One Being with the Universe for its Body:

The logical argument for the unity of God and the Self in nondual Tantric aivism The epistemology of the nondual Tantric aivism (paramevardvaya-vda) epoused by Abhinavagupta and his lineage admits of three sources of valid knowledge that support the process of spiritual unfolding (bhvan-krama): valid scriptural revelation (sad-gama), a self-realized master (sad-guru), needed to interpret scripture, and valid reasoning (sat-tarka).1 The latter includes the usual pramas of pratyaka and anumna, for in context sat-tarka refers to careful, sound, and logical reflection on ones experience. Logical argument that takes elements of universally shared experience as its sole axioms is frequently used by Abhinavagupta and his disciple Kemarja. What has not yet received scholarly attention is the impressively cogent argument that these authorities present (based on earlier writings by Utpaladeva) to demonstrate that God (defined as unbounded and dynamic self-aware consciousness) is all that exists, and that therefore there is a eternal indivisible unity of God, the universe, and the individual self. This argument clearly sets itself against the orthodox dualist doctrine of the then successful aiva Siddhnta sect, which argued that God (pati), man (pau), and world (pa) are eternally distinct. Because Abhinavagupta and his cohort could not cite scriptural authorities that the Saiddhntikas did not consider valid, they had to resort to logical argument in the presentation of their view (darana). And this they did, most notably in the person of Utpaladeva, whose work has been ably translated and studied by Rafaelle Torella and David Peter Lawrence. Therefore we turn our attention directly to the brief but powerful arguments presented by Abhinava (to use the bhmavat abbreviation for his name) and his disciple in the Tantrasra, Tantrloka, and Pratyabhijhdayam, all composed in the kingdom of Kashmr around the end of the first millennium. Like the Vedntins and the Vijnavdins, Abhinava presents a kind of monistic idealism, but unlike those schools, his philosophy is explicitly theistic. That is, it posits not only that everything is Mind or Consciousness, but also that that Consciousness has agency (aivarya-akti, karttva); indeed, it is sole agent that exists. Thus Consciousness, on this view, is not static but innately dynamic, and that dynamism expresses as the selfprojection of the one absolute into the forms of an apparent plurality of subjects and objects. This self-projection is not illusory as in Vednta, but real, and yet Abhinava denies that it constitutes a kind of parinma-vda, for on his view, even as Consciousness transforms itself into all existent forms (and the space-time they occupy), it never relinquishes the transcendent formless nature that is its fundamental being. Consciousness is simultaneously all-embodying (vivtm) and all-transcending (vivottra). Thus we see that this philosophy (or rather, philosophical theology) is not derivative, but occupies a unique place amongst Indias mature philosophies, meriting attention to its unique arguments.

Tantrasra, chapter four.