Interpreting Across Mystical Boundaries: An Analysis of Samādhi in the Trika-Kaula Tradition

Abstract

The following analysis of Abhinavagupta’s system of mystical practice (termed the fourfold path or upāya-catuṣṭayam) aims to illustrate the ways in which the Western discourse of duality, because of its fundamental acceptance of a mind/body split, is an unsuccessful heuristic model for understanding non-Western mystical traditions. Specifically, I examine the hermeneutical limitations one encounters when applying W. T. Stace’s model of comparative mysticism, which gives a Cartesian privilege to the ‘introvertive’ mystical experience of mental inwardness over its ‘extrovertive’ counterpart, to Abhinavagupta’s eleventh-century Trika-Kaula system. Abhinavagupta’s own discourse on mystical states of consciousness inverts Stace’s model and ultimately collapses the distinction between introvertive and extrovertive. In the preparatory stages of Trika-Kaula practice, the adept harnesses an inward, regressive power (visarga-śakti) in pursuit of an introvertive mystical experience with eyes closed (nimīlana-samādhi ). In the later stages, however, the same regressive power is inverted to reveal its progressive side and the Tantric thereby attains an extrovertive experience with eyes opened (unmīlana-samādhi ). At the culmination of his or her practice the Tantric attains a state of consciousness in which the inner and outer become united in the singular continuum of consciousness. At this ‘no-path’ stage of transcendent experience (bhairavīmudrā) the Self within and the world without are one.