"There is no further need of doing aught, or of any further reflection. When he knows Suvarṇa (or Śiva) a man may cease to act and to reflect."
The word also excludes the supposition that there is room in self which has recognised the nature of Maheśvara, and which manifests to itself its own identity with him, and is therefore fully satisfied, for any other motive than felicity for others. The well-being of others is a motive, whatever may be said, for the definition of a motive applies to it: for there is no such divine curse laid upon man that self-regard should be his sole motive to the exclusion of a regard for others. Thus Akshapáda (i. 24) defines a motive: A motive is that object towards which a man energises.
The preposition upa in upapádayami (I set forth) indicates proximity: the result is the bringing of mankind near unto God.
Hence the word all in the phrase the method of attaining all felicities. For when the nature of the Supreme Being is attained, all felicities, which are but the efflux thereof, are overtaken, as if a man acquired the mountain Rohaṇa (Adam's Peak), he would acquire all the treasures it contains. If a man acquire the divine nature, what else is there that he can ask for? Accordingly Utpaláchárya says—
"What more can they ask who are rich in the wealth of devotion? What else can they ask who are poor in this?"
We have thus explained the motive expressed in the words the method of attaining all felicities, on the supposition that the compound term is a Tatpurusha genitively constructed. Let it be taken as a Bahuvríhi or relative compound. Then the recognition of Maheśvara, the knowing him through vicarious idols, has for its motive the full attainment, the manifestation, of all felicities, of every external and internal permanent happiness in their proper nature. In the language of everyday life, recognition is a cognition relative to an object represented in memory: for example, This (perceived) is the same (as the remembered) Chaitra. In the recognition propounded in this system,—there being a God whose omnipotence is learnt from the accredited legendaries, from accepted revelation, and from argumentation,—there arises in relation to my presented personal self the cognition that I am that very God,—in virtue of my recollection of the powers of that God.
This same recognition I set forth. To set forth is to enforce. I establish this recognition by a stringent process which renders it convincing. [Such is the articulate development of the first aphorism of the Recognitive Institutes.]
Here it may be asked: If soul is manifested only as consubstantial with God, why this laboured effort to exhibit the recognition? The answer is this:—The recognition is thus exhibited, because though the soul is, as you contend, continually manifested as self-luminous (and therefore identical with God), it is nevertheless under the influence of the cosmothetic illusion manifested as partial, and therefore the recognition must be exhibited by an expansion of the cognitive and active powers in order to achieve the manifestation of the soul as total (the self being to the natural man a part, to the man of insight the whole, of the divine pleroma). Thus, then, the syllogism: This self must be God, because it possesses cognitive and active powers; for so far forth as any one is cognitive and active, to that extent he is a lord, like a lord in the world of everyday life, or like a king, therefore the soul is God. The five-membered syllogism is here employed, because so long as we deal with the illusory order of things, the teaching of the Naiyáyikas may be accepted. It has thus been said by the son of Udayákara—
"What self-luminous self can affirm or deny that self-active and cognitive is Maheśvara the primal being?
"Such recognition must be effected by an expansion of the powers, the self being cognised under illusion, and imperfectly discerned."