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.
Observations
For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.
- Ahmad Ahsai, Shaykh - Kitab Sharh al-Ziyara - Nothing is which does not have its Treasury with Us
- Al-Ghazzali - The Alchemy of Happiness - 04 On spiritual experience
- Arifi of Herat - The Ball and the Polo Stick - In his locks he had a thousand hidden curls
- Attar, Fariduddin - Looking for your own face
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 07
- Bailey, Philip James - from Universal Hymn 02
- Baudelaire, Charles - Rêve parisien
- Bayazid Bastami
- Bernart de Ventadorn - Can vei la lauzeta
- Bonnard, Pierre - Marthe de Meligny various
- Bonnard, Pierre - Toilet with a bouquet
- Bowie, David - 1984 Loving the Alien
- Braveheart - Mirror
- Burne-Jones, Edward - The Mirror of Venus
- Burne-Jones, Edward - The Baleful Head
- Clement of Alexandria - Protrepticus - Describes the Dionysian mysteries
- Clement of Alexandria - The Stromata - On ascension and the spiritual path
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - Kubla Khan
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - The Picture
- Crazy Horse - Native American Indians - Spirit world
- Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - The Glow-worm
- Crowley, Aleister - Divine synthesis
- Dr T Levin - Healing with timbre music
- Eizon - The Ganmon - excerpt
- Escher - Magic mirror
- Ficino, Marsilio - Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus - On the intervals of the spheres
- Genesis - Ripples
- Genesis - Squonk
- Grant Gronewald - HTML flowers - Brothers hand mirror
- Han Shan - Encounters with Cold Mountain Translated by Peter Stambler - I FOLLOW MY FINGER'S END HEAVENWARD
- Hi-ah Park – 04 The naerim kut
- Hyangga of Korea – 07 Eleven Poems on the Ten Vows of the Universally Worthy Bodhisattva - Great Master Kyunyo
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Rivers and streams
- Ibn El-Arabi - The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq - She said, 'I wonder at a lover'
- Indus valley - Dholavira - 06 The ‘Smithy’
- Indus valley - Dholavira - 07 The ‘Hemispherical Constructions’
- Jami - All that exists in the created universe is illusion
- Jami - The Nightingale
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Mysticism of Sound and Music - On dream symbolism
- Khnopff, Fernand - Memories
- Khusrau, Amir - Ghazal 1002
- King, Stephen - And lucid dreaming
- Klimt - Nuda Veritas
- Kusama, Yayoi
- Kusama, Yayoi - Various dots
- Leibniz - The Monadology - 07
- Lewis, C S - The Discarded Image - The spatial order is the opposite of the spiritual
- Lewis, C S - The Last Battle - On configurations
- Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 03 Its form
- Magritte, Rene - The False Mirror
- Magritte, Rene - Time Transfixed
- Mayan - Popol Vuh - 06 The Creation of the First humans
- Miro - Nude with Mirror
- Miro - The Ear of Corn
- Monet - Water lilies [and Rumi]
- Moreau - Jason 1865
- Morrells, Luce and the lovely hotel
- Muhsin Fayz Kashani
- Myōe – The dream of Vairocana and the queen
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from In praise of King Fakhrod-Din
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from The Second Discourse 01
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Narcissus
- Pauli, Wolfgang - Dream of 27th November 1954
- Pauli, Wolfgang - Scilla and Charybdis
- Petronius - Hans Peter Duerr - Dreamtime
- Ramana Maharshi - Quote - Now they say that the world is unreal
- Rassenfosse, Armand - Poyette
- Results of out of body survey
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 07 Second Elegy
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 34 Eighth Elegy
- Romance of the Rose - Meeting his lady
- Rops, Felicien – La Sorciere
- Rossetti, Dante Gabriel - Portraits of Fanny Cornforth 1
- Rumi - Love poems - There is a way from your heart to mine
- Saadi - The Gulistan of Sa‘di – 17 from The Morals of Dervishes
- Shabistari, Mahmud - The Gulshan-i raz - Know that the world from end to end is a mirror
- Shabistari, Mahmud - The Gulshan-i raz - Non being is the mirror of absolute being
- Shah, Idries - The Sufis - QaLB
- Sidis, William James - The Animate And The Inanimate - 01 Chapter One The Reverse Universe
- Sidis, William James - The Animate And The Inanimate - 02 Chapter Two Reversible Laws
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 03 - The Roundabout 1923
- Spender, Stephen - Passing, men are sorry for the birds in cages
- Steiner, Rudolf - Nature spirits - Cycles of time
- Sterry, Peter - Rebirth and Higher spirit described
- Suhrawardi - Book of Oriental Theosophy - The Intelligence hierarchy
- Suhrawardi - Book of Oriental Theosophy - The types of spirit entity
- Surdas - Fatephur Sikri manuscript - NPS 2415
- Tagore, Rabindranath - On the Sick bed
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord - Lady of Shallott
- The gardens of Iran
- The Lotus Sutra - 18 Benefits of the Teacher of the Law - 5 The benefits of becoming a 'seer'
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 01 - 1 Kitty and the Mirror
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 02 - 2 The enormous game of chess
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 02 - 4 Marking out the route
- Traherne, Thomas - Centuries of Meditations - It is not by going with the feet, but by journeys of the soul
- Traherne, Thomas - Circulations - As fair ideas from the sky
- Traherne, Thomas - Shadows in the Water - Thus did I by the water’s brink
- Tree, Isabella - Sliced Iguana – 01 Isabella tries peyote
- Tree, Isabella - Sliced Iguana – 04 The ceremony
- Tzu, Lao - A Way you can call Way isn’t the perennial Way
- Tzu, Lao - The wise men of old have truly said
- Various examples - 18 The Moon
- Waterhouse, John William - Circe offering a cup to Ulysses
- Waterhouse, John William - Destiny
- Waterhouse, John William - I am half sick of shadows said the Lady of Shallott
- Whitman, Walt - A Song for Occupations
- Yeats, W B - Anima Mundi - Perception recall
- Yeats, W B - Selected poems - Before the World was made
- Yeats, W B - Shadowy Waters - All would be well, could we but give us wholly to the dreams
- Youssou N'dour - Nothing's in vain - 01 Li ma weesu
- Yung-Chia Ta-Shih - When the absolute Reality is known
- Zhu Xi - Reflections While Reading