Chapter VIII - The Pratyabhijñā or Recognitive System

Other Māheśvaras are dissatisfied with the views set out in the Śaiva system as erroneous in attributing to motiveless and insentient things causality (in regard to the bondage and liberation of transmigrating spirits). They therefore seek another system, and proclaim that the construction of the world (or series of environments of those spirits) is by the mere will of the Supreme Lord. They pronounce that this Supreme Lord, who is at once other than and the same with the several cognitions and cognita, who is identical with the transcendent self posited by one's own consciousness, by rational proof, and by revelation, and who possesses independence, that is, the power of witnessing all things without reference to aught ulterior, gives manifestation, in the mirror of one's own soul, to all entities^[1] as if they were images reflected upon it. Thus looking upon recognition as a new method for the attainment of ends and of the highest end, available to all men alike, without any the slightest trouble and exertion, such as external and internal worship, suppression of the breath, and the like, these Māheśvaras set forth the system of recognition (pratyabhijñā). The extent of this system is thus described by one of their authorities—

"The aphorisms, the commentary, the gloss, the two explications, the greater and the less,

"The five topics, and the expositions,—such is the system of recognition."

The first aphorism in their text-book is as follows^[2]:—

"Having reached somehow or other the condition of a slave of Maheśvara, and wishing also to help mankind,

"I set forth the recognition of Maheśvara, as the method of attaining all felicity."

[This aphorism may be developed as follows]:—

"Somehow or other," by a propitiation, effected by God, of the lotus feet of a spiritual director identical with God, "having reached," having fully attained, this condition, having made it the unintercepted object of fruition to myself. Thus knowing that which has to be known, he is qualified to construct a system for others: otherwise the system would be a mere imposture.

Maheśvara is the reality of unintermitted self-luminousness, beatitude, and independence, by portions of whose divine essence Viṣṇu, Viriñci, and other deities are deities, who, though they transcend the fictitious world, are yet implicated in the infinite illusion.

The condition of being a slave to Maheśvara is the being a recipient of that independence or absoluteness which is the essence of the divine nature, a slave being one to whom his lord grants all things according to his will and pleasure (i.e., dāsya, from dā).

The word mankind imports that there is no restriction of the doctrine to previously qualified students. Whoever he may be to whom this exposition of the divine nature is made, he reaps its highest reward, the emanatory principium itself operating to the highest end of the transmigrating souls. It has been accordingly laid down in the Śiva-dṛṣṭi by that supreme guide the revered Somānandanātha—

"When once the nature of Śiva that resides in all things has been known with tenacious recognition, whether by proof or by instruction in the words of a spiritual director,

"There is no further need of doing aught, or of any further reflection. When he knows Suvarṇa (or Śiva) a man may cease to act and to reflect."

The word also excludes the supposition that there is room in self which has recognised the nature of Maheśvara, and which manifests to itself its own identity with him, and is therefore fully satisfied, for any other motive than felicity for others. The well-being of others is a motive, whatever may be said, for the definition of a motive applies to it: for there is no such divine curse laid upon man that self-regard should be his sole motive to the exclusion of a regard for others. Thus Akṣapāda (i. 24) defines a motive: A motive is that object towards which a man energises.

The preposition upa in upapādayami (I set forth) indicates proximity: the result is the bringing of mankind near unto God.

Hence the word all in the phrase the method of attaining all felicities. For when the nature of the Supreme Being is attained, all felicities, which are but the efflux thereof, are overtaken, as if a man acquired the mountain Rohaṇa (Adam's Peak), he would acquire all the treasures it contains. If a man acquire the divine nature, what else is there that he can ask for? Accordingly Utpalācārya says—

"What more can they ask who are rich in the wealth of devotion? What else can they ask who are poor in this?"

We have thus explained the motive expressed in the words the method of attaining all felicities, on the supposition that the compound term is a Tatpuruṣa genitively constructed. Let it be taken as a Bahuvrīhi or relative compound. Then the recognition of Maheśvara, the knowing him through vicarious idols, has for its motive the full attainment, the manifestation, of all felicities, of every external and internal permanent happiness in their proper nature. In the language of everyday life, recognition is a cognition relative to an object represented in memory: for example, This (perceived) is the same (as the remembered) Caitra. In the recognition propounded in this system,—there being a God whose omnipotence is learnt from the accredited legendaries, from accepted revelation, and from argumentation,—there arises in relation to my presented personal self the cognition that I am that very God,—in virtue of my recollection of the powers of that God.

