The Mirror and the Screen
Why the world we perceive is not out there, but arising within us
Why is it that the one thing we actually experience — our own awareness — is often relegated to the realm of religion or spirituality, as though it’s too slippery or dangerous to examine?
It’s almost as if we’re conditioned not to look too closely, as though questioning what consciousness is might mark us as heretical, unscientific, or both. We build elaborate models to explain the cosmos, decode genomes, and probe quantum mysteries, yet we tiptoe around the very experience that makes all this investigation possible.
And yet, if consciousness is the lens through which we experience everything—every scientific discovery, every human connection, every moment of joy or suffering—doesn't it deserve more scrutiny? Why do we treat the subjective experience as somehow less real than the objective phenomena it perceives?
Perhaps it's time we turned our investigative gaze inward with the same curiosity we direct outward to the stars.
In the West, most of us grow up in a culture that teaches us to perceive reality as a world of separate objects existing in time and space. From our families to our schools, and even in many religious teachings, we’re conditioned to see ourselves as distinct subjects navigating an external, objective world.
René Descartes famously reinforced this perspective with his statement, “I think, therefore I am.” This declaration drew a clear line between mind and body, establishing a perceived separation not only between self and body but also between body and the rest of nature—the external world.
This dualistic way of seeing things worked well for a while. It fostered a sense of a shared, objective reality that could be measured, quantified, and agreed upon. By focusing on measurable aspects of reality—like length, width, height, weight, texture, and frequency—we created a common language for understanding the world. And through scientific experimentation, we could verify and predict how these measurable aspects interacted, reinforcing the belief in a solid, objective reality "out there."
We built bridges, launched rockets, and sent people to the moon. Most of us in the West are steeped in a worldview that feels as solid and undeniable as the ground beneath our feet. Materialism has become the default lens, the unspoken agreement we rarely question.
But in the process, we started to mistake the map for the territory. In our fixation on defining reality through measurements, we lost touch with the simple, direct experience of being alive.
A Portal Between Worlds
When I was about fourteen, I stumbled upon Jung’s Synchronicity. I was intrigued, but to be honest, I didn’t really get it. What was he talking about? Sure, once in a while, someone would pop into my mind, and they’d call me five minutes later. But I dismissed it as coincidence. Back then, we didn’t have mobile phones, so I wasn’t glancing down to see 11:11 or 2:22 staring back at me. Synchronistic events felt like rare, isolated blips on the radar—random, and easily ignored.
This piece is not about debunking science or rejecting the measurable world. It’s about widening the frame to include what materialism often overlooks: the felt sense of being alive, the ground of awareness itself.
What if the ground of reality isn’t matter but consciousness itself?
This perspective is known as nondual idealism—the view that consciousness is the fundamental substance of existence, and that what we perceive as the material world arises from it, not the other way around.
Last year, I attended an INSEAD MBA alumni reunion, my alma mater. This institution sits at the height of Cartesian thought, of rationality, of materialism. My intention that weekend was to show up authentically with my former classmates and share my story genuinely—the parts of myself I’d been holding back. Prior to attending, I’d even been toying with a book title, The Unseen Son, a play on words that tied together themes of invisibility and revelation.
When I checked in at the registration, they handed me a gift bag. Inside was a bottle called The Unseen Sunscreen. It felt like a wink from the universe—as if it was saying, “Don’t hide behind invisible protectors and screens. This weekend is your gift—the opportunity to be seen.”
Moments like these, that seem to speak directly to us through unexpected signs, are what I now understand as synchronicities, and they no longer feel random to me.
In the framework of nondual idealism, they’re more than coincidences. They’re reflections from the universal consciousness, a way the world speaks back to us, showing us what we’re already contemplating, but in a form we can’t ignore.
The Materialist Assumption that All is Matter
Before diving into nondual idealism, it’s worth noting the extraordinary advances made through the materialist perspective. Mapping the physical world has led to groundbreaking technologies, life-saving medicines, and unprecedented scientific understanding. But while materialism excels at measuring the objective, it overlooks the subjective—the felt sense of being alive. That’s the terrain we’re about to explore.
Materialism asserts that everything in reality, including consciousness itself, arises from matter. According to this view, the universe is made up of particles, and what we experience as consciousness is just a byproduct of intricate patterns of neurons firing in the brain.
But there’s a glaring problem here.
If everything arises from matter, then how do we account for the deeply personal, first-person nature of experience?
This is what philosopher David Chalmers termed the Hard Problem of Consciousness—the question of how subjective, qualitative experience (what it feels like to see red, taste chocolate, or hear a symphony) emerges from purely objective matter.
Science has made impressive strides in mapping which parts of the brain light up when we feel love, pain, or fear. But those brain scans don’t tell us why or how those experiences feel the way they do. The gap between brain states and the feeling of being alive remains wide open.
The Map is not the Territory
Think about it this way: over centuries, we’ve created incredibly detailed maps of the world. We measure everything—color, distance, weight, frequency—and use these measurements to make predictions. But we can’t pull the territory out of the map.
It’s like measuring the color red down to its exact wavelength, thinking that if we define it precisely enough, a colorblind person will suddenly see red.
But of course, that’s not how experience works. We can’t measure the feeling of being alive, the taste of chocolate, or the experience of seeing red. Those are first-person experiences, and they don’t show up in the measurements.
In the same way, you can’t pull consciousness out of matter.
The Mirror and the Screen
When you stand in front of a mirror, you see your reflection. But the mirror itself doesn’t change. Step away, and the reflection is gone, but the mirror remains clear and untouched.
