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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.)
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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
(Note: 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.)
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).
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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.
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Silence
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Image #2 The South Meadow and pond at sunset
16x20" Inkjet PrintSilence 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.
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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)
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"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.)
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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.")
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.)
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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.
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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.)
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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.)
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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.)
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This project was published on my blog's
Welcome Page on June 5, 2026
Related Projects:
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 informatio
