Subject combination and the initiatory experience in Śrīvidyā
Religious Studies June 29, 2026 R. Krishnaswamy, Tarinee Awasthi
This article examines the Tantric tradition of Śrīvidyā, focusing on religious initiation into esoteric practice, where the initiator reportedly shares an experience with the initiand. The authors propose that such events can be understood as a 'shared token experience' and defend this concept using arguments for the epistemic value of religious experience. They argue that this phenomenon challenges two common assumptions about subjectivity: that each conscious subject is a unified whole with mereologically connected experiences, and that each subject's experiential field is bounded to one subject alone. The authors contend these assumptions do not necessarily preclude the possibility of a shared token experience.