We begin our course with the most direct source for learning about Abhinavagupta: the autobiographical passages that conclude his major works. These verses comprise a series of self-portrayals that give us a precious window into Abhinavagupta’s life. Abhinavagupta narrates his own family lineage and also gives considerable information on the multiple lineages he studied. Here we glean a great deal about the intersecting religious worlds of medieval Kashmir during his career as a student whose longing for knowledge was boundless. We conclude with a look at the natural environment and intellectual atmosphere of tenth-century Kashmir. Abhinavagupta offers a glowing tribute to his own region, which is in harmony with other local poets who glorify this Himalayan vale. Collectively, these literary sources construct an “imaginary” of Kashmir as a land of unparalleled learning, agricultural riches, beautiful women, spiritual sanctity, and cultural sophistication. To grow up in this moment in Kashmir, Abhinavagupta suggests, is to be reared on the lap of Goddess Sarasvatī herself.

Focusing on Abhinavagupta’s writings as a religious scholastic and his skill at harmonizing traditions of revelation, the second module introduces his magnum opus: the Tantrāloka. Not unlike Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica in scope and application, the Tantrāloka is a monumental account of tantric streams that deals with ritual, cosmology, meditation, yoga, social conduct, and ethics. Particular attention will be paid to the teachings of the Tantrāloka that outline the daily ritual commitments of a tantric initiate. We will then turn to the core methods of awakening that Abhinavagupta taught, both yogic and gnostic. These include a repertoire of practices rooted in the body, mind, and breath, the exercise of inhabiting expansive views on self and reality, and aligning with the impulse of pure intuition before it blossoms into thought. In surveying these tools for awakening, we will also delve deeply into two Goddess-centered traditions at the heart of Abhinavagupta’s brilliant synthesis: the Trika and the Krama.

In the course of two commentaries on a masterwork of non-dual Śaiva philosophy, Utpaladeva’s ‘Stanzas on the Recognition of Śiva’, Abhinavagupta displays yet another facet of his genius: total fluency in the doctrines, skills, and practice of Indian philosophy. This module will not only clarify the core tenets and arguments of this non-dual philosophy of “recognition,” but will also review its generative encounter with the Śaivas’ main adversary: the Buddhists. Here Abhinavagupta reveals himself to be anything but an anti-intellectual mystic. The indispensability of philosophical discernment and rational inquiry to the path of liberation will be shown to be an essential element of his worldview.

Abhinavagupta was never content to remain within the grooves of the esoteric religious and philosophical streams he transmitted. In portraying his own education within the urbane environment of Kashmir we encounter a progressive sensibility, informed by many muses and novel tastes. This cosmopolitanism is evidenced in his love for classical Indian theater and poetry. Abhinavagupta's aesthetic intelligence, when combined with his prodigious philosophical prowess and tantric scholarship, models a care for both comprehensiveness and precision that permeates his texts. As a result of his engagement with a broad spectrum of fields of knowledge, the conceptual resources and intelligences housed in different genres were freed of their disciplinary restraints and allowed to interface in creative ways. This results in what I refer to as Abhinavagupta’s “aesthetic non-duality.” The final module attempts a global consideration of Abhinavagupta’s view, particularly the way his understanding of beauty and emotion bring to life his non-dual philosophy. Abhinavagupta invites us to become connoisseurs of the theatrical performance that is reality.