This same recognition I set forth. To set forth is to enforce. I establish this recognition by a stringent process which renders it convincing. [Such is the articulate development of the first aphorism of the Recognitive Institutes.]

Here it may be asked: If soul is manifested only as consubstantial with God, why this laboured effort to exhibit the recognition? The answer is this:—The recognition is thus exhibited, because though the soul is, as you contend, continually manifested as self-luminous (and therefore identical with God), it is nevertheless under the influence of the cosmothetic illusion manifested as partial, and therefore the recognition must be exhibited by an expansion of the cognitive and active powers in order to achieve the manifestation of the soul as total (the self being to the natural man a part, to the man of insight the whole, of the divine pleroma). Thus, then, the syllogism: This self must be God, because it possesses cognitive and active powers; for so far forth as any one is cognitive and active, to that extent he is a lord, like a lord in the world of everyday life, or like a king, therefore the soul is God. The five-membered syllogism is here employed, because so long as we deal with the illusory order of things, the teaching of the Naiyāyikas may be accepted. It has thus been said by the son of Udayākara—

"What self-luminous self can affirm or deny that self-active and cognitive is Maheśvara the primal being?

"Such recognition must be effected by an expansion of the powers, the self being cognised under illusion, and imperfectly discerned."

And again—

"The continuance of all living creatures in this transmigratory world lasts as long as their respiratory involucrum; knowledge and action are accounted the life of living creatures.

"Of these, knowledge is spontaneously developed, and action (or ritual), which is best at Kāśi,

"Is indicated by others also: different from these is real knowledge."

And also—

"The knowledge of these things follows the sequence of those things:

"The knower, whose essence is beatitude and knowledge without succession, is Maheśvara."

Somānandanātha also says—

"He always knows by identity with Śiva: he always knows by identity with the real."

Again at the end of the section on knowledge—

"Unless there were this unity with Śiva, cognitions could not exist as facts of daily life:

"Unity with God is proved by the unity of light. He is the one knower (or illuminator of cognitions).

"He is Maheśvara, the great Lord, by reason of the unbroken continuity of objects:

"Pure knowledge and action are the playful activity of the deity."

The following is an explanation of Abhinava-gupta:—The text, "After that as it shines shines the all of things, by the light of that shines diversely this All," teaches that God illumines the whole round of things by the glory of His luminous intelligence, and that the diversity or plurality of the object world, whereby the light which irradiates objects is a blue, a yellow light, and the like, arises from diversity of tint cast upon the light by the object. In reality, God is without plurality or difference, as transcending all limitations of space, time, and figure. He is pure intelligence, self-luminousness, the manifester; and thus we may read in the Śaiva aphorisms, "Self is intelligence." His synonymous titles are Intelligential Essence, Unintermitted Cognition, Irrespective Intuition, Existence as a mass of Beatitude, Supreme Domination. This self-same existing self is knowledge.

By pure knowledge and action (in the passage of Somānandanātha cited above) are meant real or transcendent cognition and activity. Of these, the cognition is self-luminousness, the activity is energy constructive of the world or series of spheres of transmigratory experience. This is described in the section on activity—

"He by his power of bliss gives light unto these objects, through the efficacy of his will: this activity is creativeness."

And at the close of the same section—

"The mere will of God, when he wills to become the world under its forms of jar, of cloth, and other objects, is his activity worked out by motive and agent.

"This process of essence into emanation, whereby if this be that comes to be, cannot be attributed to motiveless, insentient things."

According to these principles, causality not pertaining either to the insentient or to the non-divine intelligence, the mere will of Maheśvara, the absolute Lord, when he wills to emanate into thousands of forms, as this or that difference, this or that action, this or that modification of entity, of birth, continuance, and the like, in the series of transmigratory environments,—his mere will is his progressively higher and higher activity, that is to say, his universal creativeness.

How he creates the world by his will alone is clearly exhibited in the following illustration—

"The tree or jar produced by the mere will of thaumaturgists, without clay, without seed, continues to serve its proper purpose as tree or jar."

