While Indian visual culture and Tantric images have drawn wide attention, the culture of images, particularly that of the divine images, is broadly misunderstood. This book is the first to systematically address the hermeneutic and philosophical aspects of visualizing images in Tantric practices. While examining the issues of embodiment and emotion, this volume initiates a discourse on image-consciousness, imagination, memory, and recall. The main objective of this book is to explore the meaning of the opaque Tantric forms, and with this, the text aims to introduce visual language to discourse. Language of Images is the result of a long and sustained engagement with Tantric practitioners and philosophical and exegetical texts. Due to its synthetic approach of utilizing multiple ways to read cultural artifacts, this work stands alone in its attempt to unravel the esoteric domains of Tantric practice by means of addressing the culture of visualization.
Sthaneshwar Timalsina (PhD, Martin Luther University) is Professor of Indian Religions and Philosophies in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. His primary areas of interest include Tantric studies and Indian philosophies. While his early books Seeing and Appearance and Consciousness in Indian Philosophy address various Advaita theories of consciousness, Tantric Visual Culture: A Cognitive Approach explores the cognitive and philosophical domains of the Indian culture of visualization with a focus on Tantric images. Timalsina has also published over three dozen articles and book chapters. He is currently working on the philosophical and psychological aspects of memory, disposition, recognition, imagination, and emotion.
Show moreWhile Indian visual culture and Tantric images have drawn wide attention, the culture of images, particularly that of the divine images, is broadly misunderstood. This book is the first to systematically address the hermeneutic and philosophical aspects of visualizing images in Tantric practices. While examining the issues of embodiment and emotion, this volume initiates a discourse on image-consciousness, imagination, memory, and recall. The main objective of this book is to explore the meaning of the opaque Tantric forms, and with this, the text aims to introduce visual language to discourse. Language of Images is the result of a long and sustained engagement with Tantric practitioners and philosophical and exegetical texts. Due to its synthetic approach of utilizing multiple ways to read cultural artifacts, this work stands alone in its attempt to unravel the esoteric domains of Tantric practice by means of addressing the culture of visualization.
Sthaneshwar Timalsina (PhD, Martin Luther University) is Professor of Indian Religions and Philosophies in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. His primary areas of interest include Tantric studies and Indian philosophies. While his early books Seeing and Appearance and Consciousness in Indian Philosophy address various Advaita theories of consciousness, Tantric Visual Culture: A Cognitive Approach explores the cognitive and philosophical domains of the Indian culture of visualization with a focus on Tantric images. Timalsina has also published over three dozen articles and book chapters. He is currently working on the philosophical and psychological aspects of memory, disposition, recognition, imagination, and emotion.
Show moreContent: Image, Imagination, and Meaning – Image and Visualization in Classical Hinduism – Better than Real: Imagining the Body in Tantric Rituals – Materializing Space and Time in Tantric Images – Transformative Role of Imagination in Visualizing the Image of Bhairava – Surplus of Imagination: Images with Multiple Arms.
Sthaneshwar Timalsina (PhD, Martin Luther University) is Professor of Indian Religions and Philosophies in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. His primary areas of interest include Tantric studies and Indian philosophies. While his early books Seeing and Appearance and Consciousness in Indian Philosophy address various Advaita theories of consciousness, Tantric Visual Culture: A Cognitive Approach explores the cognitive and philosophical domains of the Indian culture of visualization with a focus on Tantric images. Timalsina has also published over three dozen articles and book chapters. He is currently working on the philosophical and psychological aspects of memory, disposition, recognition, imagination, and emotion.
«It is refreshing to see a study that takes seriously visual images
and visualization as primary pieces of evidence in seeking to
understand the meaning and purpose of Tantra and South Asian
religious traditions generally.… The overwhelming majority of
people experience the meaning of their religious traditions through
seeing images and hearing recitations. Sthaneshwar Timalsina’s work
on the visual image as itself a kind of ‘language’ is a welcome
addition to research on Tantra.»
(Gerald James Larson, Research Professor, University of California,
Irvine; Tagore Professor Emeritus, Indiana University, Bloomington;
and Professor Emeritus, Religious Studies, University of
California, Santa Barbara)
«… Hindu and Buddhist Tantras have attracted the attention not only
of Sanskritists but of scholars of cultural anthropology, religious
studies, and, of late even of some Jungian psychologists. But
rigorous Western philosophers have kept a safe and often suspicious
distance from such ‘oriental mysticisms.’ …In this book, for the
first time, Sthaneshwar Timalsina builds bridges between
twenty-first-century psychology, phenomenology, semiotics, and
philosophy of mind on the one hand and the wide and complex use of
visual and proprioceptive images in altering bodily and mental
states through contemplative practice.
Written with uncompromising clarity and robust common sense, this
‘prasanna-padā’(gracefully phrased) exposition of the meaning and
use of images in Tantric transformative spiritual practices is sure
to transform the field of comparative philosophy of mind and of
phenomenology of imagination. We have been waiting for an
accessible yet textually meticulous introduction to the – ancient
but alive – theory and practice of re-imagining the felt body that
would attract a broadly philosophical readership the world over.
With Timalsina’s book, the wait has ended…» (Arindam Chakrabarti,
Professor of Philosophy and Director of the EPOCH Eastern
Philosophy of Consciousness)
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