Anuttara — The Unsurpassable
Anuttara (the unsurpassable, beyond which nothing is higher) is the highest concept in Abhinavagupta's Kashmir Shaivism — the absolute reality that transcends even the Shiva-Shakti duality and all other conceptual frameworks.
Anuttara (an = not, uttara = higher, i.e., 'that beyond which nothing is higher') is Abhinavagupta's term for the absolute ground of reality that transcends all conceptual frameworks — including the Shiva-Shakti polarity. Even the distinction between Shiva and Shakti is an appearance in Anuttara. The concept is close to the Buddhist Dharmata (the nature of phenomena) or Sunyata (emptiness) — but in the Kashmir Shaivism context, Anuttara is not emptiness but the fullness that contains all possibilities. It is 'the absolute self-awareness that is simultaneously the source, substance, and destination of everything.' Anuttara is accessed through the practice of Anuttara Samavesha (immersion in the Unsurpassable) — not a method that can be prescribed but a grace-given opening into the ground of reality. Abhinavagupta's Paratrishika Vivarana is the primary text on Anuttara.
Beyond Shiva and Shakti, beyond liberation and bondage, beyond all that can be named — that is Anuttara, the Unsurpassable.
Physicist David Bohm's 'implicate order' — a domain beyond all manifest structure, from which all order unfolds — is the closest physics-based parallel to the Kashmir Shaivism concept of Anuttara as the ground from which even the Shiva-Shakti polarity arises.
Paratrishika Vivarana
Written about in
- What Tantra says about freedom
Abhinavagupta's term for what lies beyond even the distinction of Shiva and Shakti, and beyond the pair of bondage and liberation. It is where the vocabulary runs out.