Yoga of Synthesis in Kashmir Shaivam

Author(s): S S Toshkhani
Publisher: S S Toshkhani

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as navamārga vill or the 'New Path', and justifiably so as like Spanda its origin cannot be directly traced to the scriptural tradition of the Āgamas. Utpaldeva wrote a commentary on his own work to elucidate his views, but the most remarkable and insightful commentaries on it are the Pratyabhijnā-vimarshini (Lāghavi Vritti) and the Pratyabhijnā-vivritti-vimarshini (Brihati Vritti) written by Abhinavagupta, the greatest interpreter of not only the Recognition School but of the whole of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism. Another important and very popular elucidatory work on the system, a virtual manual so to say, is Pratyabhijñā-hridayam by Kshemarāja, Abhinavagupta's closest disciple and an authentic commentator on Kashmir Shaiva texts. It is through this commentatorial literature that the concepts introduced by Somananda and Utpaladeva of self-recognition, perfect l-consciousness, appearance etc. came to be authentically interpreted and analysed in the overall context of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism.
Pratyabhijñā is regarded as the philosophy proper of Kashmir Shaivism, stressing as it does with sound arguments and profound reasoning the non-duality of Shiva as absolute consciousness. Its core doctrine is that liberation consists of the ultimate recognition of one's own true identity as Shiva through self-awareness. Its importance lies in the fact that it encompasses all the fundamental features common to different schools of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism and presents them as coherent system of philosophy and theology. The term pratyabhijñā does not just mean memory -- remembrance of something that is already known - as Kamlākar Mishra points out. It is recognition in the sense of knowledge of real identity, which is of key importance in Kashmir Shaivism. XIX Utpaldeva regards it as "intuitive capacity of consciousness to grasp its own nature", which Earlier Somananda did not.**
The Pratyabhijñā School uses the symbolism of light to explain the nature of the absolute. It represents the ultimate reality or Shiva as prakāsha or the light of universal consciousness and vimarsha or reflective awareness of that primordial light identified as Shakti. It is Vimarsha, the "self-referential capacity” or the power of consciousness, which makes the light of "consciousness conscious of itself”, to put it in the words of Paul Eduardo Muller-Ortega. “Shakti", says Muller- Ortega, is "responsible for the
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