The Mind of Man

is a hall of mirrors. Almost every thinker from the beginning of time has noticed, one way or another, that they way the human mind works involves reflections. It is absolutely appropriate that reflection is the word that has many meanings, and those meanings are basically the structures of the mind of man.
The first and most basic definition of reflection is could be thought of as direct observation. I see my reflection in a mirror. That reflection is passive and inactive. It is a bit humorous to think that when we see ourselves, our bodies, we are looking at the thing that is inactive; however, the body is merely the stage for the action. Think about the theatre. Does a stage do the acting? It can, and certainly ought to be, a character—in some methodologies and in some plays the stage might even be the central character, but it doesn’t actually do anything. Its simple existence is enough for it to be important, and it is enough for the body to exist to make it important.
(In a small aside here, I would like to make a plug for taking care of the body. In general this involves three things, and they are the biological imperatives. Eat food that is conducive to good health. What will happen if you eat McDonald’s every day for thirty days? Bad things. What will happen if you eat a balanced diet and one day (let’s say in a month) when you’re out and about, you happen to stop at McDonald’s for a convenient meal? Probably not too much harm will come from this. Do something physical. Have sex, go for a run, play soccer, and do whatever it is that needs doing for a few hours every week. You don’t have to be a gym rat, going every day, just ensure that you are taking care of the physical needs of your body to stay in shape, otherwise atrophy ensues, and that kind of atrophy is impossibly slow and painful. Taking care of the body’s shape is essentially the shelter from the always-impending storm of atrophy. Protect your body, as much as is possible from harm. Don’t do incredibly stupid things that are guaranteed to harm you. It is important to note that the body ought to be put in certain dangerous situations every once in a while, but don’t be reckless about it. Your body will thank you for it.)
The next kind of reflection that happens is the first that happens in the mind. Let’s call it a Hume-ism: impression. Essentially, all this amounts to is that you are taking in all the sensory bits and pieces that you can. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you see yourself and you start to think about the scar just below your right eye, or the zit that creeping into existence on your chin, or the fact that your left ear is slightly higher than your right, or “Damn, I need a haircut,” or that black eye is swelling up pretty intensely. These impressions are, in themselves, some of the simplest thoughts that human beings can have, but they are floor number one, built on the foundation of the existence of the thing in the mirror.
It works equally well with the other senses. Close your eyes and touch your skin. Your impressions are that your arms are really hairy, or your fingernails seem to be long. Take a deep breath and smell yourself. Lick your skin. What do you taste like? Listen to yourself, and I mean really listen to yourself saying something. All of this information we pick up about everything around us through the sense organs that have been granted to us, and it is the most basic information that we have. If the stage is the foundation, the sensory impressions that we pick up become the set on the stage. We are beginning to get an idea of something coming together.
The third type of reflection involves giving back—let’s call it a reaction. Imagine a line of mirrors set at an angle and a laser being pointed at the first one, only to have the light reflected down the line of mirrors. This is the first stage at which something actually happens. It is at this point that we are actually doing something about the idea that we now have, and it amounts, basically, to an explication of what the impression is. Take the color blue. The eye sees the color blue, the brain recognizes it as a thing existing on a plane, and finally you say its name: blue. Action, in this sense, is the very physical action, whether in speech or motion, that takes place as the result of an idea. First impressions become ideas that give rise to a reaction. If we continue with our analogy of the stage, then the actors have begun to populate the set. We now see that there is A) a stage B) a set and C) actors. These actors are even saying things, but it is essentially incoherent babble for the most part, or, if comprehensible, then the most rudimentary of meanings. In our other analogy (that of the building) this is essentially the enclosed building. It exists, it has vitality and color, it is populated, and it is enclosed. Foundation. Floor. Ceiling.
The final type of reflection is that metaphorical type of reflection that reaches into the past—and I am pretty sure it is always into the past that it reaches. When I sit and reflect on my life, I am thinking about the accumulated knowledge of my days on this planet, the myriad routines I have subjected myself to, and the cultural knowledge that has somehow been implanted in my brain. This is where the magic happens. Habit and our customary way of doing things are pulling the strings. We only recognize blue because we have seen it and been told its name before—in the past. Had we encountered blue for the first time, without having been told its name, there is no way that its particular moniker could possibly spring to our lips. Think of a child just learning his or her colors. We must be told something in the past for it to affect our present or future.
What presents itself as a problem for this type of reflection is that everything gets muddled here. Before the roof was on the building, we could see inside it and understand what was going on, but now our view is obscured. Before, the actors were wandering around the stage babbling in basic incoherence, and now they are saying things that seem to matter in a way that seems to make sense, and it is the unseen hand of the director that is reflection in the metaphorical sense that makes it all possible.
I have encountered this four-fold in other places, and it took me a long time to accept it, but when a thing keeps coming up in so many and various places, you start—perhaps by habit and a customary way—to believe and understand it. Heidegger’s four-fold is almost essentially this, but with different names: earth and heavens, mortals and gods. The earth is the existing thing, the initial impression (the entrance of the mind onto the scene) would be the heavens, mortals would be the populated stage, and the gods would be the realm of history and habit that seems to invisibly pull strings.
It seems to me that this is the way we go about things. Call them whatever you will, but these seem like reasonable structures of the consciousness: body, consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit. It’s what makes humans capable of doing the things they do. Animals do not have the same metaphysical structure. Their minds and spirits do not work in the same way. If for only this, I implore you to go about using the abilities and skills that are inherent in you simply by virtue of being human to start working on your understanding of your own reflections. Sit quietly for a while and stare at yourself, notice that you are, notice what you really look like, say something to yourself, do something with, go somewhere, and be great.