Remember the surviving custom - immediately after the death of a person, curtain all the mirrors in the apartment, and in the room where the deceased is lying, even turn them to the wall or take them out of the room. The custom of closing the mirror is associated among the Slavic peoples with the idea of it as a border between the earthly world and other worlds …
Slavic traditions, for example, instructed a woman not to look in the mirror during menstruation, pregnancy and the postpartum period. It was believed that at this time "a grave was opened in front of her."
The danger lies not only in contact through the mirror with death, but also in the consequences of the doubling of a person arising from reflection. It threatens to split between the world of the living and the world of evil - turning into a black sorcerer, witch, ghoul.
Moody's experiments
Scientists began to study the occult properties of mirrors at the end of the 19th century. The German Society for Psychical Research has collected a collection of extraordinary phenomena associated with mirrors.
Clara Roschbach, a resident of Munich, spoke about one of them. Once she went to the mirror to fix her hair, and shuddered in surprise. From there looked, as it seemed to her at first, an unfamiliar man. In the evening, she realized that the face in the mirror reminded her of her uncle Heinrich, who had long left Munich. The next morning a telegram came: my uncle died at the very moment when Clara saw his image in the mirror.
Psychiatrist Raymond Moody, who became famous for his book "Life After Death", devoted more than 10 years to the study of mirrors. He created a special camera for looking into the other world, opening with mirrors. It was a small room with thick shutters, upholstered in black velvet. A mirror hung on one of the walls a meter above the floor. A soft, comfortable chair stood in front of him. The angle of the mirror was adjusted so that the person did not see his reflection in it. The only light source in this "black" room was a small lamp. According to Moody, it was this arrangement of the room that provided ideal conditions for "looking into the other world."
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Moody selected for the first experiments people who are mature, unbiased, but interested in the peculiarities of human consciousness. The prerequisites were the absence of mental or emotional disorders, the ability to clearly express their feelings and, most importantly, the absence of a penchant for occult ideology. Starting the experiments, Moody thought that only one in ten participants would see representatives of the other world in the mirror. But the scientist was wrong in his predictions: not one in ten, but five participants saw their dead relatives in the mirror!
The stories of the participants in the experiment were somewhat similar, but very different in some ways. Some communicated with deceased relatives mentally, without words. Others distinctly heard voices addressing them. Someone was sure that he was watching the dead behind the plane of the mirror. It seemed to some that they themselves went to the "Through the Looking Glass", and then came back. Approximately every tenth person said that the ghosts of the dead themselves came out of the mirror.
Although the participants in the experiments specially prepared for their conduct and always looked at the photographs of those deceased they wanted to see for a long time, they did not always appear in the mirror. For example, an elderly doctor dreamed of seeing his father who died 30 years ago, but met with his late cousin. The skeptical businessman saw instead of his father a business partner who died of a heart attack. The woman agreed to participate in the experiments, hoping to see her dearly beloved deceased husband, but her mother came instead. She told the widow that her husband could not come on a date, he said he still has a lot to learn in the afterlife.
When Moody decided to try the camera himself, he too was disappointed. He sat in front of the mirror for over an hour, hoping to see his beloved maternal grandmother, but ended up meeting an evil and eccentric paternal grandmother. At the same time, Moody was amazed at how she changed: “I felt warmth and love, peace and joy emanating from her.”
The Ghost of the Late Count
The design, invented by Moody, only helps to see the inhabitants of "Through the Looking Glass". Often images of the dead appear in mirrors without any help. It is then that encounters with the other world are especially frightening.
Here is the story told to the author by the director of a large Moscow plant, Anatoly D. In the early 60s, he came to Egypt to help in the construction of an industrial facility. At the airport he was met by a representative of the embassy, who took Anatoly to the hotel, where Soviet specialists always stayed. The hotel was owned by a Russian emigrant Countess Boretskaya.
The countess greeted her fellow countryman who had arrived from Moscow amiably, asked for a long time about the capital. There were no vacant places in the hotel, but our hero liked the countess so much that she offered to stay at her town house. Anatoly agreed with gratitude. And from that moment his meetings with "Through the Looking Glass" began.
A young Soviet specialist, a convinced atheist, became the temporary owner of a large house. It had many rooms, a swimming pool and three bedrooms, differing only in color. Anatoly chose a blue bedroom for himself and immediately rushed to the factory. He returned late, but threw himself on the huge bed and fell asleep.
