This chapter traces the historical development of mirror models of consciousness in Indian philosophy, beginning with the early Vedic theory of resemblances between human and divine realms. It argues that later theories of reflection preserve the general structure of the Vedic model of formal causation. The chapter then examines the early theory of reflection in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, specifically in the story of Prajāpati’s instruction to Indra and Virocana. Subsequent sections survey reductionist mirror models in Buddhism and mirror models in Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and Kaśmiri Śaivism, mapping various positions on the interpretation of the optical process of mirror reflection and its implications for consciousness, mental processes, and cognition.
In Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophy, consciousness and the mind are fundamentally distinct, and their apparent interaction is an illusion explained through mirror reflection. Early theories described external objects reflected in the mind, consciousness reflected in the mind, and the mind reflected in consciousness. Later thinkers developed these ideas: Vācaspati Miśra proposed that consciousness reflects in the mind, and Vijñānabhikṣu argued for mutual reflection—consciousness in the mind and back into consciousness. The chapter also examines Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya's creative but little-known interpretation of these reflection theories, engaging with it for the first time.
Advaita-Vedānta is a non-dualist tradition that sees the many individual selves as mere reflections of a single transcendent self. This chapter examines the concept of ahaṃkāra (the “I-maker”), an entity that arises from the mistaken identification of mind with consciousness and mediates between them. It provides the first analysis of Śaṅkara’s reinterpretation of the Sāṃkhya model of consciousness reflected in the mind, later developed by Padmapāda and Prakāśātman, and later mirror models that identify god with individual selves, as reported by Appayya Dīkṣita in the sixteenth century. These texts of the Vivaraṇa sub-school have been seriously understudied.