Abhinavagupta · अभिनवगुप्त

The polymath of Kashmir Śaivism — philosopher, aesthetician, tantric master — and the most sophisticated mind the tantric traditions produced. His non-dualism differs from Śaṅkara's on the point that matters most here: the world is not mithyā, mere appearance, but the free and joyous self-expression of consciousness, which contracts itself into a universe for the delight of doing so. He also wrote the definitive theory of aesthetic rapture, and thought it was a cousin of the mystical kind. That is startlingly close to the Kabbalah's own answer to why anything exists at all — the divine will contracting through tzimtzum to make room for an other, and the Shekhinah as the divine indwelling in the world rather than a veil over it. Of everyone on this door, Abhinavagupta is the one a Kabbalist could argue with longest before finding the floor.