The Spark ~ "A Flashing Forth!"

~  The Spark ~

"A Flashing Forth!"

Five Favorite Photographs associated with very Personal Experiences

An Inkjet Print Project July 2026

The Spark ~ "A Flashing Forth!"

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Introduction

In my last project (Seeing Things, 4 photographs with commentary), I wrote about a dream in which I experienced the image (below, Fig 1), as if I were were suspended in air, high above the image . . . and then, I saw the image as if it were floating in outer space amongst the stars, and the image had turned into something like a photo taken by the Hubbard Telescope (see Fig 2 below).  I liked the image very much before the dream, but the dream made the image especially, personally meaningful for me.  And that's essentially the theme of this project and the five images I will be commenting on.  

          (Fig 1) from the project "Seeing Things"        

 Houseplant in a vase, bright sunlight & deep shadows on cardboard, 

[Fig. 2]  Hubble Telescope,  photo of the cosmos 

Another example: when a good friend--one I have learned to trust and respect--speaks with a special degree of enthusiasm about one of my favorite photographs, it takes on an additional aura, and sometimes I catch myself focusing on my remembrance of my friend's response more than my own experience of the image.  This can be a short lived situation for some images, or it can become an ongoing  bothersome distraction over many years for other images.

This brief project includes images I especially like, have lived with for many years, and thus have been tested by my sustained attraction to them.  The issue is not so much about meaning in the intellectual sense, of understanding something.  It's more about a sense of meaning that transcends what is knowable and sayable.  It's about a feeling that transcends mere description, or obvious associations.  It's about an image that awakens me, in the most extraordinary cases, to the divine presence that exists within the picture and within the heartfelt depths of my being.

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Image #1  (Title Photograph)          The Spark ~ "A Flashing Forth!"        Inkjet Print  15x15"

I get very little response to my blog projects and images from the public because I choose to not invite viewer comments on my blog pages.  I do offer my address and provide an email address for responses, and yet over the years I have received only a few complimentary email messages about my work.  Around a year ago I received an email from a practicing student of Sufism.   She told me that when she saw the image (#1 above) in one of my blog projects* it moved her deeply in a way that impacted her life in some very important way, and she just wanted to tell me how grateful she was to have seen the image.  

(*Visit: The Green Light of Sufi Mystical Travel from my multi-chaptered project "An Imaginary Book." )

Recently, I had decided to begin reading (again) a favorite Siddha Yoga publication that I return to at least once every year, and re-read completely, entitled Resonate With Stillness, a book of daily contemplations from the teachings of Swami Muktananda and Swami Chivilasananda.  Just after I decided to create this blog project, I remembered the above image (#1) in particular and the email I received from the loving, grateful Sufi stranger.  Then,"by chance" (though I don't believe in chance, I believe in synchronicity), I came across the following yogic teaching by Gurumayi from Resonate With Stillness that was perfect for both the image and the email I had received:

Kasmir Shaivism speaks about the experience of the Truth, as unmesha, 

a flashing forth.  In a split second your perceive it.  Within a moment,  

you realize it.  Let the truth flash forth, and then hold onto it and 

contemplate it.  In this way, instead of living in your mental 

projections, you will live in the experiences of the Truth,

the Truth that is unmesha, that flashes forth here and

there: in the laughter of a child, in the noise of a 

machine, in the sound of footsteps, or as you

watch a bird flying through the sky.

Learn to hold on to the flashes of the Truth, 

the light of the [inner, divine] Self.

Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, from the SYDA Foundation publication Resonate With Stillness

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Image #2 (The Spark)   Sunset over the North Meadow, pond & woods"   Inkjet Print  16x20"

Clearly, photography has been a way for me to hold onto those special moments of recognition. For example, this image above (#2), and the photograph below (#3):  both have been hanging on the walls of my bedroom for at least the past ten years and I have never tired of looking at them.  As a matter of fact, just recently I noticed how they both echo each other in several ways formally, and in terms of the theme of this project: The Spark ~ "A Flashing Forth!"  

Both images have repeating horizontal lines; both have a mysterious presence that manifests through a similar quality of light; and both invoke two different but related sensations of time and space: 1) the spontaneous, momentary Flashing Forth! of divine light--the light of the Self; and 2) a sense of immense, or infinite space which invokes an eternal sense of time.  

For example, the above image invokes a feeling in me of the flight of an immense bird's wing, stopped for one eternal moment, before it then dissolves into the golden light of the setting sun.  At this late moment in the day, just before the sun goes down, the light on the clouds is changing in every way in every moment.  It was a gift for me to be able to witness this event in time and space and photograph it.

Image #3 (The Spark)          An Abstract Photograph: "Flashing Forth"           Inkjet Print  21x21"

This abstract photograph was made for the eighth part of a large blog project entitled The Departing Landscape Project which was initiated in 2007 and completed in 2012.  When I look at this photograph--from the Abstract Photographs series--I feel a spacious, luminous, cool-blue spiritual (divine) presence.  ~  The size of this inkjet print (21"x21") allows me to look closer at and imaginatively enter into the image and become immersed in its internal illuminated mysteries of the vastness of space and light. 

Whenever I see this image I am always reminded of the memory of how I felt when I chose to print this image large for the first time (21x21") in 2005/6 as the initiation print for my new, second larger 7600 Epson printer which I had purchased so that I could make larger inkjet prints than the first printer (the Epson 2200) I had purchased in 2003.  The decision to buy a much more expensive larger printer was a major turning point in my creative process.  It marked my full-hearted commitment to the world of digital imaging--which was not an easy thing for me to do.  I had been clinging to the world of Black & White silver gelatin prints, resisting the change that truly had gradually become inevitable.    

