A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.t2.1

c6.s3.t2.1

aspects of the microcosm, there come to be recognised the four aspects of the "makranthropos," a decidedly better word to use than "macrocosm". The Cosmic consciousness comes to be regarded as corresponding state by state to the Individual consciousness, and what is in the Individual comes to be found also in the World. Even though this idea is not fully brought out in the Upanishads, we already trace in them an incipient tendency towards that view. Leibnitz's theory of representation is already present in the Chhāndogya Upanishad : "Within this city of Brahman (this body), there is a small lotus-like place (the heart), and within it a small internal space ; that which is within this small space is worthy of search and understanding....Of the very kind as this outer space is, of the same kind is this internal space inside the heart ; both heaven and earth are contained within it, both fire and air, both the sun and the moon, both the lightning and the stars" (S. 19). Here we see the root of the theory that the individual is to be regarded as the world in miniature, and the world only the individual writ large, and that the individual object serves as a mirror in which the whole of reality is reflected—a theory to which Leibnitz gives expression when he says : "In the smallest particle of matter, there is a world of creatures, living beings, animals, entelechies, souls. Each portion of matter may be conceived as like....a pond full of fishes."'¹