Narcissus at Twilight.
Andre Willers
2 Dec 2013
“Mirror , Mirror on the wall , how do I break this thrall?”
This is not medical advice . Do not do this without support
. No Schizophrenics .
Synopsis:
Self-perception with limited information gives access to
subsets of the mind via quantum effects . Angels or demons are visible due to
feedback processes .
Discussion :
1.How to do it:
See Appendix A :
Just look at yourself in a mirror in dim light for about 10
minutes .
The reflection in the mirror changes .
2.What is going on ?
The brain does not have enough information , gets bored and
starts making things up . Fair enough . But it uses as raw material aspects of
your mind normally voted off the consensus ego .
3.These aspects are personality formations formed by the
neural connection in a Small World network . Normally they “vote” on waking
which one will be dominant . But this technique gives access to these
semi-formed personalities , urges , etc .
Not advised for fragile personalities (like schizophrenics)
4.An interesting test for sociopathy or psychopathy :
Wire them up to a fMRI and let them look in a mirror under
twilight for ten minutes . A schizophrenic will disassociate , but sociopaths
will not . This can be seen on the fMRI readouts .
5.Ever wonder why women’s make-up mirrors are under such
harsh light ?
Usually ascribed to bloody-mindedness .
But in reality , if they use soft , twilight lighting they
start seeing themselves twisting into the dark side .
6. Men .
“Nemesis noticed and attracted Narcissus to a pool, wherein he saw his
reflection and fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely an image.
Unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, Narcissus died.”
What it doesn’t say is that he died screaming ,
as his image morphed into the monsters of his own mind .
Men simply don’t look except for combing their
hair .
7.Interesting speculation :
Would a Saint not have a dark side ? Of course .
The whole point is overcome the dark side , especially your own .
Can this be done ?
I can intuit that it can be done , but you will
need Beth (2) techniques .
8. Why Devil’s faces ?
Because there are many more ways of doing
something wrong than right .
Unless you are solidly Good from top to bottom ,
you will have bad images .
9. Steering images :
Exploring the sub-conscious .
Just use a LED or laser pointer on the mirror of
that aspect you want to explore . The system will morph accordingly .
Really be careful .
You are programming your own mind .
Not more than 10 minutes .
10 Oh well .
Into the Well of Worlds you go .
11. Illusions in a mirror .
“Things are not what they seem .
Every subconscious monster is a different scream
.
A symphony of screams
Are Ego dreams .”
12. Seriously , if you try this , at least have a
LED pointer .
“Indiana Jones will have to be your star .
You need to be a Tsar .
Keep this in mind
Heroes are all of a kind .”
When the lights go dim
Things go grim .
Andre
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Appendix A
Illusory Scenes Fade into and out of
View
Fading illusions play
hide-and-seek with your perception
“I don't think there is anything wrong with
white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.”
—Annie Leibovitz
According to a legend that one of us (Martinez-Conde) heard
growing up in Spain, anybody can see the Devil's face. All you need to do is to
stare at your own face in the mirror at the stroke of midnight, call the
Devil's name and the Prince of Darkness will look back at you. Needless to say,
I was both fascinated and terrified by the possibility. And I knew this was an
experiment I must try. I waited a day or two to gather my courage, then stayed
awake until midnight, got up from my bed, and into the bathroom I went. I
closed the door behind me so that my family would not hear me calling out loud
for Satan, faced my wide-eyed reflection, made my invocation, and ... nothing
happened. I was disenchanted (literally) but also quite relieved.
Now, three decades later, a paper entitled
“Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion,” by vision scientist Giovanni B. Caputo
of the University of Urbino in Italy, may explain my lack of results. Caputo
asked 50 subjects to gaze at their reflected faces in a mirror for a 10-minute
session. After less than a minute, most observers began to perceive the
“strange-face illusion.” The participants' descriptions included huge deformations
of their own faces; seeing the faces of alive or deceased parents; archetypal
faces such as an old woman, child or the portrait of an ancestor; animal faces
such as a cat, pig or lion; and even fantastical and monstrous beings. All 50
participants reported feelings of “otherness” when confronted with a face that
seemed suddenly unfamiliar. Some felt powerful emotions.
After reading Caputo's article, I had to give “Satan” another
try. I suspected that my failure to see anything other than my petrified self
in the mirror 30 years ago had to do with suboptimal lighting conditions for
the strange-face illusion to take place. Caputo recommended dim lighting, so
that observers might see their facial features in detail but experience
attenuated color perception. So this time I turned off the bathroom lights and
turned on my cell phone's flashlight, then placed it on the floor behind me, so
that I could not see its reflection on the mirror. Then I looked at myself and
waited.
My efforts were rewarded quickly. Portions of my face started to
disappear, contract or expand, and suddenly all the features would come back,
giving me a bit of a start. I was particularly thrilled to experience some of
the dissociative identity effect that the experimental participants reported,
feeling as if the face staring back at me was both mine and yet not mine.
Disappointingly, I did not see any monstrous creatures or ghosts of ancestors
calling me from the beyond (or even Satan, for that matter), but I think I came
close to seeing one of the “archetypal” faces. Weirdly, halfway through the
experiment, my face appeared to morph into a sepia portrait of an old Native
American warrior. But as soon as it arrived, it was gone.
Fade to Gray
Why does this happen? To explain, we need to start with Erasmus
Darwin, the English natural philosopher and physician and grandfather of
Charles Darwin. In the late 18th century he described how objects can fade
after steady gazing: “On looking long on an area of scarlet silk of about an
inch in diameter laid on white paper ... the scarlet color becomes fainter,
till at length it entirely vanishes, though the eye is kept uniformly and
steadily upon it.” Swiss philosopher Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler later
corroborated Darwin's observations, using colored patches on a wall. The
phenomenon became known as Troxler fading.
Neural adaptation, the mechanism by which neurons decrease or
stop their response to unchanging stimulation, is thought to underlie
perceptual fading during prolonged gazing at an object or scene. Once the
target of interest has vanished, blinks, gaze shifts and even microscopic
involuntary eye movements called microsaccades can restore it to perception
instantly [see “Shifting Focus,” by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L.
Macknik; Scientific American Mind, November/December 2011].
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