Glimpses Into The Mirror of Reality

When you look into the mirror, you want to see exactly what you look like. You take for granted that the image in the mirror is in fact what you look like, and perhaps rightly so. But at the same time that the mirror shows you what you look like, it also shows the exact opposite. Text in the mirror appears backwards and unintelligible. Your image in the mirror is identical to the real image of you that people see, as far as the eye can tell, and yet scientifically we know that the mirror shows the reverse of reality. Somehow in the reverse perspective of reality, we simultaneously perceive reality itself.


Perspective begins with relationship. The way that we relate to reality as a whole determines our perspective on individual aspects of reality. The mirror offers us an accurate picture of reality because the opposite parts of the body are more or less identical, and therefore, when they are reversed, the relationship is still in harmony. But with text, each letter is different and relates differently with the other letters, thus when viewed in reverse, it leaves a skewed picture of reality. Our subjective reality is made up of how we relate to, and therefore perceive, ourselves, the world, other people, and time itself.


In A Different Existence, J. H. van den Berg studies a patient who has a completely subjective and erroneous view of reality. The streets are terrifying and close in on him while the rest of mankind is out to get him. His weak heart constantly plagues him with irregularities which threaten his life. Although in objective reality none of this is true, the patient perceives it as true and is therefore his reality no matter how untrue it is. This is not relativism because it is not made true as he thinks it. On the contrary, it is not a true reality, but a reality nonetheless, based on his perception of himself, the world, others, and time.


Van den Berg uses the example of a young woman who goes to the city on her evening off. While she dresses to impress in the city, she acts differently in front of her parents and makes no attempt to impress them. She acts naturally around them and does nothing “daring” or oriented towards making any kind of impression. The girl’s perspective of her parents is different than the perspective she has of “the boys she will see” in the city whom she hopes to attract. People form their perspective on people based on their relationship with them. This young girl has such a relationship with her parents so as to not feel the need to impress them, and certainly not to “attract” them in the same sense as she does the city boys. Her relationship forms her perspective and she acts naturally before them. A troubled boy may perceive his mother as strict and angry while his well-behaved brother, who never needed radical discipline, may see their mother as kindhearted and gentle. Both perceptions can be equally true and yet lead to conflict with each other.


Similarly, falsely perceiving the relationship of two other people can also skew one’s perspective of another. For example, one woman sees her husband embrace another women in a restaurant one day and begins to investigate. She finds the woman’s telephone number and a picture of the two at the beach. Needless to say, this woman begins to perceive her husband’s lack of love for her and labels him with infidelity. But suppose that the woman’s husband was not unfaithful, and the strange woman turned out to be his sister. Suddenly, though every one of his actions remain exactly the same, he is once again the loving, faithful husband to his wife that he always was and she perceives him as such. Because formerly the woman had failed to recognize her husband’s sister as such, her reality included the image of her husband as a liar and cheater. As far as she could tell or was concerned, this was true. Her reality could not be altered or changed until she was reconciled with the relationship between her husband and his sister as such.


The troubled patient in van den Berg’s study apparently has false relationships with people, places, things, and ideas which in turn distorts his perspective of reality. He truly believes that his perspective is right, even in the face of total contradiction. His perspective is all that he knows and all that he has to conclude the basic aspects of reality. He cannot be argued with because we do not know what and which relationships have formed his perspectives as such. The patient does not know either for the experiences which formed his relationships lie in his subconscious mind. Just like this patient, our relationships, and our perspective forms who we are and how we see reality.