rock Nityananada said:  

                                                                       "Do you see this rock?  See the miracle?  See the doing of       

          universal Consciousness?  Here it has become a rock, here        

    it has become  a human being, and  here it  has become a tree."   

My Shree Gurudev used to say  . . .  in everything, whether animate 

 or inanimate, God exists. In the form of the inner Self, God dwells  

 in a human body.     God is the one who has become the light 

in the eyes and illumines everything.   That same Lord  

pervades the  entire world completely, never losing  

His oneness. . . .  Nityananda was fully aware of  

the inner Observer, the One who understands    

 [the Vedantic] vision of unity in diversity.   

Swami Muktananda  ~  Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri  

Baba tells us that his teacher was able to live in the outer world in a uniquely different way than most of us because of his complete indentification with his own inner divine Self.  This allowed him to remain ever watchful of everything around him in a detached way, as if experiencing everything from a distance.  I believe when I am photographing in a meditative-like state I sometimes briefly, spontneously achieve a kind of vision that is called, in yogic terms, witness consciousness.

Many of the great poets and visual artists seem to understand this kind of vision.  One poet wrote about intuition in a way that I fully understand from my own experience: he said intuition is a way of seeing, a way of "seeing inwardly outward things."  In the yogic tradition, the saints all say very clearly that everything in the outer world originates in the inner world--the "world" of the divine Self.*   I like to refer to this kind of "poetic" ~ "intuitive" ~ "visionary" seeing as "Seeing with of the Eye of the Heart."  

(*I had an extraordinary visionary experience during a visit to the Grand Canyon that was directly related to this classic yogic teaching, and a concept I ofter refer to as synchronicity.  See my blog essay Seeing the Grand Canyon: Perception=Projection)

(Fig. 1) 18x18' inkjet print

"Seeing with the Eye of the Heart"

Seeing with the Eye of Heart enables an artist to naturally, spontaneously give visible form to images that emerge from the inner depths of the divine Self.  Essentially a Symbolic Photograph is an image that has emerged from this sacred place--that is sometimes referred to as the Heart, and its shakti, its grace has the ability to still the mind and open the heart of a contemplator.

True Symbolic photographs are images which have articulately conjoined an outer-world image with its corresponding inner world image counterpart.*  True Symbols transcend a mere description of the subject matter pictured, and its grace can transform the duality of the mind and invoke the experience of the Oneness of Being.  

(*Note: Carl Jung, founder of modern day analytical psychology, was fascinated by an acausal phenomena which he termed Synchronicity* which is a spontaneous recognition--in the flashing-by of a singular moment of linear time--that provides an experiential glimpse of the Oneness of Being, the eternal nature of the divine Self.  ~  See my blog essay based on my MFA written thesis The Symbolic Photograph: A Means To Self Knowledge which was heavily influenced by the writings of Carl Jung.) 

*

The Field of Vision

Image #4  A Symmetrical Image of a Field (with an open space in the middle of the field) 

Inkjet print, 21x21"  (from my project "Field of Vision.")

Swami Muktananda wrote and talked often about the human body as a sacred place, or Temple that serves as an abode for God's divine Presence.  And directly related to this idea is his teachings about the human body as a Field, a concept that was introduced in the Bhagavad Gita, in Lord Krishna's teachings to Arjuna.

Baba explains that the body--like a field--will "generously take on whatever character that a farmer chooses to to give it, multiplied many times.  A few grains of wheat become a crop . . . ":

Land will not resist your intention, for the law of the field seems to be that it will increase whatever you have put into it.  You can choose to create a garden that will delight the hearts of all who visit it, or a guest house to provide hospitality for your friends, or a temple where people can come and perform worship.  On the other hand, you can turn this same land into a cemetery, or you can use it as a dumping ground for people to come and unload all their garbage.  [Lord Kirshna] calls this body a field because you can accomplish in it whatever you choose. . . . What you sow here and now, you will harvest later.  Therefore, sow God in this body by meditating on Him.  Swami Muktananda, from the SYDA publicanion  Resonate With Stillness

In my Introduction to the 2015 blog project Field of Vision I wrote about several ideas I had discovered in the writings of Henry Corbin, Tom Cheetham, and Christopher Alexander that seemed directly related to each other in very meaningful ways for me.  Corbin was a dynamic scholar, teacher and Sufi mystic who wrote an essay, "Temple and Contemplation." (click here to see the pdf)  He wrote about the temple as the meeting place--at the Center of the World--between Heaven and Earth, and that "the temple is the place, the organ of vision":

"This is what it means to contemplate: to 'set one's sights on' Heaven from the temple that defines the field of vision.  By the same token, the idea of contemplation introduces the idea of consecration.  The term 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 word templum finally came to mean the sanctuary, the sacred building known as a temple, the place of a divine Presence and of the contemplation of this Presence.  Thus, 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." 

