A Day in the Life of an Aesthetic Tāntrika: From Synaesthetic Garden to Lucid Dreaming and Spaciousness
Kerry Skora
Religions March 14, 2018 DOI: 10.3390/rel9030081 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming Lucid dreaming |
| Key points | Argues that Abhinavagupta's blending of Aesthetics and Tantra follows from his view of liberation, which re-integrates the body and senses into religious life and affirms the material world. |
Abstract
This essay addresses the question of the relationship between Aesthetics and Tantra, in the world-view and life-world of Hindu Tantric visionary Abhinavagupta (ca. 975–1025 C.E.) and his tradition. I respond to a classic work on Abhinavagupta’s understanding of aesthetic experience and religious experience by shifting the focus from ultimate experience to the life of a liberated being. I argue that Abhinavagupta’s blending of Aesthetics and Tantra naturally follows from his view of liberation, which re-integrates the body and senses into the religious life, and affirms the reality of the material world in which the liberated being is embedded. I recover the very humanness and boundedness of Abhinavagupta as an additional way of understanding liberation. I draw on hymns of praise, descriptions of ritual, thoughts on hermeneutics of Being, and complex metaphors, from Abhinavagupta’s tradition, and engage with various thinkers, including Performance Theorist Richard Schechner and neurologist James Austin, to flesh out complex metaphors depicting the relationship between consciousness and the world. I conclude by reflecting on similarities between the Trika model of Self, as interpreted by Abhinavagupta’s student Kṣemarāja, and lucid dreaming.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on lucid dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| What I make up when I wake up: anti-experience views and narrative fabrication of dreams | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| New perspectives for the study of lucid dreaming: From brain stimulation to philosophical theories of self-consciousness | 2010 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Lucid dreaming: Evidence and methodology | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |