PART I: An Introduction to Kashmir Shaivism

Kashmir Shaivism, designates a constellation of non-dual Shaiva-Tantric traditions that flourished in the Kashmir Valley between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It stands as one of the most refined and comprehensive expressions of Indian non-dual thought, combining rigorous metaphysics, subtle epistemology, practical yogic and ritual techniques, and an aesthetics that situates beauty within the very structure of liberation. Muller-Ortega and Sanderson point out that what is often called “Kashmir Shaivism” is not a single monolithic system but a complex of lineages , including Trika, Krama, Spanda, Pratyabhijña, and later Kaula currents. These traditions are closely related, sometimes differing only in emphasis, terminology, or ritual preference, but they all fall under the umbrella of non-dual Shaiva-Tantra.

Trika, “the triad,” encodes the central vision of Kashmir Shaivism. The designation is deliberately polyvalent, signifying several interlocking structures of meaning. Most authoritatively, it refers to the triad of goddesses: Para, Parapara, and Apara,who personify the supreme, mediating, and immanent modalities of Shakti (In Kashmir Shaivism, Shakti is the inseparable dynamic power of Shiva, the reflexive awareness (vimarsha) through which consciousness freely manifests as the universe) respectively. A second referent is energetic: the threefold gradation of power as para-shakti (the supreme, undifferentiated self-awareness identical with Shiva), parapara-shakti (the intermediate vibration where unity begins to unfold as difference), and apara-shakti (the immanent field of differentiated manifestation expressed as sound, thought, and external objects). A third referent is epistemic and cosmological: the triadic correlation of consciousness (citta), word (vak), and object (artha), which integrates subjectivity, language, and world into a single continuum of awareness.

By naming itself Trika, the tradition stresses not an inert monism but a rhythmic structure of unity, differentiation, and reintegration through which the Absolute discloses itself. In the earliest strata of the scriptures, the term Trika denoted precisely these triads of goddesses, energies, and categories. With Abhinavagupta’s vast synthesis, however, it expanded to designate the non-dual Shaiva project as a whole, encompassing the closely related lineages of Spanda, Krama, Pratyabhijña, and Kaula. In modern scholarship, therefore, “Trika” often functions as the representative label for what is otherwise termed “Kashmir Shaivism.” At the same time, it is important to distinguish this nondual cluster from contemporaneous dualist currents such as the Shaiva Siddhanta or cults like that of Svacchandabhairava, which coexisted in the Valley. Thus, Trika names both a specific set of triadic structures and, by extension, the integrative nondual vision of Kashmir Shaivism as a whole.

At the same time, other “triads” (trikas) were also invoked to articulate the structure of reality and practice. Some sources emphasize the triad of pati-pashu-pasha (Lord, soul, and bond), inherited from earlier Shaiva discourse, which the nondualists reinterpret as modalities of consciousness rather than ontologically distinct entities. Later exegetes also point to triads such as iccha-jñana-kriya (will, knowledge, action) or even citta-vak-artha (consciousness, word, object), as heuristic frameworks expressing the same logic of threefold differentiation within unity. For this reason, “Trika” is not a rigid label for a single set of three, but a polyvalent symbol of the way the Absolute (Shiva) manifests in differentiated yet integrated modes.Its central claim is at once simple and profound: there is only one reality, consciousness (citi), also called Shiva, Bhairava, or ParamaShiva, and everything that appears-self, body, thought, and world-is a free manifestation of this reality.

Within the wider landscape of Shaiva traditions, Kashmir Shaivism occupies the non-dual (advaita) pole. In contrast to the dualist Shaiva Siddhanta, which views the individual soul (pashu) as eternally distinct from Shiva, the Trika insists that the finite self is none other than Shiva himself, contracted through maya (the principle of limitation that veils the infinite and projects difference); mala (impurity or contraction obscuring consciousness (anava, mayiya, karma)) and kañcuka (the five sheaths that restrict divine powers into finitude). Liberation is therefore not a union with a distant deity but the recognition (pratyabhijña) of one’s eternal identity with the divine. In this way, Trika integrates the ritual and doctrinal frameworks of the broader Shaiva world but reorients them around a radical nondualism that affirms the world as Shiva’s own luminous self-expression.

Liberation (moksha) is not attained by abandoning the world but by recognizing (pratyabhijña) that the same awareness which experiences the world is already divine.Unlike Advaita Vedanta, which characterizes the phenomenal world as illusory , Kashmir Shaivism insists that the world is real as abhasa, a luminous appearance of consciousness. And unlike many forms of Buddhism that emphasize emptiness (shunyata), the Shaivas affirm fullness (purnata), the plenitude of awareness as it vibrates into multiplicity. This affirmation of the world, combined with the conviction that liberation is possible in embodied life (jivanmukti), makes the tradition unique in the history of Indian philosophy.

