The Invisible Spirit

"Spirit selects its own photographer. 

All we can do is to be
open to Spirit.

...

For some reason I have a sense of 'mysticism.' ... The 'perilous world of the dream' is my most comfortable backyard. Since I turn everything to photography, I have tried to treat photographs in this same manner. Contrary to expectations I do not go for fuzzygraphs, I try to reach the dream, or the state of mind that is 'Visionary' ... From time to time various images in front of my eyes lift themselves up and beckon to me - I approach at their command - and make the expo sure, sometimes reluctantly, but always with such a complete projection of my mental state onto the object that it seems as if the object commanded and not myself. At this intensity I photograph. The result is a record of an experience between myself and the object. ... 'Mysticism' in photographs is a delightful idea, full of danger of overreading the visible elements, but perhaps intensely rewarding. I know its danger, and pursue it anyway.

...

...the invisible is made visible to the intuition,
the invisible organic, the invisible spirit."

- Minor White (1908 - 1976)

The Nature of Things Illuminated

"For even the light of the sun which it has in itself would perhaps escape our sense of sight if a more solid mass did not lie under it. But if someone said that the sun was all light, one might take this as contributing to the explanation of what we are trying to say; for the sun will then be light which is in no form belonging to other visible things … This, then, is what the seeing of Intellect is like; this also sees by another light the things illuminated by that first nature, and sees the light in them; when it turns its attention to the nature of the things illuminated, it sees the light less; but if it abandons the things its sees and looks at the medium by which it sees them, it looks at light and the source of light.

...

What is above life is cause of life; for the activity of life, which is all things, is not first, but itself flows out, so to speak, as if from a spring. For think of a spring that has no other origin, but gives the whole of itself to rivers, and is not used up by the rivers but remains itself at rest, ... or of the life of a huge plant, which goes through the whole of it while its origin remains and is not dispersed over the whole, since it is, as it were, firmly settled in the root.

...

The One is all things and not a single one of them: it is the principle of all things, not all things, but all things have that other kind of transcendent existence; for in a way they do occur in the One; or rather they are not there yet, but they will be. How then do all things come from the One, which is simple and has in it no diverse variety, or any sort of doubleness? It is because there is nothing in it that all things come from it. ... For something like what is in Intellect, in many ways greater, is in that One, it is like a light dispersed far and wide from some one thing translucent in itself; what is dispersed is image, but that from which it comes is truth; though certainly the dispersed image, Intellect is not of alien form."

- Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270 CE)

One Eye

"The eye through which I see God is the
same eye through which God sees me;
my eye and God's eye are one eye,
one seeing, one knowing, one love.
...
Nothing in all creation is
so like God as stillness.
...
When the Soul wants to experience something
she throws out an image in front of her
and then steps into it."

- Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1328)

What Are Things?

"As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring;

like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying, What I do is me: for that I came."

- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889)
Quoted in Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality,
by Timothy Morton (1968 - )

Spirits Clad in Veils

"We are spirits clad in veils."

- Christopher P. Cranch (1813 - 1892)

"Live, you say, in the present;
Live only in the present.

But I don’t want the present, I want reality;
I want things that exist, not time that measures them.

What is the present?
It’s something relative to the past and the future.
It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing.
I only want reality, things without the present.

I don’t want to include time in my scheme.
I don’t want to think about things as present;
I don’t want to separate them from themselves,
treating them as present.

I shouldn’t even treat them as real.
I should treat them as nothing.

I should see them, only see them;
See them till I can’t think about them.

See them without time, without space,
To see, dispensing with everything but what you see.
And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science."

- Alberto Caeiro (1889 - 1915)
The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

"There are many faiths, but the spirit is one
— in me, and in you, and in him. So that
 if everyone believes himself, all will be united;
everyone be himself and all will be as one."

- Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910)
Resurrection

Myriad Worlds of the Universe

"I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of, magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated one as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons."

