Jivanmukta — Liberation While Living
A Jivanmukta is one who has attained liberation (Moksha) while still alive — who lives in non-dual awareness in the midst of ordinary life, beyond the conditioning of karma while fully engaged with the world.
The concept of Jivanmukti (liberation while living) is one of the most important and distinctive teachings of the non-dual Tantric and Vedantic traditions. Unlike traditions that envision liberation only after death (videhamukti — liberation in a bodiless state), Tantra insists that full liberation can and does occur in a living body. The Jivanmukta (one who is liberated while living) is fully established in non-dual awareness — no longer identified with the body-mind while still inhabiting it. From outside, the Jivanmukta appears to live normally — eating, speaking, relating — but from inside, all experience is recognized as Shiva's play. The karmas that produced the current birth continue to bear fruit (Prarabdha Karma) but cannot generate new karmic binding because the sense of doership (Karta) has dissolved. Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Swami Ramakrishna are considered modern examples of Jivanmuktas.
The Jivanmukta lives in the world as the lotus lives in water — present but untouched, engaged but unbound.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow's concept of 'peak experiences' and 'plateau experiences' — the latter being a sustained, calm non-dual awareness available during ordinary activities — is the closest secular psychological analogue to the Tantric concept of Jivanmukti as ongoing, effortless liberation.
Yoga Vasistha
Written about in
- What Tantra says about freedom
Freedom while still alive and still in a body. The tradition is insistent on this, against the view that liberation only completes after death.
- What Tantra says about illness and the body failing
Jivanmukti is liberation in a living body, and the tradition is explicit that prarabdha karma — the karma that produced this birth — keeps bearing fruit anyway. The liberated person still gets ill and still dies. What ends is the sense of doership, not the symptoms.