 Tom Cheetham is a wonderful writer who has brought the challenging and enlightening teachings of Corbin to the world.  And Christopher Alexander was an architect who tried to revive "a science of sacred space" through the buildings he designed and constructed. 

According to Tom Cheetham: [Alexander's] work is of interest in light of the conception of form and space that Corbin is analyzing in his essay "Temple and Contemplation" (in which Corbin writes about the Temple "that functions as a center space in the field where Heaven and Earth can communicate with each other").   

Cheetham continues:  Of immediate relevance, is Alexander's book "A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets," Alexander's study of Turkish "Sufi" carpets and their implications for our understanding of sacred geometry.  Alexander has described the goal of his work [in a documentary video] with humor and an intense seriousness as "the attempt to make God appear in the middle of a field." 

The confluence of these ideas: Muktananda's "body" as a "temple," and "the body as a field;" Corbin's ideas about "the temple that functions as a center space where Heaven and Earth can communicate with each other;" and Alexander's interest in Sufi carpets--inspiring him to create buildings and spaces alive with sacred presence (plus his playful comment regarding his attempt "to make God appear in the middle of a field. . . ")  . . . all this provided what is for me a fascinating conceptual context for the symmetrical images I included in my Field of Vision project, and in particular the symmetrical image I am presenting here, above, which I have entitled:  ". . . a Field with an open space in the middle of the field]."

(I hope you will visit the Field of Vision project, which provides more details regarding the concepts I have briefly touched on here, and lots of bold symmetrical photographs.  Be sure to click on each of the images to get into that alternative viewing space which provides the best viewing experience of the complex and detailed nature of my symmetrical photographs.)

*

The four-fold symmetrical image above has a strong center point which appears (to me) to have served as the very origin of the image which has expanded outward into the image we see here as a whole.  In Islamic traditions, and more generally in the traditions of sacred geometry, the point is a deeply mystical concept.  Keith Critichlow, the author of a fascinating book Islamic Patterns, An Analytical and Cosmological Approach writes:

"Islam’s concentration on geometric patterns [which are based upon mathematical laws of repetition] draws attention away from the representational world to one of pure forms, poised tensions and dynamic equilibrium, giving structural insight into the workings of the inner self and their reflection in the universe.  ~  The circle is the archetypal governing basis for all the geometric shapes that unfold within it . . . reflecting the unity of its original source, the point, the simple, self-evident origin of geometry and a subject grounded in mystery.  ~  The circle has always been regarded as a symbol of eternity, without beginning and without end,  just being. . .  In the effort to trace origins in creation, the direction is not backwards but inwards." 

The center of the my "Field" image (above) does indeed invoke (for me) a feeling of expanding roundness in both a rather obvious visual way, and, in a more subtle sense I experience an interior plane of being that has unfolded and expanded outwardly from within the center of the image and between and the visible, repeating parts of the image above and below.  I would venture to say that in general the transformational nature of the four-fold symmetrical process gives the resulting image a feeling of animation or aliveness that invokes in me "the hidden face of the divine," and "the Oneness of Being."  

When, through the process of contemplation, I allow myself to become fully absorbed in any image that functions for me as a True, Living Symbol I often experience an extraordinary, though often subtle, sense of intimacy followed by a feeling of recognition . . . of that which had already, and always existed within me . . . and Witnessed of the totality of my existence.

*

Epilogue 

In a few months (September, 2026) I will be turning eighty-one years of age.  Yoga has been, for me, a continual process of preparing for what is inevitable for each and every one of us, namely, Death.   Swami Muktananda often reminded us in his talks and writings to keep our own death in mind, and be as prepared as possible for the time when we are "scheduled" to leave our bodies and move on . . .  

Baba said:  Remember, the body is perishable . . . Eternity is only in the Self.  Truth is only in the Self.  Greatness is only in the Self.  Only the Self is worth attaining, worth seeing.  ~  How  beautiful my Guru Nityananda Baba was. . . .  But he had to depart.  Then Muktananda will have to depart also.  The entire world will have to depart. . .   We think we are the agents of action, but the fact is that it is some other power that makes everything happen. . .  It is the Lord who is the real doer. . .  Know your true inner Self.  Swami Muktananda  ~  Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri 

(Note: After I met Gurumayi and took that first Intensive with her in 1987, my creative process in photography has definitely become a way of contemplating and preparing for my death.  Click here to see my collection of Death-themed Photography Projects.)

*

Baba's repeated use of the word depart in the above quote got me thinking about how my Creative Process seems to have its own autonomy, how it seems to be driven or directed by some other power that makes everything happen.  Regarding the word "depart" I also was reminded of how I came to title my blog The Departing Landscape, and how I have always enjoyed departing from my usual "straight" photography to varying ways of transforming the "straight" image.  The symmetrical images came to me in a very meaningful way, and that's what I want to share with you in this Epilogue.

