Abhinavagupta Quotes on Mind
Abhinavagupta (c. 950 – c. 1016), the Kashmiri polymath whose Tantrāloka (Light on the Tantras) supplied non-dual Kashmir Śaivism with its most ambitious systematic exposition, gave classical Indian philosophy of mind one of its most rigorous statements of the doctrine of consciousness as the supreme reality. The framework — drawing on the earlier Pratyabhijñā (Recognition) school of Utpaladeva — treats every act of cognition as the spontaneous self-articulation of a single luminous self-aware consciousness (samvit), with the consequent doctrine that liberation is the experiential recognition of the identity of the individual cognizer with the supreme conscious principle that has been concealing itself from itself in the apparent multiplicity of the world.
Quotes
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Attributed to Abhinavagupta:
“Consciousness alone is real; the world is its play.”
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Attributed to Abhinavagupta:
“Recognition of the Self is liberation.”
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Attributed to Abhinavagupta:
“Bliss is the inmost nature of consciousness.”
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Attributed to Abhinavagupta:
“Aesthetic experience reveals the structure of consciousness itself.”
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Attributed to Abhinavagupta:
“What is bound is bound only by ignorance of itself.”