He woke up from a strong push in the back. He slept on his side and, opening his eyes, immediately saw himself in a huge mirror standing next to him, and behind the bed - a tall man in a tailcoat and for some reason in a turban. Anatoly closed his eyes, then opened them again - the vision was in the same place. He shook his head, opened his eyes again - the man disappeared.
Anatoly turned on the light and examined all the rooms - there was no man in the house. I checked the locks on the doors - no one could enter the house. But on the second and third nights, a bearded man in a tailcoat and a turban appeared in the mirror …
A week passed, the hostess invited the Muscovite for a cup of coffee. Anatoly went up to her office and shuddered - a portrait of a man who appeared in the mirror every night was looking at him from the wall. “This is Count Boretsky, my late husband,” said the hostess, noticing Anatoly's reaction to the portrait. And then she added with a laugh: - He loved the house where you live now. Sometimes he even appears in the mirrors in the bedrooms. I see from your reaction that you have already met him."
The story of Boretskaya's mirrors had a continuation. An acquaintance of Anatoly came to Cairo: an employee of the Philharmonic, Lev S. Anatoly, invited the musician to stay with him for several days in one of the bedrooms. In the morning he went into a friend's room - it was empty! All that was left of Lyova was her clothes, casually thrown on a chair. Suddenly there was a snoring under the bed. Anatoly found Leva sleeping there. The next night, the musician also spent under the bed, and the next morning, taking his things, he moved to the vacated hotel room. As he left, he admitted that under the bed he was driven by fear caused by the appearance in the mirror of some kind.
Calming the soul
Petersburg psychotherapist Viktor Vetkin decided to apply Moody's experience for therapeutic purposes. He arranged at his home the same camera for "looking" through the looking glass and tested its effectiveness on himself. In the mirror, the doctor saw his grandfather, who had died 20 years ago. Before his death, he was seriously ill. Vetkin remembered him exhausted, with an earthy face. But from the mirror looked at him a youthful old man - cheerful and healthy. What they were talking about, the doctor could not tell later. He only had a feeling of warmth and kindness emanating from his grandfather.
It was this feeling from meeting with the Looking Glass that the doctor tried to use to alleviate the suffering of the living. Almost everyone who visited the mirror said that after meeting with their deceased relatives, the pain of loss was smoothed out, peace came to their souls and they began to perceive their fate in a new way.
Here's just one example. A young woman entered the room with the mirror. She was in a state of deep depression. Her five-year-old son died, and his mother blamed herself for his death. After a 10-minute stay in the Looking Glass, a completely different person came out of the room. “I saw him, I communicated with him absolutely real, - said the smiling woman. "He feels good there."
Scientists' hypotheses
How do images of the dead appear in mirrors? Two hypotheses can be proposed.
The first recognizes the independent existence of the ghosts that appear in the mirror. According to well-known researchers of the paranormal Yuri Fomin, Igor Vinokurov, Alexei Priima, with the death of the physical body, a person does not completely disappear. What remains is the structure, which is a specially organized energy field. It retains a part of our consciousness and after death it can exist for some time independently of the physical body. Mirrors, especially the old ones, the surface of which was made of mercury, a magical metal, have, under certain conditions, the ability to reflect these energetic phantoms.
The second hypothesis suggests that ghosts come from our subconscious. Perm scientist G. Krokhalev managed to photograph clear images of objects appearing in the pupils of people that the eyes cannot see at the moment. There is only one step from this to explaining the effect of mirrors - the images of the deceased, under certain conditions, are projected by the person himself. As for how the deceased enter the pupils, many experts acknowledge the existence of the Universal Mind, which unites the content of the consciousness of all people - both living and previously living on our planet. A person who falls into a trance near the mirror is able to join the Universal mind and perceive information about deceased people.
However, another explanation can be given to the effect that occurs in front of the mirror: with its help a person can "look" inside himself. In the depths of the subconscious, the images of our ancestors and random people who met on the path of life are preserved. They appear in front of the person in the mirror. And it turns out that he is not talking with the souls of the dead, but with his subconscious.
Now a little about the mechanism of the appearance of the image. Japanese scientists have created a screen with increased thermal sensitivity. If you look at it and think about some person or object, then the corresponding contours will appear on the screen - a kind of psychohologram. It allows you to extract information from the "bank" of the information field, thus creating the effect of the presence in the "mirror" of long-dead people.
Author: M. Burleshin