Piet to Heloisa and Rod

Heloisa and Rod,

I had proposed to work with the contrast between our working hypothesis and the usual assumption of what reality is like. Ordinarily, we go about our life with the working hypothesis that all is not complete at all. What can it mean, to test a working hypothesis that all is complete?

While I tried to focus on the tension or paradox between these two so very different assumptions, I saw more clearly the roots of the paradox. The working hypothesis is not trying to tell us that we, in our role as limited creatures, are complete. Rather, the working hypothesis is inviting us to shift our identification away from the ordinary roles we are playing, to a new role. The problem is: the new role cannot be stated in words, within the old games that we have been playing.

A traditional analogy is that of a mirror and the images that are reflected in it.  Independent of what type of reflections arise in the mirror, the mirror itself is not affected by it, allowing every kind of reflection without judgment, without filtering, without trying to retain some images while rejecting other images.

While looking at a mirror, we see images. Focusing on the images and taking them to be real is like buying into the working hypothesis that life is very complicated and full of problems. Watching the images and realizing that they are only reflections without independent existence is like tasting the working hypothesis that all is complete.

So my addition to my original proposal to contrast the two working hypotheses is to try to spend a day viewing all that presents itself as reflections. This includes one's sense of self, one's body, one's thoughts, feelings, moods, felt personal history, everything. Only a very rigorous housecleaning is radical enough to test the working hypothesis that all is perfect. Any moment something presents itself. How about this? A reflection. How about that? A reflection, too. And so on. Anything that can be named and recognized: a reflection.

Footnote: any analogy and metaphor has its limitations. With a real mirror, you can see the frame, and recognize that it is a mirror. So for this analogy to work here, imagine that you are looking at a huge mirror, and you can't see the frame, so you can only see reflections, nothing else. The only way to see/recognize the mirror as a mirror is then to investigate the nature of what is reflected, since the mirror as such is literally invisible.

Piet