Reflexivity in Māndukya Upaniṣad: Ontological and Epistemological Applications

Māndukya Upaniṣad (MU) envisages a reflexivity between the individual and the universal in regard to the states of consciousness: सर्वंह्येतद् ब्रह्म अयमात्मा ब्रह्म सोऽयमात्मा चतुष्पात्, meaning- All this is Brahman, this Ātman is Brahman, this Ātman has four states. The waking consciousness of the individual is called Vaiswānara, the dreaming individual consciousness as Taijasa, and the sleeping individual consciousness as the Prājna. Its fourth state is the Ātman. The corresponding Universal consciousness in waking, dreaming and sleep states is called Virt, Hiranyagarbha and Iswara respectively. Its fourth state is the Brahman. MU states that the Ātman and the Brahman are identical and each has these four quarters as stated. These reflexive correspondences are ontological in nature as far as consciousness is concerned and they have epistemological implications as well as far as our methods of obtaining knowledge of the external world is concerned. The epistemological key is in the assertion “Sarvam hyetat Brahma” and it means, all attributes of Brahman such as having four quarters etc are inherent in everything (sarvam), which, in turn, means that all objects, nay the whole universe, must have four corresponding aspects. We discuss some applications of reflexivity through subject-object duality and psychophysical parallelism in Physics and Biology.