Tradition locates the Shivasutras in the ninth century as a revealed text to Vasugupta, either discovered on a rock at Mount Mahadeva or disclosed in a dream; this text functions as the axiomatic ground for the Kashmiri non-dual project. Early exegesis unfolds along two lines: (i) the Spanda materials deriving from or keyed to the Shivasutras, and (ii) the independent Pratyabhijña treatises inaugurating a philosophical school of “recognition”.Bhatta Kallata stands at the inception of the Spanda lineage. Within the tradition there is a live authorship debate: some sources ascribe the Spandakarikas to Kallata (versifying teachings traceable to Vasugupta), while others attribute them to Vasugupta himself; what is not contested is Kallata’s vrtti (commentary) on the karikas and his role in establishing Spanda as a doctrinal stream. Later, Bhaskara composed the Shivasutravarttika on the Shivasutras, and Ksemaraja authored both the Shivasutra-vimarshini and Spanda-nirnaya (and the concise Spanda-sandoha), forming the classical commentarial matrix for these two root corpora.

In contrast to the revelatory framing of Shivasutra/Spanda, the Pratyabhijña school explicitly begins with a human author, Somananda (c. 900–950), whose Shivadrsti (“Vision of Shiva”) lays down the thesis that particular consciousness is in truth identical with absolute consciousness and that the aim of religious observance is recognition of this perennial fact. His disciple Utpaladeva (c. 925–975) systematized the school in the Ishvarapratyabhijña-karika along with auto-commentaries, giving Pratyabhijña its definitive philosophical articulation, which Abhinavagupta would later expand and defend in two major commentaries. Ksemaraja’s Pratyabhijñahrdayam then distills the essentials as a succinct primer.

Alongside these currents, the Krama (Kalikula) tradition ,already active in Kashmir by the late ninth/early tenth century, advanced a goddess-centered analysis of temporality and sequential unfoldment -twelve Kalis, krama as graded stages In the Krama lineage, the doctrine of the twelve Kalikas is best understood as a twelve-fold cycle mapping graded manifestation and reabsorption of awareness. Sources present these goddesses as visionary markers of sequential unfoldment (krama), often correlating phases of arising, stabilization, withdrawal, and return to the ineffable ground, rather than as twelve separate deities in a sectarian pantheon. A common exegetical presentation (used by some teachers) arranges the twelve as a schematic interplay of cognitive poles (knower/knowing/known) with phases of emergence and resolution; this is pedagogical, not a verbatim doctrinal formula.

Practically, contemplation of the Kalika-cycle functions as a meditative map: tracking how consciousness projects differentiation and, by recognition (pratyabhijña), re-collects itself in nondual awareness. Each Kalika marks a moment in the cognitive process, spanning the triad of subject (pramatr), object (prameya), and means of knowledge (pramana). The cycle is thus soteriological: it maps how consciousness externalizes into finite experience and, through recognition, retraces its path back to the nameless ground (anakhya). In meditation, practitioners visualize or internalize these twelve transitions to stabilize recognition of their identity with Shiva. Abhinavagupta and Ksemaraja treat the twelve Kalikas as a wheel (cakra) or graded succession (krama), a contemplative map where each goddess is a stage in both cosmic manifestation and the yogi’s inward re-absorption

While Kaula currents provided the initiatory and ritual framework, they also emphasized a distinctive embodied spirituality. Rooted in the conviction that all aspects of existence are Shiva’s manifestation, Kaula practices sought to sacralize the body, the senses, and even the socially transgressive. In certain strata, this included rituals that deliberately inverted conventional purity codes,such as offerings involving wine, meat, or sexual union (maithuna),not for indulgence, but as symbolic enactments of non-duality. By ritually integrating the “pure” and the “impure,” Kaula initiations sought to collapse dualistic distinctions and awaken recognition that every dimension of life is already divine.

Abhinavagupta himself, trained by the Kaula master Shambhunatha, incorporated these ritual-symbolic structures into his broader synthesis, while at the same time reinterpreting transgression as an inner yogic process: the real “sacrifice” is the offering of limited identity into the fire of awareness. In this sense, Kaula furnished the ritual framework and experiential intensity that grounded the Trika system’s more philosophical schools, ensuring that its lofty metaphysics remained embodied, initiatory, and transformative. Both krama and kaula shaped later Trika.

Abhinavagupta (c. 975–1025) unified the philosophical framework of the Pratyabhijña school with the vibrational insights of Spanda and the ritual-embodied Kaula and goddess-oriented Krama traditions, bringing them together in his encyclopedic Tantraloka (37 chapters). He later produced the Tantrasara, a prose digest, to render its vast vision more accessible.; he also wrote the Paratrimshika-vivarana (language/mantra) and the Abhinavabharati (aesthetics), rendering Trika the representative framework of nondual Kashmir Shaivism. The synthesis is anchored in Pratyabhijña’s epistemology (recognition), Spanda’s dynamism, Krama’s temporality/goddess praxis, and Kaula’s initiation/embodiment. Jayaratha (mid-13th c.) later composes the Viveka on Tantraloka, stabilizing its reception; Yogaraja comments on Abhinava’s Paramarthasara. This post-Abhinava redactional layer is crucial to how the system reached us.

 Shoaib Mohammad (KAS), Chief Accounts Officer, J&K Govt.