The Game of Light and Mirrors

A few nights ago I experienced a vivid mental image. Whether it was a dream or a “vision” or something else I don’t know, but it woke me up accompanied by a clear perception of its meaning.

I saw a cluster of mirrors arranged at different angles more or less in a circle facing one another at different levels, more like the inside of a ball than a flat circle, so that every mirror faced other mirrors. There were different colors reflecting from some of the mirrors. I couldn’t see images in the mirrors.

It was a closed system seen against a big black background, as you might see a tight constellation of stars against the night sky. The mirrors did not impress me as large, but they could have been huge or small because there was nothing to measure them against or to give perspective.

The vision came, conveniently, with its own explanation: This is the game that consciousness plays with itself. This is all there is. There is nothing beyond the mirrors.

It made me think of ping pong.

I had the feeling of a revelation, of an insight into what we call reality -- a closed system game of light and mirrors. And I felt a kind of cosmic aloneness.

The main thing that impressed me was, “There is nothing outside the cluster of mirrors.” And yet, presumably everything that I sense and know and feel is created within the cluster.

(I wrote about my fascination with reflections, in different respects, in ”Reflections” and “More Reflections” early this year.)

More Reflections

White Azaleas, by Julia


While preparing a post for PEGASUS I received a Comment from Dr. Alistair on my post ”Reflections”, December 16.

That reminded me of one of my earliest memories. From the day my first two years of golden baby curls were lopped off (to the accompaniment of my mother’s tears) until my family moved from St. Augustine when I was in First Grade, I was taken to Caruso’s Barber Shop on St. George Street for haircuts.

When seated and raised up on the barber’s chair I faced a wall that was one huge, long mirror. Behind me, the wall was also a mirror. The result was that I could see not only my reflection in the mirror in front of me, but also that reflection reflected by the mirror behind me back to the mirror in front of me, which reflection was in turn reflected to the rear mirror, which returned it (containing all the previous reflections) to the mirror in front of me – and so on in an endless ping pong game of light, scores of reflections of the same thing, smaller and smaller, in a tunnel to infinity.

I hope I’ve explained that so that if anyone hasn’t experienced it he or she can visualize it.

I can’t attach a cosmic or spiritual meaning to what I saw in Caruso’s Barber Shop any more than I can to the reflections that surround and fascinate me today, but for some reason the memory evokes a sense of significance.

When I try to think of all the other memories I have of reflections, the list swiftly grows beyond management, and so I’ll leave you to make your own list. But among all my memories of reflections, none has a higher place than the infinite diminishing mirror images in Mr. Caruso’s shop.

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Tomorrow will be 1m 8s longer than today.



Yellow Kolanchoe, by Julia

Reflections

Writing about the ocean’s surface reflecting the sunlight and the stars brought to mind something that has tantalized me for weeks – something I noticed when I was trying focus on being in the Present but not trying to notice anything in particular.

Every morning I get up early – before sunrise at this time of year in Florida – and make coffee. I use one of those old Bodum vacuum coffeemakers that basically consists of two glass globes. When the stove heats the water in the lower globe it rises into the upper globe where the coffee grounds are waiting, stays up there long enough (after the stove is turned off) to brew the coffee, and then descends as coffee to the lower globe leaving the exhausted grounds in the top globe. I love the way the whole thing is done by Nature – that and there being no paper filter.

I was using the glass globes as my focal point for Now while the water heated, when I suddenly became aware that the shiny globes were reflecting things from all over the kitchen. They were like small kitchen universes – ceiling and counter lights, refrigerator, cupboard doors, knife rack – all there on the curved glass.

From there I waked up to the reflections all over the kitchen. It seemed that everything in my consciousness was a reflection. Many shiny surfaces reflected clear images of objects, but even the duller surfaces reflected light in one way or another. I could see my glass globes in the small handles of cupboards. Everything seemed to bounce from everything else, as if Reality were all reflections.

It surprised me that I’d never noticed or thought of reflections in that way before. I had taken them for granted in the way that one takes for granted and may overlook the most obvious thing in botany and biology – bilateral symmetry.

There seems to be some hidden, important, meaning in reflections as I newly perceived them. I’m still pondering what that meaning is, where it is leading me, where it might lead anyone. There is a secret here.

I have no answer, but I keep recalling the book, THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE, by Michael Talbot (1991). There may be some connection with the mystery in reflections. Leafing through the book I find these lines:

“Every cell in our body enfolds the entire cosmos. So does every leaf, every raindrop, and every dust mote. . .”


“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”

William Blake, “Augeries of Innocence”