Kashmir Shaivism

Abhinavagupta (Devanāgarī अभिनवगुप्तः; c. 950 – 1016 CE) was a philosopher, mystic and aesthetician from Kashmir. He was also considered an influential musician, poet, dramatist, exegete, theologian, and logician – a polymathic personality who exercised strong influences on Indian culture.

nondualist Kashmiri Hindu tradition

Saccidānanda (; also Sat-cit-ānanda) is an epithet and description for the subjective experience of the ultimate unchanging reality, called Brahman, in certain branches of Hindu philosophy, especially Vedanta. It represents "existence, consciousness, and bliss" or "truth, consciousness, bliss".

7th century hilltop Hindu temple in Jammu and Kashmir

Vasugupta ( – 850 CE) was the author of the Shiva Sutras, an important text of the Advaita tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, also called Trika (sometimes called Trika Yoga).

Shaktipata () or Shaktipat refers in Hinduism to the transmission (or conferring) of spiritual energy upon one person by another or directly from the deity. Shaktipata can be transmitted with a sacred word or mantra, or by a look, thought or touch – the last usually to the ajna chakra or agya chakra or third eye of the recipient.

Trika was a school of Kaula which flourished in Kashmir between ca. 900 and 1300 CE, and is often used synonymously for the wole of Kashmir Shaivism, an exegetical tradition which developed in Kashmir after 850 CE, as an adaptation to upper-class Hindu norms of 'wild' tantric Kaula traditions. The Kashmir Trika-tradition developed the "Philosophy of Recognition" (pratyabhijñā), a nondual form of Tantric Shaivism.

Rajanaka Kṣemarāja (क्षेमराज) (late 10th to early 11th century) was a philosopher disciple of Abhinavagupta, who was considered a master of tantra, yoga, poetics, and dramaturgy. Not much is known of Kṣemarāja's life or parentage. His chief disciple was a sage known as Yogāraja.

Muktananda (16 May 1908 – 2 October 1982), born Krishna Rai, was a yoga guru and the founder of Siddha Yoga. He was a disciple of Bhagavan Nityananda. He wrote books on the subjects of Kundalini Shakti, Vedanta, and Kashmir Shaivism, including a spiritual autobiography entitled The Play of Consciousness. In honorific style, he is often referred to as Swami Muktananda, or Baba Muktananda, or in a familiar way just Baba.

collection of aphorisms from Kashmir Shaivism

Tradition in Shaktism and tantric Shaivism

Utpaladeva (c. 900–950 CE) was a Shaiva tantrik philosopher, theologian and poet from Kashmir. He belonged to the Trika Shaiva tradition and is a thinker of the Pratyabhijñā school of monistic idealism. His Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (IPK, Verses on the Recognition of the Lord) is a central text for the Pratyabhijñā school of Shaiva Hindu philosophy. Utpaladeva was also a tantrik guru and a religious bhakti poet, having authored the influential Śivastotrāvalī (A Garland of Hymns to Śiva), a collection of Shaiva hymns that remain popular with Kashmiri Shaivas.

Tantrāloka () is a treatise of Abhinavagupta, a writer and philosopher of the Trika-school of Kashmir Shaivism.

British Indologist

thumb|Parashakti murti in a temple.

Type of yoga

elements or principles of reality