Symbols - What does heaven look like

Mirror

How on earth do we explain a symbol that is both a symbol and a concept? Well, we have provided a video, but whether this makes it any clearer may be open to question. The add to this fact layers of symbolic meaning and you have one of the most difficult symbols to understand, despite its apparent simplicity.

Form mirrors function. The physical mirrors the spiritual. As above, so below [see left].

But we must not take this too literally.

The physical universe does ‘mirror’ the inside of the Egg because it contains at the lower vibrational levels all the systems supporting the physical. At higher vibrational levels there is no correspondence – function exists without any form.

In olden days, people took the idea of the ‘mirroring’ too literally and thought that the physical universe was a true mirror image of the egg – a sort of turned inside out egg, with the earth at its centre – the geocentric universe of people like Robert Fludd.

The theologians and less gifted shamans over the years thus assumed a correspondence physically, which meant that the earth was the centre of the universe, then water, then air, then fire, then at the outer layer the ‘heavens’ of the aether layer – sun moon. And they started to name the star constellations with the names of the gods and the zodiac, which is why the planets now have ‘gods’ names. And the theologians assumed that Heaven must be above us in a sort of circle or dome, which is why star constellations have been given the name of the signs of the Zodiac.

But the correspondence was incorrect, this is not the case.

For an old style theologian, however, anyone who didn’t believe was a heretic. This is why Copernicus was persecuted for putting the sun at the centre of the physical universe. For them, Copernicus had to be wrong – but of course he wasn’t - physically.

But the mirror symbolism and understanding does seem to live on. And any actual mirror symbolically becomes a figurative barrier between the spiritual world accessed by dreams visions and hallucinations and the world of the 5 senses……

Rabindranath Tagore – from On the Sick bed
Can you polish your mysterious mirror
And leave no blemish?
…...
When the gates of heaven open and shut
Are you capable of keeping to the role of the female?
When your discernment penetrates the four quarters
Are you capable of not knowing anything?
It gives them life yet claims no possession;
It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;
It is the steward yet exercises no authority
Such is called the mysterious virtue

In eastern symbolism the mirror is simply a symbol of the type of spiritual experience we know of as a vision.
For example, in the “Dzogchen doctrine of the triunic complex of the manifestation of energy” Rolpa [rol pa] is the energy which manifests internally as vision. It is symbolised by the mirror because the image of the reflection always appears as if it is inside the mirror.

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WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

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Symbols - What does heaven look like

Mirror

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