- Siddhārtha Gautama (c. 563 or 480 BCE)

More Than the Mind Knows

"'Standing in the presence of' must be different than 'spirit taking over.' In the former I photograph my own blocks, veils, abstractions, etc. I know nothing of the latter. ... Be still with yourself. To establish condition - concentration heightened awareness with a still body and active mind ... To stand in the presence of... projection - empathy - to awareness of object and self ... Previsualization. (Become a camera. Let subject generate its own composition or impose, knowingly, yourself. when the subject presents itself as its own photograph.) Subject for what it is. Subject for what else it is ... [Written in upper margin: 'while holding firm to object and self-previsualizing its transformation as a photograph.] ... During a moment of rapport let recognition trigger exposure. Recognition of what? The thing for what it is (surface appearance and let the viewer go on if he wishes). Things for what else they are: A) inner truth or essence B) mirror of self. This means to do this at seeing prior [to] exposure and again at the instant of exposure ... The eye and the camera see more than the mind knows. Photo not understood fully at exposure. Sense of desiring of self and/or of world (by including heart and soul). Beyond verbal and visual, beyond this recognizable image rapport with spirit or depth [of] mind ... (Above delete this because it may become another Canon. Make each photograph a prayer.) ... Once a photo is a mirror of the man and man a mirror of the world, spirit may take over. Make each photo a prayer."

- Minor White (1908 - 1976)
Minor White, Memorable Fancies

Nature Gazing Upon Itself

"Thus, when we look out at the world,
we are nature gazing upon itself."

- Philip Toshio Sudo (1959 - 2002)
Zen 24/7: All Zen, All the Time

Ineffable Music

"Trees are the earth's endless effort
to speak to the listening heaven.

...

The touch of an infinite mystery passes
over the trivial and the familiar, making
 it break out into ineffable music... 
The trees, the stars, and the blue hills
ache with a meaning which can
never be uttered in words.

...

The one who plants a tree knowing he
may never sit in its shade has
learnt a little about life."

- Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

Naked and Entwined

"A human being is never what he is but the self he seeks.

...

...because two bodies, naked and entwined,
leap over time, they are invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source,
there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
no yesterday, no names,
the truth of two in a single body,
a single soul, oh total being...

...

Art is the opposite of dissipation,
in the physical and spiritual sense of the word:
it is concentration, desire that seeks incarnation.

...

To love is to undress our names."

- Octavio Paz (1914 - 1998)

Joyfully Reaching the Stream

 "Follow the way of virtue.
Follow the way joyfully
Through this world and on beyond!
...
The fool laughs at generosity.
The miser cannot enter heaven.
But the master finds joy in giving

And happiness is his reward.
...

And more -
For greater than all the joys
Of heaven and of earth,

Greater still than dominion

Over all the worlds,

Is the joy of reaching the stream."

- The Dhammapada

The Essence of Everything

"He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another.

...

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.

...

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere, that is Atman, that is in me and you and in every creature, and I am beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the man of knowledge, than learning.

...

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

...

One thing, however, did become clear to him - why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing - mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery ... You, too, have mysteries of your own. I know that you must have dreams that you don’t tell me. I don’t want to know them. But I can tell you: live those dreams, play with them, build altars to them ... Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day."

- Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

Shadow and Light

"You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe."

- Rumi (1207 - 1273)

Ethereal Substances

"To hear never-heard sounds,
To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible
Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances
That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul."

- Dejan Stojanović (1959 - )

Beyond the Grasp of The Imagination

"Let us now endeavor to conceive what Matter must be, when, or if, in its absolute extreme of Simplicity. Here the Reason flies at once to Imparticularity - to a particle - to one particle - a particle of one kind of one character - of one nature of one size of one form - a particle, therefore, ‘without form and void’ - a particle positively a particle at all points a particle absolutely unique, individual, undivided, and not indivisible only because He who created it, by dint of his Will, can by an infinitely less energetic exercise of the same Will, as a matter of course, divide it ... Oneness, then, is all that I predicate of the originally created Matter; but I propose to show that this Oneness is a principle abundantly sufficient to account for the constitution, the existing phænomena and the plainly inevitable annihilation of at least the material Universe.

...

By Him, then, existing as Spirit, let us content ourselves, to-night, with supposing to have been created, or made out of Nothing, by dint of his Volition—at some point of Space which we will take as a centre - at some period into which we do not pretend to inquire, but at all events immensely remote - by Him, then again, let us suppose to have been created what? … An intuition altogether irresistible, although inexpressible, forces me to the conclusion that what God originally created - that Matter which, by dint of his Volition, he first made from his Spirit, or from Nihility, could have been nothing but Matter in its utmost conceivable state of Simplicity.

