| Summary/Abstract |
Kashmir Shaivism, or the non-dual Shaivism of Kashmir as many scholars now prefer to call it, is a system of philosophy and theology rooted in the Tantric world view. What distinguishes it, is its idealistic outlook and monistic vision that conceives of the Ultimate Reality in terms of pure and undifferentiated consciousness vibrating in every atom of the universe. Describing consciousness as an all-pervasive principle that forms the ground and substratum of all existent things, Kashmir Shaivism regards the phenomenal world, with all its diversity, as its manifestation or expression. Man, according to this system of thought, is a contracted or congealed form of Parama Shiva or universal consciousness, the one and the only Reality. Realization of one’s true nature and self as one with Shiva liberates one from the tyranny of finitude. Rejecting the otherness of God, Kashmir Shaivism asserts that there is nothing that exists apart from or outside absolute consciousness.
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