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Our next mind experiment requires deep concentration. You are standing in an Art Gallery. Before you is a framed painting. The paper canvas is white. In the very centre is a red dot. That’s all you see. Moving closer you see the dot has an irregular shape and is not a perfect circle.

The painting has no title, so no clue is given to help interpret the painting. What do you see?

Does it symbolise menarche? Do you then see a young girl on the cusp of womanhood?

Is it the first prick of the diabetic, the start of a nosebleed? Is it a hesitant full stop, the ending of life? Is it just a dot on white paper?

Is it a beginning or an ending, a statement or an observation?

The most important point is what do you see when you close your eyes and try to imagine what it might be?

That’s one level of seeing. Look more closely, can you imagine the journey of the ink or the paint to the canvas, can you see the atomic structure, the light absorbing property that allows the eye that isn't colour blind to perceive a shade of red. If you are colour blind what journey of meaning do you see?

Then there is the paper, the machinery behind its construction, the science of paper making, then back to the tree, its life cycle starting with a seed, the fruitful soil, its first breaking through into light from the darkness of the soil.

At what level do you see all this?

Now go back to mirror and look at yourself with fresh eyes and see beyond what first appears.

Who are you?