"Reframing Dynamism: Consciousness, Materiality, and Embodiment from the Perspective of Spanda"
Speaker : Sthaneshwar Timalsina
Nirmal and Augustina Mattoo Chair of Classical Indic Humanities,
Stony Brook University, USA
@: sthaneshwar.timalsina@stonybrook.edu
Chairperson : Sisir Roy
Honorary Visiting Professor, NIAS
@ :sisirnias@nias.res.in
Date : 7th August 2026
Time : 3.30 PM
Venue : Conference Hall-II, NIAS
Abstract: The dichotomy between mind and matter, the confusion regarding the mind-body relation, and even the hard problem of explaining consciousness are all philosophical problems rooted in the misconception of being as such and the modes of becoming. The very requirement for the separation of being as such from the modes of becoming stems from an understanding that reality is distinct from what we see. This separation leads to the separation of the invisible mind from the visible body, or the differentiation between consciousness and matter.
In my forthcoming book, Reframing Dynamism: Indic Philosophies of Being, Time, and Freedom, I argue that there is a separate philosophical route for us to take: that the absolute itself is dynamic, that it is within this dynamism that temporality and externality manifest, and that materiality or embodiment are merely expressed modes of configuration of this very being. In this paradigm, since being is inherently dynamic, there is no categorical distinction between the absolute and the modes of expression. This perspective rejects the motionless and volitionless absolute Brahman of Śaṅkara, the emptiness or Śūnyatā of the Buddhist philosophers, as well as contemporary physicalist perspectives.
I engage with, among the classical Indian philosophers, Yāska, Bhartṛhari, and Abhinavagupta in particular, and, among the Western philosophers, Henry Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. This perspective can accommodate some versions of cosmo-psychism and can engage with some models of panpsychism.
About the speaker: Nirmal K. and Augustina Mattoo Chair of Classical Indic Humanities, Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, 1046 Humanities Building, NY 11794-5356, USA