The (#3) image may at first appear to be a formless space filled with an ethereal illumination.  It may have been influenced by my yogic practice, or Morton Feldman's music which I was listening to at the time I made this image . . . or both! and it has become a touchstone image for me that has never lost its spiritual presence and sense of purity.  

Gurumayi had talked about "seeing with the eye of the Heart." And that has become part of my sadhana, my yogic-spiritual practice since it fully merged with my creative process of making photographs.  In trying to define the mystery of the space of the Heart, she uses the metaphor of the light of the sun:

Entering the Heart is like coming into the center of the sun.

There is no more you; there is nothing except the iridescent 

force of that light.  ~  When you are in the center of the sun,

there is no way to block its light.  It streams through you and

around you.   ~   So by entering your own Heart,  you make 

the whole world a better paradise. 

Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, from the SYDA Foundation publication Resonate With Stillness

In another quote taken from the book Resonate With Stillness, Gurumayi talks about the Guru-Disciple relationship in terms of light:

The relationship between the Guru and the disciple is not a physical         

relationship as such.  The relationship between the Guru and the

disciple is one of light, where forms become formless, where 

light merges into light.  ~  The light of the disciple merges 

into the Guru's light, and becomes a divine flame.

Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, from the SYDA Foundation publication Resonate With Stillness

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Image #4 (The Spark)    Symmetrical  Photograph   "Govinda~The Protector"     Inkjet Print  21x21"

Gurumayi's words above: "The light of the disciple merges into the Guru's light, and becomes a divine flame" also relates to this next image (#4, above).  Usually once a month our local Siddha Yoga Meditation Center, in Rochester, NY offers an online zoom program that consists of chanting God's Name for about 30 minutes, followed by a period of meditation.  The chants often consist of the names of various yogic saints or the names traditional yogic Gods and Goddesses associated with particular yogic teaching narratives.

The process of chanting the sacred name(s) over and over again, and the mood of the melody of a given chant, gives the chanter the kind of support one needs in order to successfully dissolve the mind--its constant thinking--and open the heart, and experience one's own True Self, one's own inner divine nature.

On a recent Sunday morning zoom program we chanted the names Govinda and Gopala.  I have a small booklet published by the SYDA foundation, entitled Sing the Name, which provides the meaning and significance of 36 chants that are performed regularly by Siddha Yoga devotees.  The following explanations for the words Govinda and Gopala are my abbreviated summaries of the meanings I found in Sing the Name which I pieced together from four different chants whose titles included the names Govinda and/or Gopala.  

To begin with, the divine power that sustains the universe is known, in India, as Vishnu.  According to the Vedic tradition, from time to time throughout the ages Vishnu manifests on Earth in human form when humanity is in great need of divine help or intervention.  One of the most beloved of these forms is Lord Krishna.  

The word Krsna means "dark blue-black" which refers to the dark blue color often seen in deep meditation.  Thus "dark blue-black" is said to be the color of divine Consciousness. 

When Lord Krishna was a young boy he was a cowherd known as Govinda and Gopala. The word Go (in both names) means "cow," and in this case, it is richly symbolic, referring to the Lord's protection of those who take refuge in him.  The word go, also means the "master of the senses" or "the master of the phenomenal universe."  Go also mean's "rays of light," and the divine effulgence which exists within each and every human being.  

Thus Govinda symbolizes "the one who gathers and protects the cows."  The word Govinda also invokes divine protection.  And chanting the names Govinda-Gopala helps yogis control their outgoing senses so they can "turn their attention within" for the meditation period that follows the chant.  In my own experience I often feel myself merging into a meditative state even before the chant ends.

In our most recent Sunday's zoom chanting session, about 15 minutes into the chant, after it had slowly gained momentum and intensity . . . I became aware of the framed photograph (of the #4 image shown above) that has been hanging on our dining room wall for about the last ten years, which is about ten feet away from where I usually sit at our dining room table, and remains fully visible when my laptop computer is placed in front of me on the table.  As the chant kept building in intensity I kept staring at the image.  I could not take my eyes off the image, even though it has been hanging on that wall for such a long time now!  

(Note: every time I sit down at our dining room table to eat or work on my computer I look at that photograph and wonder how and what the image means to me, or how I am seeing the image differently today as opposed to other times before.  The changing quality of light in the room can dramatically change the way I respond to the print.)  

At some point near the end of the chant I had entered a mode of perception which had definitely changed within me, for I was seeing the image as if it had come alive.  I felt a bit intimidated by the appearance of the dark face I always see at the very center of the image, with its two green & gold eyes.  I have always thought of the face as a mask designed to frighten enemies away.  

Also, the many repeating circles above and below the dark face, seemed to be in motion as if they were expanding in size.  The blue color in the larger circles and the pairs of very white eyes in that circle, then became a focus of my perception.  Then All the pairs of eyes in the photograph seemed to be looking at me!!  And All the colorful leaves seemed to have become more vigorously and magically illuminated with light that was coming from within the leaves themselves.  There were moments flashing on and off when the image appeared to be aflame!

I had become transported by my chanting and filled with an energy that seemed to pervade the image itself.  Certainly during the chanting session I experienced the image in a very different way from the mode of being I had become accustomed to seeing it.  Together, the photograph and the chanting of the divine names provided me with an exceptionally meaningful experience of the photograph, and near the end of the chant I had an insight which made me (inwardly) exclaim to myself (silently) "My God, that image is Govinda, the Victorious Warrior-Protector!"

This Inkjet Print project was published and announced 

on my blog's Welcome Page on July 1, 2026

Related blog Projects:

Seeing Things, 4 photographs with commentary

It Is Always One, 4 photographs with commentary

The Departing Landscape Project including the project The Abstract Photographs

The Green Light of Sufi Mystical Travel from the multi-chaptered project "An Imaginary Book." 

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

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