A Deeper Recognition of the Self via the Mirror Test

If you put a mirror in front of an animal, most of them react with aggression. They attack the mirror because they don't realize they're looking at their own reflection. And then there are other species who do realize that, like chimpanzees and dolphins and humans. You've probably heard of this. It's called the 'mirror test'.

And it's designed to give us some idea of the self-awareness an animal has.

So imagine my surprise when in the 37th year of my life, I discovered there's another level to the test.

And so I've been failing this test for most of my life. Most of the human species has actually not really passed the test.

You know if you were to give grades maybe the animals that attack the mirror get a C grade . Their self-awareness is at the level where it's driven mostly by evolutionary drivers. Humans get a B grade. Sure you recognize that's your reflection, but to really pass the test; to ace it, you arrive on a very different observation.

A very different realization.

And if there is a really advanced species somewhere in the universe now, I like to imagine this would be the most obvious way of looking into a mirror for them.

Anyway, so this is how it goes.

Looking into a mirror usually we obsess over what we see in the reflection.

When you're a child you find it funny. You make faces. And as you grow up, you become a teenager, and the little pimples they take up all your attention. How your hair look like. And that kind of sticks around as you grow up.

And the wrinkles show up. Time to obsess over those. And so on.

So, most of our lives we obsess over the image in the mirror.

But there's another way to look at the mirror, and that is to consider whether it truly represents what's over here.

Over there you see a face. Eyes and eyebrows and skin and hair and all that. You see an object.

But on this side, where you are, there's no face. There's no object here.

There's only an awareness of those objects over there.

And clearly that awareness or sentience is the truest representation of what you are.

And a mirror never reflects that. It only reflects the external insentient objects making up this body.

So how can that be called my reflection?

Isn't the recognition of the awareness over here a truer reflection of what you are?

That is your true face.

Your original face.

The face you've had since the very beginning.

When the very first experience came, that's how you received it. Not with the face in the mirror that keeps changing, but with this no-face, this non-object, this sentience that you are.

What I am.

What 'I' always refers to no matter what appears in the mirror.

And from the outside we might see dogs and cats, and birds and bees, and human faces, but behind the reflections always lies this very same sentience.

So with this kind of self-awareness the world is seen quite differently. There are all these phenomena, which appear and are observable.

And then there's the Noumenon; the thing in itself, what is actually real beyond all phenomena.

And what this final level of the mirror test reveals, is that while the Noumenon is unobservable and will ever remain unobservable, You know It, because You are It.

The Noumenon is this Sentience which allows all these phenomena to be known in the first place.

The mirror of Reality.

Reflecting Itself; Its own processes. Experiencing Itself.

Anyway, so as a species humans haven't really passed the mirror test. We're still obsessed over the image in the mirror.

But every human mind has the capacity to arrive at this more deeper understanding. To discern the reflection from what is truly real about you.

So next time you look at the mirror, look back from the eyes in that reflection, back towards where you really are, and notice what differentiates you, on this side, from the reflection over there.