The Ajaḍa-pramātṛ-siddhi Of Utpaladeva - A Summary

Utpaladeva, disciple and successor of Somānanda, and the grand-guru of the celebrated Abhinavagupta, wrote the Pratyabhijñā Kārikās (Verses on Self Recognition), setting down the principles of the Pratyabhijñā philosophy, the doctrine of Self-Recognition in Kashmir Shaivism. It is based on the principles and insights of Śivadṛṣṭi (“The Outlook of Shiva”), Somānanda’s seminal work. Somānanda himself only uses the term pratyabhijñā only once in the entire work, and not really in the sense that Utpala does later (Torella). Utpala was a master in the celebrated Kashmiri tradition, anchored in his unity with the world-order, God-intoxicated, and able to infect others with that current. Besides his best known and most influential work, the Pratyabhijñā Kārikās, he was also the author of a commentary, Vṛtti, on Śivadṛṣṭi, two auto- commentaries on the Pratyabhijñā Kārikās, a set of very beautiful stotras, hymns, Śivastotrāvali, and a corpus called “Siddhitrayī” made up of three loosely related works called Ajaḍa Pramātṛ Siddhi (proof or attainment, of the conscious knower), Īśvara Siddhi (Proof of the Lord), and Saṃbandha Siddhi (Proof of Relationship). Several excellent translations of the Pratyabhijñā Kārikās in English are available (Pandey, Pandit, Torella), as also of the available portions of his vritti on Śivadṛṣṭi (Nemec) and the Śivastotrāvali (Rhodes-Bailly). A Hindi translation of the Siddhi-trayi is available. (Vyas) A detailed analysis of Īśvara Siddhi has been published by Ratie. This is an excerpt from the larger article also included on this site. Comments are welcome.

An overview of the principles presented in Ajada-Pramatr-Siddhi:

This text, which could be titled “Knowing the Conscious Knower”, is concerned with the nature of reality. What is reality? What constitutes existence and non-existence? The text starts with the question of the nature of reality, or existence, of things. The task undertaken is to understand the distinction between existence and non-existence; being and non-being; the living and the conscious vs. the non-living and the non-conscious. How do we know that something is real? What distinguishes it from the unreal? Is there something inherent in true and untrue things that distinguishes them from each other? If there were, how would one know that the distinguishing factor is even there? Even to know that, one would need consciousness. Regressing in this manner, Utpala finds that the only thing that can distinguish true from false is consciousness. This formulation culminates in a verse, often quoted by Abhinavagupta, that observes, “these jada (inert) things, that act as if they don’t even exist in or by themselves, belong only to consciousness.” it is consciousness that confers reality on things. Nothing else is capable of doing so.

Much of the text deals with the nature of and relationship between “idam” - this and aham, “I”. Everything in the universe looks like an idam, “this”. However, if we focus on the nature of this idam, we find that it is based on, or sits in, its awareness, its consciousness. If you stay with this awareness, which starts as an awareness of the idam, it leads you directly to “aham”, the “I- consciousness”.

Said another way, when consciousness sees a thing with its power of knowing, it comes back and resolves in itself. In Utpala’s words, it finds its fulfillment in so’ham – “that I am”. The idam transmutes into the light and ecstasy of so’ham.

Didactically, so far this “I” looks pretty much like the individual, limited, I, the limited knower. So Utpala next sets out to deal with this individual knower, the jiva.

The knower, Utpala says, has a dual nature: limited and unlimited. The limited knower is the one defined by the usual mind-body complex. However, it is inextricably woven into, or forever anchored in, the unlimited knower.

We got this far by tracing, or staying with, our awareness. If we keep at it, we find that that awareness does not really change as we go from object to object. It is the same awareness. There is not a second or a third awareness inside us as we go from object to object. In other words, the individual self, the individual awareness, provides the unity to the individual’s world. That unity of the individual’s world is not the property or result of the inert nature of his world. The inanimate world is incapable of providing such unity. It is the non-differentness or non- multiplicity of the individual awareness that provides that unity.

The awareness of everything rests in this aham vimarsha, this self-awareness. It is what connects everything. Because it connects everything, it pervades everything. Because it pervades everything, it is unlimited by anything.

The individual self may look like the knower; however, all its defining characteristics like the life force, mind and body are really “knowables”. So what appears as the individual knower is ultimately not the real knower. It just looks like one. It parades as one. It itself rests in the para-pramātṛ, the supreme knower. The reality of things may originally have seemed like it rested in the individual, limited self, but really it rests in the supreme, the unlimited Self.

How the supreme or unlimited knower manages to become limited by life force, etc, Utpala says, is explained at length in the Pratyabhijna Karikas. What this means, is that aham vimarsha, which is the connecting power and the resting place of everything, is not the property of the individual self; this aham vimarsha is actually pure consciousnsess, free of all limitation. Aham bhava, this I-sense, is pure consciousness, prakash, at rest in itself. In other words, to think that your awareness is your awareness, i.e., that it belongs to you, is a silly notion. Really, you belong to this awareness, this aham vimarsha.

This Aham-bhava, I consciousness, is not limited by anything. In fact, it is the basis of everything. It needs nothing; it is free. In fact, it is the source and the creator of everything. It administers this creative capability through its power of maya. And since it, or she, is the source of everything, she is the great mother.

We started with the world of Idams - of this and that, all separated from each other. We wondered which Idam was true or not true, what existed or did not exist. We found that all that exists, exists in samvid, consciousness. The very fact of the differences implied the capability of knowing the differences. The differences point to their awareness, their unity. Objects point to their knower. At first that knower appears to be the individual knower. However, as we examine that knowing, we realize it can’t be limited by the known. The knowing pervades the known. The one that gives reality to everything, including ourselves - the individual knowers, and connects everything, is awareness. It is not capable of being limited by anything. What looks like a world of this and that, of jada and the ajada things, end up resting in the one consciousness. That consciousness is what is sat, true, what is chetana, alive. The world is nothing but this one non-dual samvid, consciousness.

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