...

Had we discovered, simply, that each atom tended to some one favorite point - to some especially attractive atom - we should still have fallen upon a discovery which, in itself, would have sufficed to overwhelm the mind: but what is it that we are actually called upon to comprehend? That each atom attracts - sympathizes with the most delicate movements of every other atom, and with each and with all at the same time, and forever, and according to a determinate law of which the complexity, even considered by itself solely, is utterly beyond the grasp of the imagination of man."

- Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

Eureka: A Prose Poem

Experience, Emptiness, and Luminosity

"One of the points in the traditional Buddhist way of viewing the question of what reality is or what truth is, is that in fact we cannot perceive reality, we cannot perceive truth. This is not to say that there is no reality or truth, but rather that whatever we perceive, if we happen to perceive anything, we see in accordance with some particular language or approach, and we color it with our own styles and ways of looking at things.

...

The nonexistence of ego is not a philosophical matter, but simply a matter of perception. Perception is unable to trace back its existence {to an origin}, so it becomes just sheer energy, without a beginner of the perception and without any substance. It is just simple perception. Perception on that level has three aspects.

...

The first is perception as experience. In this case, experience does not refer to the experience of self-confirmation, but to experience in the sense of things as they are. White is white, black is black, and so forth.

...

Then there is {the second aspect}, the perception of emptiness, which is the absence of things as they are. Things have their room; things always come along with a certain sense of room, of space. Even though they may appear within the complexities of the overcrowdedness of experience, they provide their own space within the overcrowdedness. Actually, overcrowdedness and room are the same thing; overcrowdedness is room in some sense. This is because there is movement involved, because there is dance and play involved. At the same time, there is a shifty and intangible quality, and because of that the whole thing is very lucid.

...

There is experience, then space or emptiness, and then the final aspect, which is called luminosity. Luminosity has nothing to do with bright visual light. It is a sense of sharp boundary and clarity. There is no theoretical or intellectual reference point for this, but in terms of ordinary experience, it is a sense of clarity, a sense of things being seen as they are, unmistakably.

...

So there are these three aspects of perception: the sense of experience, the sense of emptiness, and the sense of luminosity. The point is that with that level of perception {that contains the three aspects}, one is able to see all the patterns of one’s life. Whether the patterns of one’s life are regarded as neurotic or enlightened, one is able to see them all clearly. That seems to be the beginning of some glimpse of the mandala perspective, the beginning of a glimpse of the five buddha energies."

- Chogyam Trungpa (1939 - 1987)
Orderly Chaos: The Mandala Principle

Ouroborosian Complexity

"In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference. We believe in marbles that disintegrate when we search for them but that are as real as any genuine marble when we’re not looking for them. Our very nature is such as to prevent us from fully understanding its very nature. Poised midway between the unvisualizable cosmic vastness of curved spacetime and the dubious, shadowy flickerings of charged quanta, we human beings, more like rainbows and mirages than like raindrops or boulders, are unpredictable self-writing poems - vague, metaphorical, ambiguous, and sometimes exceedingly beautiful."

 -  Douglas R. Hofstadter (1945 - )
I Am a Strange Loop

The Flux of all Things

"Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Senses of the Mind

"From mirror to mirror - this is what I happen to dream of - the totality of things, the whole, the entire universe, divine wisdom could concentrate their luminous rays into a single mirror. Or perhaps the knowledge of everything is buried in the soul, and a system of mirrors that would multiply my image would then reveal to me the soul of the universe, which is hidden in mine."

- Italo Calvino (1923 - 1985)
 

"The senses are the tools of the mind
and the mind is the tool of the Spirit
When the mind becomes confused, it is
Spirit that brings back clarity and harmony.
...
A master who puts his senses to sleep is able
to perceive the unseen emerging from Spirit
Even in his waking state he dreams
dreams that open the gates to Divine Truth.
...
Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript of a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that."

- Rumi (1207 - 1273)

Secret Order

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."

- C. G. Jung (1875-1961)

"There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense."

- Chuck Palahniuk (1962 - )

""We are not human beings having a spiritual experience;
we are spiritual beings having a human experience."

- Teilhard De Chardin (1881- 1955)