ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 investigates the important role played by scholar-practitioners in the revival of Nondual Śaiva Theosophy (NŚT) among non-Kashmiri peoples. In fact, the contemporary revival would never have taken place had important advances in the academic study of medieval NŚT not occurred, beginning in the early twentieth century. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, a number of Western-trained scholars gave up any pretense to “objective study,” and openly expressed a personal, religious or spiritual interest in their study of Nondual Śaivism. Some of these “scholar-practitioners” such as Mark Dyczkowski, Bettina Bäumer, Paul Muller-Ortega and Christopher Wallis have become important teachers in the contemporary Anglophone revival of NŚT. This chapter details the life and scholarship of some seminal, contemporary scholar-practitioners of Nondual Śaivism, who (like many other modern practitioners) either trace their lineage to Swami Lakshman Joo or Swami Muktananda, or are independent promoters of their particular brand of “Kashmir Śaivism.”
