Language of Images

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.

Content: 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.