Loriliai Biernacki, "The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism" (Oxford UP, 2023)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Jun 8, 2023 · 31m

In the early 11th century, the Kashmiri philosopher Abhinavagupta proposed panentheism-seeing the divine as both immanent in the world and at the same time as transcendent--as a way to reclaim the material world as something real, something solid. His theology understood the world itself, with its manifold inhabitants--from gods to humans to insects down to the merest rock-as part of the unfolding of a single conscious reality, Siva. This conscious singularity-the word "god" here does not quite do it justice--with its capacity to choose and will, pervades all through, top to bottom; as…