Mirror, Mirror On the Wall

Consciousness – the Hard Problem, per David Chalmers. What is it? Who has it? How does it work? What’s it ‘like’ to be conscious? Is it the sound of one hand clapping? As we learn more and more about the structure of the human brain and the perceptual capabilities of non-human life forms (organic and otherwise), the long felt need to find a consensus model of consciousness is growing more urgent.

There is a tendency for models to grow more complex with each new iteration. Something like that is happening right now in the fields of cosmology, particle physics, and biology. The steady complexification of theory is often, usually in fact, a clue that the theory itself is somehow ‘wrong’. Remember Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe? Hello Galileo!

Typically, when we build a model, we start by following the architect’s blueprint for the Tower of Babel, one story teetering on top of another…until suddenly the whole edifice collapses like a house of cards. So we welcome the fresh air of heliocentricity, relativity, and quantum mechanics! Perhaps in the case of consciousness we can avoid this painful odyssey. 

My preferred model for consciousness is a simple mirror, or to be more precise, reflexivity per se.  A mirror, as Lewis Carroll taught us (Through the Lookingglass), has no intrinsic content. Likewise, while mirrors come in all sizes, shapes and designs, the ‘mirror-part’ is the same in every case. Reflection is reflection and that’s all there is to it. 

Not that I envision a cosmos full of disembodied shards of silver backed glass floating in space. Rather I suspect that reflexivity is built into the fabric of the cosmos itself. Universe is its own mirror! Reflexivity is characteristic of any non-orientable topology, e.g. a Mobius strip. If, as I suspect, our universe is locally orientable but globally non-orientable (see below), then reflection (mirroring) may be a local manifestation of global reflexivity. 

The recent discovery of Rondeau Time Crystals (RTC) is relevant here (Moon, et al., Nature Physics, October 14, 2025). An RTC consists of two ordered states (Alpha & Omega) separated by a chaotic state (Delta). 

The two ordered states relate deterministically but their topology is non-orientable. The elements in the Omega state are ‘reciprocals’ of those same elements in the Alpha state. The chaotic, intermediary Delta state is where we live and here events appear orientable.

All mirrors are identical, but no two mirror images are ever the same. A mirror reflects what is reflected. Likewise, consciousness – a reflector reflecting. Without reflected content, a mirror cannot reflect and so is not a ‘mirror’ at all; it’s just silver backed glass. Without reflexivity, the cosmos would be inert, mindless, and without meaning. 

Meaning is reference between two distinct classes of phenomena, e.g. a map and a territory, an object and its image, symbol and signified. Object and image, for example, are ‘mutually transcendent’ – that’s a pre-condition for meaning.

Even before syntax, language has meaning, e.g. an object and a word that denotes that object (Namo). Of course, words can be objects and objects can be words, but not in this context. We are strictly speaking of words as symbols and objects as what words symbolize. In one respect, language is ‘objective’ and therefore part of the world; but in a more important sense, it is ‘symbolic’ and therefore transcends the world.

Likewise, consciousness may, or may not, be dependent on certain structures, neural or otherwise, but it is not those structures per se. Again, these ‘structures’ are part of the world that consciousness reflects…and transcends. 

When we speak of ‘consciousness’, we are not referring to whatever physical structures may support it. In fact, it appears that wildly different physical configurations may support consciousness. This lends further support to the idea that a universal potentiality for consciousness is woven into the fabric of the cosmos itself.  

How is consciousness like a mirror? A mirror has no intrinsic content. It acquires 100% of its content from what it reflects. Every mirror, in so far as it reflects, is the same. I am conscious and someone in Tibet is conscious. We share few life experiences, but to the extent that we are both conscious, we are identical…not merely congruent.  

Consciousness is a single phenomenon, manifest in multiple environments and circumstances. No two manifestations of consciousness are the same but consciousness per se is identical everywhere and everywhen. 

What a mirror actually reflects is light. Without light, a mirror has no content, i.e. no image. When an organism dies, the ‘mirror’ associated with that organism goes dark; it no longer reflects light (an image). It ceases to be a ‘mirror’; therefore it is no longer conscious. Its physical properties no longer support conscious experience.

However, this does not necessarily resolve Hamlet’s dilemma: “To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub.” In the language of AI, could it be that our dark and imageless reflexivity will yet ‘hallucinate’? (After all, we know that AI ‘hallucinates’; why not ‘NI’ - natural intelligence?) Perhaps, it is still too soon to award the laurel wreath to Horatio! 

But there is a ‘silver’ lining to all this! Because chaotic Delta is strung between highly ordered Alpha and Omega, Delta inherits its fundamental topology from its boundary conditions. Think of a hammock strung between two trees. Per se, it has no shape but because of the trees it assumes a catenary shape, the only ‘minimal surface’ in nature (other than a plane). It's the natural shape that forms when a rope, chain, or fabric hangs freely between two points.

Note that the trees do not cause the hammock to assume the characteristic shape. Nothing about the trees gives the hammock its curve. Rather, it is the natural shape assumed by whatever hangs freely between two terminals. Delta ‘hangs freely’ between Alpha and Omega and therefore it inherits a very specific, and very fortunate, topology.

That topology permits islands of spatiotemporal order to form spontaneously (bootstrapping?) in Delta’s otherwise chaotic medium. In Moon’s terminology, the two end states ‘fine tune’ the intermediary (Delta) state without compromising its essentially chaotic nature. 

These islands of order enable the cosmos to encode information. We live on (actually, in) such an island; we are pure information. Information is a pattern. Alpha and Omega are the pattern of all patterns. A pattern (island) in Delta may resonate (harmonize) with a pattern in Alpha/Omega. In which case that pattern is immediately bilocated, in Alpha/Omega and in Delta. 

Marcel Proust provides an analog in Remembrance of Things Past. The sensation of cobblestones in France recapitulates a similar sensation felt years earlier in Italy. Immediately, the resonance bilocates Proust in France-now and Italy-then. In an identical manner, when a pattern in our lives (Delta) resonates with a pattern in Alpha/Omega, we are bilocated: our temporal existence merges with atemporality (aka eternity). 

The Christian doctrine of Incarnation tells of the merger of atemporal divinity with temporal humanity. Rondeau Time Crystals reverse the process: temporality is absorbed in eternity.

So for those of us who aspire to eternal life, to leaving a permanent mark in the cosmos, ‘all we have to do’ is create patterns in our own lives that are in harmony with patterns in Alpha/Omega, i.e. in the ‘Garden’ and the ‘Kingdom’, i.e. in God. But how on earth do we do that?

Easy! God is Good. Beauty, Truth, and Justice are good. Therefore, they are found among the patterns in Alpha and Omega; they are part of God’s essential nature. Therefore, whenever we foster beauty, truth and/or justice, we create a pattern in Delta that resonates in Alpha/Omega, and we assure ourselves at least a modicum of eternal life. 

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