Tantra and Art — Sacred Aesthetics
Tantra's influence on Indian classical arts — music, dance, sculpture, and poetry — reflects the fundamental teaching that aesthetic experience is a form of meditation and that great art is a transmission of non-dual awareness.
Abhinavagupta's contribution to Indian aesthetics (Rasa theory) is as significant as his philosophical work. In his Abhinavabharati (commentary on Bharata's Natyashastra), he argued that the experience of Rasa (aesthetic emotion) in great art is identical in quality to Brahmananda (the bliss of Brahman). When a spectator is completely absorbed in great music, dance, or poetry, the self-consciousness momentarily dissolves in the aesthetic experience — and in that moment, one directly tastes the nature of consciousness as Ananda. This is why temple sculpture (including erotic sculpture as at Khajuraho), classical dance (Bharatanatyam), and Dhrupad music were all understood as forms of Tantric worship — vehicles for awakening awareness to its own nature. The profound beauty of Indian classical arts is inseparable from their Tantric philosophical roots.
Great art does what great meditation does — dissolves the self in the beautiful, revealing consciousness as the ground of both.
In the Abhinavabharati, Abhinavagupta develops the theory of rasa, arguing that aesthetic relish (rasasvada) is a taste of the same self-luminous bliss (brahmasvada) realized in meditation.
Abhinavabharati
Written about in
- What Tantra says about beauty
Abhinavagupta's rasa theory describes what actually happens in a moment of beauty: self-consciousness drops out of the way, and what is tasted in the gap is consciousness as ananda. This is why the erotic sculpture at Khajuraho, Bharatanatyam and Dhrupad were classed as worship rather than as art adjacent to worship.