Kashmir Shaivism - Part IV : Pratyabhijña: The Mirror of Recognition
The Pratyabhijña,“Doctrine of Recognition”,is not a mere school among others; it is consciousness remembering its own eternity. In the vast constellation of Kashmir Shaivism, it stands as the intellectual and spiritual heart, the inner pulse through which revelation becomes reflection. It is a practice of anamnesis: consciousness turning upon itself and seeing, with lucid intimacy, that it is the ground of all appearance.To know is not to acquire but to recall; liberation (moksha) is not a journey outward but an interior recognition that the knower, the known, and the act of knowing are one radiance.This is why the Pratyabhijña is called the philosophy of consciousness recognizing itself. The moment of remembrance,so it was I all along,is both epistemic and salvific. Shiva’s light, forgotten in the play of difference, turns upon itself and beholds its own reflection in the mirror of mind.
At the centre of this vision stands the dyad-unity of prakasha and vimarsha,illumination and self-awareness. Prakasha is the sheer luminosity of consciousness; vimarsha is that luminosity folding back upon itself, knowing itself as light. Without vimarsha, light would be inert radiance; without prakasha, awareness would have no brilliance to behold. Reality, therefore, is prakasha-vimarsha-maya,a living reflex of self-manifestation. As Motilal Pandit writes in Disclosure of Being, being “is self-revealing and self-certifying; it is the mirror in which existence sees its own face.”In this metaphysics, Shiva is not a transcendent creator but the autonomous energy of awareness (svatantrya-shakti), eternally free to appear as the universe. The world is neither illusion nor emanation but abhasa, the shining-forth of consciousness. Every object is real as a mode of the light that discloses it. This doctrine, abhasavada, makes Pratyabhijña a luminous realism: the cosmos is true because it is a gesture of awareness, not a shadow upon it. Mukhopadhyaya called this “the vision of reality as consciousness self-articulating,” where being and knowing are the same vibration.
Utpaladeva’s Ishvara-pratyabhijña-karika anchors ontology in experience. When one perceives a form, the perception already knows itself: the statement “I see” arises within the seeing. The self is not inferred,it is the very continuity that makes cognition possible. To recognize, we must remember; to remember, we must be the same consciousness that once perceived. Thus, recognition itself becomes the proof of an enduring, self-manifest subject. Isabelle Ratié’s analysis of the recovered Vivrti fragments shows Utpaladeva’s relentless logic: a cognition cannot be objectified by another cognition, for every act of knowing is simultaneously self-knowing. The Buddhist denial of permanence collapses under the weight of its own evidence, for even the claim “there is no enduring self” is uttered by a consciousness that remembers its intent. The world, then, is not a series of flashes but the continuous pulsation of the same awareness. Abhinavagupta inherits this insight and expands it into ontology. Every perception, he says, is Shiva beholding Himself in finite form. Pratyabhijña is therefore reflexive monism in structure: the Absolute is one, but its oneness includes the act of self-recognition. Being is not an abstract unity; it is the ecstasy of awareness knowing itself through difference. Unlike Advaita Vedanta’s abstract monism, the Pratyabhijña maintains an ontological realism in attitude: objects are real as modes of consciousness, not as inert projections. Existence is thus panentheistic.
If reality is reflexive, the body too must be read as a gesture of consciousness. In the luminous commentaries explored by Kerry Skora, Abhinavagupta transforms the physiology of desire and sensation into a phenomenology of touch (sparsha). The senses are not obstacles but instruments of recognition; through them, the infinite tastes itself as sound, colour, fragrance, and movement. Sphurattā,the “throb” of life,is awareness as pulse, as embodiment.In this context, the erotic union of Shiva and Shakti ceases to be symbolic theatre; it becomes a metaphysical event: consciousness and energy embracing in the heart of the practitioner. Vimarsha,awareness touching itself,unfolds as the subtle intimacy between the seer and the seen. Martin Skora calls this “erotic mysticism,” but its essence is phenomenological: the sensation of being aware. The human body, far from concealing divinity, is its radiant articulation.
Utpaladeva’s argument from recognition (pratyabhijña-nyaya) is the backbone of his system. Every cognition presupposes a self that endures through time; memory and perception meet only within that continuity. If knowledge were merely representational, as the Buddhists contend, no recognition could occur. The very possibility of saying “this is that” refutes momentariness. Abhinavagupta amplifies this insight: cognition does not arise in a vacuum but in a field of self-reference. Knowledge is identity becoming explicit. When consciousness appears to know an object, it is only knowing its own power of appearing as other. There is thus no epistemic bridge to be crossed between knower and known,they are one vibration of awareness. Pratyabhijña dissolves dualism not by denial but by comprehension: the object is not false; it is the subject’s own reflection.
