his foundational work, the Sivadrsti, consisting of seven chapters of 700 verses, declared (I.

2) that Lord Siva is the essence and identity of all the beings. He shines in all the beings. He is bliss and consciousness whose free will nothing can impede and who manifests himself through his powers of knowledge and action. This conctept of the highest reality is basically different from the Buddhistic idea of momentary vijnana, from the nirguna (hence passive) Brahman of Sankara, from the dualistic conception of Purusa and Prakrti of the Sankhya and from the later schools of Vaisnava Vedanta. Somananda not merely propounded his theory of the ultimate reality, he refuted the grammarians' theory of Sabda Brahman, the views of the Saktas, the dualistic Saivas, and the followers of the Yoga and demonstrated the lack of logic and consistency in their view of reality. Utpaladeva, Utpalacarya, or simply Utpala, built the great edifice of the Pratyabhijna on the foundations laid by his teacher Somananda. He wrote his famous Isvarapratyabhijna Sutra or Karika by working out at great length the germinal ideas of the founder of the system (Utpala treats his Karika as the reflection of the Sivadrsti) and by providing a suitable fencing against the onslaughts of the counter systems of Indian philosophy. Utpala advocates the permanence and universality of the self and criticises the Vijnanavadin's theory of momentariness and individuality. He asserts that freedom of will, thought and action is basic essence of being. Being must have innate power to become at will. He vehemently opposes the passive Brahman of Vedanta and lack of integrality between Purusa and Prakrti of the Samkhya. Vasugupta had recognized three ways of final freedom of human beings: Sambhava, Sukta and Anava. These ways required an ascetic life of complete detachment and austere practice of Yoga. Somananda and Utpala show a new way to freedom and beatitude. The realization in the Pratyabhijna system, to quote from the Introduction of Vol. II (pp. v-vi) by Dr. K. C. Pandey, "consists, not in the actualisation of the potential, nor in the attainment of something new, but in penetrating through the veil that makes the Mahesvara appear as the individual of which everyone is immediately aware and in recognising the Mahesvara in the individual." The followers of this system daily recite the following verse which sums up the attitude of a Saiva: