A View from the Cosmic Mirror

"A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is a Japanese folktale that portrays the power of the cosmic mirror. The folktale takes place in a small village in a place known only as the “House of 1000 Mirrors.”

Long ago in a small, far away village, there was a place known as the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at one thousand other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with one thousand great smiles just as warm and friendly as his. As he left the house, he thought to himself, “This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often.”

In this same village, another little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw one thousand unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see one thousand little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, “That is a horrible place, and I will never go back there again.”

The happy dog sees the reflection of his warm and friendly attributes in the one thousand mirrors. The second dog sees the reflection of his mean and unfriendly attributes. The wisdom embedded in such allegories and Zen-like stories is profound. Yet, it is not easy to grasp how to make use of it in our daily lives. It is one thing to recognize the wisdom and quite another to constructively apply it to ourselves.

The idea of a cosmic mirror that reflects our unseen image has been around for centuries. The most literal interpretation of the word mirror is that it is a surface capable of reflecting an image of something that is placed in front of it. But when we look at ourselves in the mirror, how do we know that what we are seeing is a clear reflection of our complete self? Throughout the ages, learned scholars, philosophers, and sages have advised us to search for our innermost self in the reflections of those we encounter in our daily life. For example, the Siddha yoga guru Muktananda declares, “There is a great mirror in the Guru’s eyes, in which everything is reflected.” But in and of themselves, memorable remarks like this one do not provide the guidance needed to apply their insights to our everyday lives.

The people, objects, and symbols in our daily face-to-face world comprise what we have chosen to call the cosmic mirror. And we can learn how to use it on a daily basis to find our reflection in it. As noted psychiatrist Carl Jung has said,

One is always in the dark about one’s own personality. One needs another to get to know oneself.

When we feel strongly about someone (either positively or negatively) it can tell us a great deal about ourselves. It can provide us a clear mirror into our unacknowledged self and our heartfelt inner struggles. People, objects, and symbols that elicit intense attraction, admiration, repulsion, or fear usually indicate that we perceive something about them that we may be having trouble acknowledging in ourselves.

Mirroring is not simply a metaphor for a mental process. It is a physical process as well. Scientists who study nerve cells in the brain have uncovered the physical basis of mirroring. They call these specialized cells mirror neurons. And they have found these unique neurons in monkeys, birds, humans, and other species. These nerve cells fire when we watch other people performing an action and when we imitate the same action. These neurons are located in the part of the brain that controls thinking and action. Studies of human infants suggest that the system of mirror neurons develops in the first year of life. And it leads infants to imitate and understand the actions of others. For example, a one-day-old infant will stick out his tongue in response to a parent sticking out their tongue! Another everyday example of mirroring takes place when someone yawns; inevitably, their yawn is contagious, and like a mirror image, we yawn back. Scientists also believe that mirror neurons are the physical source of empathy. It seems we do not simply learn to be empathetic. We are hard-wired to be emotionally reflective of others’ feelings. In fact, neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni argues that the concept of “self “and the concept of “other” are meaningful only as they interrelate. Without a concept of the other, there would be no concept of self and vice-versa. He theorizes that mirror neurons in infants are formed by the interaction of self and others. As he puts it, “In other people, we see ourselves with mirror neurons.”

The core idea of the cosmic mirror is that we unknowingly populate the world around us with our denied inner attributes and struggles. For a variety reasons, we have a great deal of difficulty seeing these attributes and struggles as our own. We also form a view of ourselves by unknowingly filling our inner world with the attributes, thoughts, and feelings from outside of us—we unknowingly develop opinions about ourselves by taking in what opinions others try to place in us.