Because cognition is self-articulate, language is not an external instrument but the texture of consciousness itself. Abhinavagupta, in the light of Bhartrhari yet distinct from him, rejects the separate entity of sphota( inner, instantaneous revelation of meaning on hearing a word) .Meaning arises from the living vibration of phonemes (varna), each infused with awareness. Torella’s study of How Is Verbal Signification Possible? shows that for Abhinavagupta, speech is vāk as consciousness, not a conventional sign-system but the resonance of Being communicating with itself. In this view, the mantra is not magical sound but reflexive speech: consciousness invoking its own depths. As Motilal Pandit observes in The Philosophical and Practical Aspects of Kashmir Shaivism, mantra is remembrance made audible,the word tracing its way back to the silence that utters it. Language thus becomes yoga; to speak or to listen with awareness is to participate in the cosmic discourse of Shiva.
Every system conceals a teleology,an account of purpose. In Pratyabhijña, purpose is not imposed from without; it is inherent in svatantrya, divine autonomy. Shiva’s freedom is the freedom to manifest, to hide, and to rediscover Himself. The limitation (anava), the veiling power (maya), and the law of action (karma) are not alien shackles but self-chosen veils. The Infinite becomes finite to savour the joy of remembering its infinitude. Abhinavagupta names this cosmic movement lila, the play of concealment and revelation. Bondage (bandha) is divine forgetfulness; liberation (moksha) is divine recollection. The world exists so that recognition may occur. Christopher Wallis’s study of alchemical metaphors illuminates how Abhinava compares spiritual practice to the refinement of base metal into gold,the transformation of awareness from opacity to lucidity through progressive immersions (samavesha), culminating in turyatita, (Turyatita: the fourth form of consciousness beyond waking (jagrat), dreaming (svapna), and deep sleep (susupti) - a state beyond transcendence,where consciousness, having realized its unity, remains perpetually aware amid all experience, embracing the world as its own luminous self). Teleology here is aesthetic: the purpose of existence is the delight of self-recognition.
Abhinavagupta’s genius was to extend the logic of recognition into the realm of art. In the theatre of emotion, he saw a mirror of metaphysics. The spectator who experiences rasa,the distilled essence of feeling,momentarily transcends individuality; the self becomes universal, the actor and audience one awareness. The bliss of aesthetic relish (rasananda) and the bliss of liberation (brahmananda) are, in Abhinava’s words, “of the same essence.” Gerald Larson’s expositions show how this insight unites aesthetics and soteriology: art becomes yoga, perception sacrament. The teleology of creation thus returns to its source in wonder (vismaya). When consciousness beholds its own splendour through form and emotion, it trembles with joy. That tremor,neither knowledge nor ignorance, neither affirmation nor negation,is the ontological mood of reality itself.
The Pratyabhijña does not prescribe an elaborate ritual but a simple, radical orientation of attention: anusandhana,continual turning of awareness upon itself. Every perception is an opportunity for recognition; every breath a reminder that the witness and the witnessed share one pulse. Ksemaraja, in the Pratyabhijña-hrdayam, condenses the entire philosophy into twenty aphorisms. The first, declares consciousness free and self-causing; the last,rests in silence. Between them lies the spiral of manifestation and return: the cosmos as remembrance.Grace (shaktipata) is the axis of this return. It is not bestowed from outside; it is the heart’s own decision to awaken. As Swami Lakshman Joo paraphrased, “When you recognize yourself as Shiva, you do not vanish,you expand until everything breathes as you.” Recognition is thus the supreme sacrament, the offering of self to self.
In the culmination of the system, philosophy and mysticism converge. The world, seen through recognition, is no longer a field of opposites but the play of one awareness. The sage does not escape existence; he beholds it as Shiva’s laughter,each instant a revelation. Vismaya, wonder, becomes the texture of being: consciousness astonished at itself. Motilal Pandit calls this “the spontaneous revelation of the infinite in the finite.” Ksemaraja ends his aphorisms in a spirit of silence because the final recognition cannot be spoken; it can only shine. When the mirror has recognized the face, there remains no mirror,only light.This philosophy sanctifies embodiment as the living field of awareness, the theatre where the infinite enters the finite to behold its own splendour. And through this drama of concealment and revelation, creation reveals its teleology: the play of divine freedom whose consummation is aesthetic wonder. For what else could the universe be but the joyous expression of consciousness tasting its own infinity?
Shoaib Mohammad (KAS),
Chief Accounts Officer, J&K Govt
