A Love For No Reason

This collection of photos is a reminder of my spiritual experience from September 2019 - an affirmation of who we really are, under all the veils of the ego.

I was sitting in the conservatory one September morning of 2019, in utter despair, in a very dark place, due to personal circumstances, when out of nowhere I experienced the first beams of this divine, radiant warmth, which I have since come to know as a love without reason. There was an immense clarity, like pure water - clarity about nothing at all, and yet clarity about every single aspect of existence. It felt like grace had touched me, this was a love without an object - a love that I had previously never known. This was love not as an act, not intended for someone or something, not as a feeling. This was love as a state of being. In that space and time, i WAS love, my environment WAS love, without any separation between the two. There wasn’t a physical space where I ended and my surroundings began, it was all one. The ego had melted away, all the veils had vanished. I understood much later that I had reached that place within myself - mystically, for I had not intended to do any such thing - that was pure light, pure love. I have read that the Hindu tradition calls this experience Brahman. Every act that you perform in this state comes from a place of purity, the separateness that we are so used to in our daily lives, dissolves, there is no fear because there is no clinging to anything. You are not trapped by the boundaries of your mind. Whether you’re making tea, buying a ticket from the bus driver, having an exchange with someone you don’t agree with, watering a plant, watching your cat sleep, you acknowledge each moment as it is. There is no pushing, no pulling, there is just an is-ness, a spacious presence in which you allow each moment’s richness to unfold. This allowing opens up the heart and then whether you are protesting a wrong doing, or celebrating, whether you’re on a high or in the depths, the heart remains open without clinging or rejecting.

This ongoing collection of photos - and going forward it will include writing too - is not an illustration of what I’ve just described, for it’s impossible to convey the essence of formlessness by trying to give it form, but is a gentle attempt at evoking feelings of such a love through photographs, through softness, through lightness, and through a warmth that will hopefully transmit to the viewer and create a ripple effect. Even writing about it feels a bit futile because it can’t be understood by the intellect, it can only be felt through an open heart, but presently, words and images are all we have.

My practice is to let myself touch that place of love inside myself (as my teacher Ram Dass puts it) - through various methods like meditation and study - and let it expand into every aspect of my life including photography, into the people and things that I put in front of the camera. It is a difficult practice because the mind always gets in the way. The ego says “Let me keep you safe.” Love says “You are free.” The ego says “I will love you if I can get this or that from you.” Love says “You are loved without condition or boundaries.” - a love for no reason.

There was no intellectual reason at all why I photographed Vijay, the young boy with the flowers, or the Flower Brothers, or the elderly lady in the sun. I just shared love with these people, one that will live on and be passed on through me. Every being in these photos merely helped me reach that place within me that is pure light, just by virtue of being around them. As Ram Dass puts it - They became the environment for me to grow in. In a way this practice is a lifelong meditation in love and the photos are just mementos, gentle reminders of who we really are under the veils of the ego - pure love.