In 2010, when I created this blog (after realizing that my days as an exhibiting artist had probably come to an end) I named it The Departing Landscape because of an American composer, Morton Feldman, whose music I had become fixated on at the time.  Feldman used the phrase The Departing Landscape to explain one of his fascinations with musical sounds: the way music emerges from silence into audible sounds, and then dissolves back into silence.  

In Feldman's solo piano music, he often instructs the pianist to hold down the sustaining pedal which allows the sounds performed to accumulate and become suspended in space.  In this suspended field of living sounds, each sound can actively reverberate and interact with all the other sounds, which results in the transformation of the whole field.  After some time the sounds gradually reach the point where they naturally become so decayed the dissolve back into silence.   

Feldman called his beautiful and fascinating fields of sound "Chromatic fields."  Interestingly--and directly related to Christopher Alexander's stated interests--not only did Feldman refer to "Fields" of sound in his music, he also talked about what inspired many of his compositions.  Like Alexander, Feldman was a collector of Turkish and Sufi rugs, and, like Alexander, he too wrote about their influence on his creative process. (See my multi-part 2003-2007 project Triadic Memories, which was inspired by Feldman's composition for solo piano of the same title.)

There was sychronistically another reason why I decided to use the term The Departing Landscape as the title for my blog.  Gloria and I moved from Milwaukee to Canandaigua, New York in 2008 shortly after I retired from teaching.  And shortly after we began to settle in, we began to hear about a number of protests that were happening in our new State regarding Hydrofracking.  By 2010, the year I decided to initiate my photography blog, the People of New York State began to speak up very loudly against Governor Cuomo and the powerful Gas and Oil Industry which was pressuring the State for permission to drill for natural gas using the violent, dangerous, very toxic drilling process--Hydrofracking.  Both the processes involved in making natural gas available for use, and the use of fossil fuels in general, such as gas and oil and coal, had by this time become--clearly--a major threat to the global health of all its people, its fresh water, its air and every other living thing on our beautiful planet.  

After completing Triadic Memories in 2007--which in essential a meditation on image repetition--I began working exclusively in digital photography.  Much of the work I made between 2007 and 2012 became in varying ways related to my fears about the dangers of Climate Change.  Over those five years I created ten projects that as a whole seemed to work well under the conceptual umbrella, The Departing Landscape.  So I titled that ambitious body of work The Departing Landscape Project.  (Visit The Departing Landscape Project.) 

                                                                                  *

While in the process of finishing up The Departing Landscape Project Gloria and I decided to traveled to Turkey, in part because of Feldman's musical interest in Turkish and Sufi rugs, and in part because we both loved the poetry of the great Sufi poet, Rumi, and wanted to visit his Shrine in Konya.  

During our two weeks of travel in Turkey I became profoundly interested in the many forms of Islamic Sacred Art I had be encountering,  and I was especially moved by the illuminated Qur'ans I saw exhibited in a museum we had decided to visit because of its renowned collection of Turkish rugs.  Both the rugs and the illuminated Qur'ans I saw--and experienced in surprisingly intense, heart-opening ways--inspired me to begin a study of several sacred art traditions.   But I kept wanting to return to the books I had collected on Islamic Sacred Art.  

After we returned home, though I had begun something like a travelogue blog project in which I intended to share what my wife and I experienced in those two weeks, as I learned more and more about Islamic Sacred Art, and the more I contemplated the series of mystical experiences I had encountered in those two weeks with the many forms of Islamic sacred art, an entirely different project emerged.   "An Imaginary Book" consists of multiple project "chapters" and my very first attempts at creating symmetrical photographs.  

(I invite you to visit "An Imaginary Book" and I especially want to encourage you to see its Preface and its first "chapter" Prayer Stones.)

*

This project was published on my blog's

Welcome Page on June 5, 2026

Here is the list of the 2026 mini Inkjet Print Thematic projects published so far:

"It Is Always ONE"  June 5, 2026

"Seeing Things"  June 19, 2026 =

~ The Spark ~ "A Flashing Forth! July 1, 2026

Seven Windswept Symmetrical Photographs" July 19, 2026

"Nine Quirky Photographs" July 23, 2026

"Six Thing-Centered Photographs" with An Exercise in Reading Image Juxtapositions  August 11, 2026

"Ten New Inkjet Prints, August 2026: a MAKOM project"  August 24, 2026

Other Related Projects:

The Complete 2023-2026 Inkjet Print Project

The 2026 Inkjet Print Digital Archive Project (22 images, March-June 2026)

Contemplating True, Living Symbolic Photographs

Straight & Symmetrical Photographs

Field of Vision

Seeing the Grand Canyon: Perception=Projection

The Symbolic Photograph: A Means To Self Knowledge

The Departing Landscape Project

The Chromatic Fields

The Chromatic Fields, Symmetrical Photographs & Recurrent Creation

"An Imaginary Book"

Welcome Page  to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography blog projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.