Similarly, our senses reflect the world around us. We perceive colors, sounds, textures, and objects, but when we close our eyes, those reflections disappear. What’s left? The ground of awareness—the mirror of consciousness itself.
Now think of a movie screen. Imagine a movie playing on a screen. Rain pours down, fire erupts, characters move through scenes of joy and tragedy. But the screen itself remains untouched. It doesn’t get wet or burn; it remains clear, blank, and unchanged. Consciousness is that screen. Everything we see, hear, think, and feel is like a scene projected onto it.
In this way, the mirror and the screen help us glimpse the unchanging source of consciousness—the ground from which space, time, and matter emerge, like ripples on a still lake.
Eastern Perspectives
Eastern traditions have been exploring this idea for thousands of years.
In Advaita Vedanta, the unchanging screen or mirror of consciousness is referred to as Brahman—the ultimate reality. The practice in Advaita is to peel away the projections, the stories, and the identifications, stripping everything away until only the pure, formless awareness of Brahman remains. It’s a path of renunciation.
In Kashmir Shaivism, the metaphor is similar but with a twist. Here, the still lake or mirror of consciousness is Shiva, the unchanging ground of being. But what moves upon the surface of that lake—the ripples, waves, and currents—are Shakti, the dynamic play of creation. It’s a tantric path.
In Buddhism, particularly in the Madhyamaka school, the unchanging ground is Śūnyatā, or emptiness. But this emptiness is not a void—it’s the space in which all phenomena arise and dissolve, interdependent and impermanent, like waves on a lake.
Reversing Descartes
What if Descartes put the cart before the horse? What if instead of “I think, therefore I am,” we said, “I am, therefore I think”?
Nondual idealism flips the script, positioning consciousness as the fundamental ground of existence. In this view, being precedes thought, just as the screen exists before the movie plays. It’s a subtle but profound shift—from seeing the mind as the originator of experience to seeing it as a reflection of the deeper, unchanging awareness beneath.
When we invert Descartes’ proposition, we’re no longer locating our existence within thought, but rather recognizing thought as arising within the field of being. But here, “being” isn’t the body or brain—it’s the universal, unchanging ground of consciousness itself, not confined to any specific form. In nondual idealism, being is not a product of matter; instead, matter and thought arise within the field of being, like images appearing on a screen. And that screen is consciousness itself.
This perspective suggests that awareness isn’t a byproduct of neural complexity but the canvas upon which all experience—including thinking—appears. While Descartes located certainty in thought, nondual idealism locates it in the underlying awareness that precedes thought—the “I am” that exists before any particular “I think.”
The Primacy of Being
Perhaps our identification with thought has led us astray. We've mistaken the ripples for the water, the clouds for the sky. What remains when thinking pauses? The stillness of awareness, that silent witnessing presence—could that be our true nature, more fundamental than any thought that arises within it?
For those steeped in the materialist worldview, this shift in perspective can feel disorienting, even unsettling. It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff, peering over into an unknown depth. Yet, in truth, it is not new. From Berkeley to Whitehead, from Kant to Schopenhauer, from Advaita Vedanta to Kashmir Shaivism, from Bernardo Kastrup to Rupert Spira the notion that consciousness is the ground of reality has echoed throughout centuries of thought.
Perhaps what’s controversial isn’t the idea itself, but the invitation to look at reality differently—to see the world not as a collection of separate, inert objects, but as a living, breathing expression of consciousness itself. And in doing so, to consider the possibility that the dualities we take for granted may not be as fixed as they appear.
Duality as Illusion
Nondual idealism doesn’t just lend meaning to synchronicities, it lends meaning to life itself. The world is a movie screen, and the events of our lives are the projected images. The people we meet, the challenges we face, the uncanny alignments are all reflections, scenes in a story playing out within and around us.
Embracing nondual idealism has brought me a profound sense of calm. It’s made life feel more connected, more purposeful. What once felt like random occurrences—manifestations, telepathy, even astral travel—now appear as expressions of a unified consciousness, like reflections on a mirror or scenes on a screen.
If consciousness is the source of all phenomena, then we are not merely observers of the world—we are co-creators of it.
The world isn’t something that happens to us; it’s something that arises within us, a living, breathing projection on the screen of consciousness.
In this view, each of us is a unique point of perception through which consciousness experiences itself. The boundaries we perceive—between self and other, mind and matter—are just ripples on the surface of a single ocean.
Because in the end, the reflections arise from the mirror, and the mirror is not separate from what it holds. The movie plays across the screen, but the screen itself remains steady, embracing every scene without changing. The world emerges from consciousness, and consciousness is not separate from the world it beholds.
At the INSEAD reunion, I thought I was just attending a weekend of reconnecting with old classmates. But when I was handed that bottle of “Unseen Sunscreen,” it felt like a nudge from the universe—a reminder that the very things we hide behind can also be the things that obscure our light. In nondual idealism, these moments aren’t just quirky coincidences; they’re part of the dance, reflections of what we’re ready to see within ourselves. And what if everything we encounter—every moment of joy, every flash of insight, every unexpected alignment—is, in some sense, the universe reminding us, ‘You are here. You are seen. You are part of all of this.’
What appears as duality is the one playing as many—a single song sung in harmony, each voice distinct yet all emerging from the same underlying melody. This is the heart of nondual idealism: the recognition that the multiplicity we perceive is the dance of a single, unified consciousness.
Very clearly and nicely put.