If clay and similar materials were really the substantial cause of the jar and the rest, how could they be produced by the mere volition of the thaumaturgist? If you say: Some jars and some plants are made of clay, and spring from seeds, while others arise from the bare volition of the thaumaturgist; then we should inform you that it is a fact notorious to all the world that different things must emanate from different materials.

As for those who say that a jar or the like cannot be made without materials to make it of, and that when a thaumaturgist makes one he does so by putting atoms in motion by his will, and so composing it: they may be informed that unless there is to be a palpable violation of the causal relation, all the co-efficients, without exception, must be desiderated; to make the jar there must be the clay, the potter's staff, the potter's wheel, and all the rest of it; to make a body there must be the congress of the male and female, and the successive results of that congress. Now, if that be the case, the genesis of a jar, a body, or the like, upon the mere volition of the thaumaturgist, would be hardly possible.

On the other hand, there is no difficulty in supposing that Mahādeva, amply free to remain within or to over-step any limit whatever, the Lord, manifold in his operancy, the intelligent principle, thus operates. Thus it is that Vasuguptācārya says—

"To him that painted this world-picture without materials, without appliances, without a wall to paint it on,—to him be glory, to him resplendent with the lunar digit, to him that bears the trident."

It may be asked: If the supersensible self be no other than God, how comes this implication in successive transmigratory conditions? The answer is given in the section treating of accredited institution—

"This agent of cognition, blinded by illusion, transmigrates through the fatality of works:

"Taught his divine nature by science, as pure intelligence, he is enfranchised."

It may be asked: If the subject and the object are identical, what difference can there be between the self bound and the self liberated in regard to the objects cognisable by each? The answer to this question is given in a section of the Tattvārtha-Saṅgraha—

"Self liberated cognises all that is cognisable as identical with itself, like Maheśvara free from bondage: the other (or unliberated) self has in it infinite plurality."

An objection may be raised: If the divine nature is essential to the soul, there can be no occasion to seek for this recognition; for if all requisites be supplied, the seed does not fail to germinate because it is unrecognised. Why, then, this toilsome effort for the recognition of the soul? To such an objection we reply: Only listen to the secret we shall tell you. All activity about objects is of two degrees, being either external, as the activity of the seed in developing the plant, or internal, as the activity which determines felicity, which consists in an intuition which terminates in the conscious self. The first degree of activity presupposes no such recognition as the system proposes, the second does presuppose it. In the Recognitive System the peculiar activity is the exertion of the power of unifying personal and impersonal spirit, a power which is the attainment of the highest and of mediate ends, the activity consisting in the intuition I am God. To this activity a recognition of the essential nature of the soul is a pre-requisite.

It may be urged that peculiar activity terminating in the conscious self is observed independent of recognition. To this it is replied: A certain damsel, hearing of the many good qualities of a particular gallant, fell in love with him before she had seen him, and agitated by her passion and unable to suffer the pain of not seeing him, wrote to him a love-letter descriptive of her condition. He at once came to her, but when she saw him she did not recognise in him the qualities she had heard about; he appeared much the same as any other man, and she found no gratification in his society. So soon, however, as she recognised those qualities in him as her companions now pointed them out, she was fully gratified. In like manner, though the personal self be manifested as identical with the universal soul, its manifestation effects no complete satisfaction so long as there is no recognition of those attributes; but as soon as it is taught by a spiritual director to recognise in itself the perfections of Maheśvara, his omniscience, omnipotence, and other attributes, it attains the whole pleroma of being.

It is therefore said in the fourth section—

"As the gallant standing before the damsel is disdained as like all other men, so long as he is unrecognised, though he humble himself before her with all manner of importunities: In like manner the personal self of mankind, though it be the universal soul, in which there is no perfection unrealised, attains not its own glorious nature; and therefore this recognition thereof must come into play."

This system has been treated in detail by Abhinava-gupta and other teachers, but as we have in hand a summary exposition of systems, we cannot extend the discussion of it any further lest our work become too prolix. This then may suffice.^[3]

A. E. G.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Read bhāvān for bhāvāt.

[2]:

Cf. supra, p. 113. Mādhava here condenses Abhinava Gupta's commentary. Abhinava Gupta lived in the beginning of the eleventh century (see Bühler's Tour in Cashmere, pp. 66, 80).

[3]:

I have seen in Calcutta a short Comm. on the Śiva sūtras by Utpala, the son of Udayākara (cf. pp. 130, 131).—E. B. C.