Ibn' Arabi

Ibn'Arabi was a grand-master Sufi that is famous for his metaphor of the "polished mirror." Mirrors are often used to convey a deeper meaning about the self and the world. A reflection is much more than what you see... reflection is perception of existence. Ibn'Arabi identified with the example of a dirty mirror: "While looking at a smudged mirror the viewer sees the glass. If the mirror is polished, a shift occurs. The glass becomes invisible, with only the viewers image reflected. Vision has become self-vision" (Sells 63). To have this knowledge, the real manifests itself in differentiated forms; to have a culmination of this knowledge, combine the aspects of self knowing and the knower.