Droplets Trailing Down the Mirror

Infinite “doubles” of myself

I was there, in front of the bathroom mirror, rinsing my hair after shampooing. A routine gesture I’ve done hundreds of times. Yet in that mundane moment, something profound happened in my perception.

Mesmerized

As the water streamed over my head, I stared mesmerized at the reflections of the droplets trailing down the mirror. The tiny liquid spheres seemed to morph into miniature curved mirrors as they rolled and slid down the reflective surface.

In a flash of ecstatic clarity, those mirrored droplets appeared to reconfigure into far more complex structures. As if each one was an intricate fractal mirror composed of yet other ever-tinier reflecting surfaces, all interconnected and folded back into themselves in a single paradoxical object.

I viscerally intuited that every microscopic reflecting region contained actual spacetime curvatures within itself. It was as if the entire mirror was an infinite network of infinitesimal mirrors tangled into themselves in impossible hypercubic configurations.

Portal

At that moment, I understood that what I saw was no ordinary flat mirror, but rather a portal into an entirely different reality. An alternate dimension is constructed from the same paradoxical laws governing the behaviour of those interconnected micro-mirrors.

And in that same instant, as if I had managed to align with the subtle folds of this underlying hyperspace, countless reverberations passed through the mirror toward me. Echoes, reflections of infinite other versions of myself — parallel embodiments interconnected with the fractal, multidimensional geometries of that higher realm.

It was as if infinite “doubles” of my self, embodied directly into the fractal geometries and twisted topologies of that extradimensional domain, were for a fleeting moment staring back at me through the thin rift between our worlds.

I shuddered

I shuddered, simultaneously perceiving their innumerable “selves” inextricably interwoven with each other and the very fabric of the recursive space of infinite reflections they originated from. Parallel incarnations share my essence, yet fanned out across billions of divergent existential trajectories in that tangled skein of overlapping universes.

I could almost hear their collective bewilderment as they struggled to make sense of our flat, limited three-dimensional reality. Beings accustomed to perceiving a staggering multitude of refractions of themselves intersecting the warped geometries of the space-time continuum, now abruptly reduced to single coherent forms in the arid simplicity of Euclidean space.

One ecstatic instant

For one ecstatic instant, we were all perfectly aligned, infinite opposing facets of the same multiversal prism. I taste an intuition of the twisted underlying reality fabric. They briefly experience our flat, illusory three-dimensional world.

But the moment slipped away, the aperture closing. We remained divided, each confined to our bizarre interpretations of existence. Yet that provocation of the existence of realms bound to radically different physical and geometrical laws continued to churn in my mind.

And…so?

We have imagination, we have questions. The point is that I humbly believe they are inquisitive manifestations seeking an answer that already exists. Or rather an answer that we believe must emerge, since the questions emerge. But if we don’t think, we realize that something pulses inside, which is not communication, but an attributeless essence that does not contemplate the existence of questions and answers.

“The Tao has no limit; the word is not secure.”

(Zhuang-zi)

“The Self is everywhere. Bright is the Self, indivisible, untouched by sin, wise, immortal. It is the Self that makes one think one is thinking. It is the Self that makes one know one is knowing.”

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (III.iv.2)

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