Shanghai Museum houses tens of thousands of ancient Chinese bronze mirrors, but only four have a “semi-transparent” quality, and this is one of them.

An Over 2,000-Year-Old Bronze Mirror that Is Semi-Transparent

The mirror, unearthed from a West Han (206 BC – 24 AD) tomb, weighs 50 g and measures 7.4 cm in diameter. If you hold it against a wall in the sun, the images and text in the back of the mirror will appear on the wall, as if this piece of bronze was somewhat transparent.

The bronze of course can not be transparent.

1,000 years after Han, China entered the Song Dynasty when Chinese technology led the world. But even by then, the Chinese were unable to reproduce a “transparent” bronze mirror.

This technology apparently lost in time. The four “transparent” bronze mirrors in the Shanghai Museum were all made during the Han Dynasty.

The secret to its “transparency” was only discovered in recent decades by Chinese scientists.

They found the parts of the mirror with text and images are much thicker than the rest, which produced casting stress, and further resulted in elastic deformation during the mirror grinding process, with the thick parts having a smaller radius of curvature than the thin parts. But the difference in the curvatures is extremely tiny, just a few micrometers, undetectable by the naked eye.

When the mirror is placed in the light, the parts with bigger curvature spheres produce more diffused reflections, thus the shadows of the smooth parts appear to be brighter. The different shades, therefore, reflect the patterns in the back of the mirror, which gives an illusion as though the bronze mirror is transparent.

The Concept of the Mirror

It is a basic framework between the intangible concept and the tangible world, equivalent to Four Vicinities (四象) in the Taoist notion, which is said to be split from Two Poles (yin and yang) and further evolve into Eight Trigrams that give the rise to myriad appearances.

Two Poles are born from a single point Taichi. Taichi is a thought, the seed containing holographic info about the entire universe with a biased focus.

While each consciousness is an independent intangible existence, all consciousnesses by essence are exactly the same, therefore they can know and understand each other perfectly.

But when consciousness is stained, it’s no longer completely transparent — the different patterns caused by different stains make us different from each other and unable to understand one another sometimes.

The so-called nirvana is not about self-extinction. Quite opposite. It is to reveal the true self by letting go of all the stains that form an elusive fake self.

Only when we’re with our full and true self (fully transparent consciousness), we can be free from default positions (the habit or the inertia), exercise our own wills and exist as a master, not a slave.

COMMENTS FROM GOOGLE PLUS

Nicholas Forsberg
It’s a sacred mirror.

All Things Chinese
I don’t regard anything as being sacred. Everything in this universe (at least in my universe) is the product of my mind, and my mind is the product of my consciousness, therefore everything can be open to question.

John B
Note the “Double Square” in the Centre.
It’s “The Seal of Melchizedek”.

All Things Chinese
This mirror was produced before Jesus was born.

John B
The “Double Square” has existed before the Earth was ever thought of, and before your Universe existed.

All Things Chinese
Before the universe (at least my universe) there is only consciousness that is shapeless and formless.

John B
“The Real Self” (LIFE) is Non-Dimensional, but your Processing System of the “Real Self” is a Clone from the 1st Processing System, which was based on a “Conceptual Processing System”, involving Geometric Form.

The “Double Square”, involves the Rotation of the Square (Register).

The 1st of the Concepts was “To & Fro”, the 2nd was “Rotation”.

Just one of the reasons there are only 2 Shapes All is produced from.

1. Straight.
and
2. Curved.
(And the combination of these 2)
There are No other shapes in your Universe.

All Things Chinese
I agree “The Real Self” is non-dimensional, but it is not a LIFE. It is before and after and beyond life.

The engine for life is movement, and movement can only take place in an environment where time and space exist.

But “The Real Self” (the complete and pure consciousness) is shapeless with no dimension therefore without inner structure. It is full of potential, but it is Nothing — it’s like when you sit before a piece of white paper: you can see what is on it but there is nothing on it to be seen. This state is referred to as Wuji (no point or nothingness) in Taoism.

When a thought pops up, a point appears, Wuji becomes Taiji (Taichi or original point) which is like a whole set of building design drawings and construction documentation.

If Taiji is a blueprint, then Two Poles are time and Four Vicinities is space. But the process of split won’t stop there ever since the yin-yang dual forces grew from a taiji core, because the dual forces need to balance each other in motion thus new elements are constantly introduced to achieve a new balance.

When a square is further split into two squares, an old balance tips and the top square hence rotates 45 degrees to achieve rebalance, which forms an Eight Trigram.

From the Eight trigrams, the worlds and lives emerge.