Lalleshwari (Lal Ded)
c.1320-1392 · Bhakti · Known
Lalleshwari was a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic and poet of the Trika Shaiva tradition. Her short verses, the vakhs, are quoted in Kashmir six centuries on. She taught that nothing exists but Shiva and that the freed self is that same Supreme, which makes idols, ritual and priestly learning into detours. Look for God inside your own body, she said, and stop looking anywhere else.
Signature
The position Lalleshwari is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity
- Highest Good
- Union with God
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (85 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (83 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity (4 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (25 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Lalleshwari refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Pantheism / Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God / Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Reincarnation / Conditional Immortality
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?