THE PRATYABHIJNA-DARSANA, OR RECOGNITIVE SYSTEM.
Other Máhesvaras are dissatisfied with the views set out in the Saiva
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[150]
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 Máhesvaras set forth
the system of recognition (_pratyabhijñá_). 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[151]:--
"Having reached somehow or other the condition of a slave of
Mahesvara, and wishing also to help mankind,
"I set forth the recognition of Mahesvara, 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.
Mahesvara is the reality of unintermitted self-luminousness,
beatitude, and independence, by portions of whose divine essence
Vishnu, Viriñchi, 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 Mahesvara 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._, _dásya_, from _dá_).
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
Siva-drishti by that supreme guide the revered Sománandanátha--
"When once the nature of Siva 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 Suvarna (or Siva) 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 Mahesvara, 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 Akshapáda (i. 24) defines a motive: A motive
is that object towards which a man energises.
The preposition _upa_ in _upapádayami_ (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 Rohana (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 Utpaláchárya 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 Tatpurusha genitively constructed. Let it be taken as a
Bahuvríhi or relative compound. Then the recognition of Mahesvara, 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) Chaitra. 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 Naiyáyikas may be accepted. It has thus
been said by the son of Udayákara--
"What self-luminous self can affirm or deny that
self-active and cognitive is Mahesvara 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 Kási,
"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 Mahesvara."
Sománandanátha also says--
"He always knows by identity with Siva: he always knows by
identity with the real."
Again at the end of the section on knowledge--
"Unless there were this unity with Siva, 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 Mahesvara, 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 Saiva
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 Sománandanátha 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
Mahesvara, 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 Mahádeva,
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 Vasuguptáchárya 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 Tattvártha-Sangraha--
"Self liberated cognises all that is cognisable as identical
with itself, like Mahesvara 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 Mahesvara, 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.[152]
A. E. G.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 150: Read _bháván_ for _bhávát_.]
[Footnote 151: Cf. _supra_, p. 113. Mádhava 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).]
[Footnote 152: I have seen in Calcutta a short Comm. on the Siva
sútras by Utpala, the son of Udayákara (cf. pp. 130, 131).--E. B. C.]