Pratyabhijñā

Pratyabhijñā, “recognition”, is the name of a school of non-dual Śaiva philosophy founded in Kashmir by Somānanda and Utpaladeva in the ninth and tenth centuries, and developed by Abhinavagupta and his disciple Kṣemarāja. Its central teaching is that liberation is not the attainment of something new but the recognition of what one already is: the self is Śiva, the one universal consciousness.

The school compares this to a woman who has heard of a lover’s virtues but feels nothing when he stands before her until she recognizes him, and then is filled with joy. So the individual, who has always been Śiva, does not experience it until recognition dawns.

Unlike Advaita Vedānta, the Pratyabhijñā school holds that the world is not an illusion but the real self-manifestation of consciousness. Śiva is not inert being but consciousness endowed with freedom (svātantrya) and the power of self-awareness, who freely appears as the many while remaining one. Bondage is the contraction of this infinite consciousness into limited selves; recognition is its re-expansion.