Bill Carter , Writer, Photographer, Jazz Musician and Friend, sent me the following email, which I wanted to share with my readers:
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From: Bill Carter
Hi Sramana
I looked at your website, as did Ulla. It is terrific, and very “you” in its freelance inspired style. Probably something appropriate will come to me to write for it. Meanwhile, here are my thoughts which emerged when looking at Dominique’s picture of the people in the fog in Varanasi, which I was pleased to see on your site. I thought of the fact that the Upanishads, arguably the oldest text we have, depicted a time of consciousness emerging out of the unconscious. The ultimate primal creative moment. “Thou are that”, the repeated mantra, identified the atman (soul) with god in the water, earth, air, fire, etc. In the West we have come to lack a sense of mystery partly because everything interesting is supposed to be “out there” rather than “in here”, and partly because we in the United States lack a sense of history infecting every moment which is there in Europe and Asia (and probably Latin America about which I know very little). This is the personal and collective depth dimension lacking in Silicon Valley, for instance. I am glad you are applying Tagore to your experiences here — this is the needed corrective.
As you know I have had the instinct to want to illustrate the Upanishads in book form, but have not seen the images in my collection to use for that (yet). Anyway, that image of Dominique’s could be an iconic one for that moment in the mists of pre-history when already realized beings were beginning to leave their profound realizations of fundamental truth for others to recognize and probe again for the trillionth time. In our hyperconscious world we need to reconnect with the unconscious, mysterious sources of our knowledge and creativity. Hinduism gave us the big bang theory (form descending out of the formless Brahman which that picture also expresses) with the intuition that in the Upanishadic mode of understanding the origins of the universe are also within us.
Now it is nearly 6 AM. No wonder the main meditation times in India begin at pre-dawn and end with the sun rising: another expression of the same theme.
Bill
