Līlā’s Adventures in the Pavillion: Freedom and the Space of Consciousness in the Mokṣopāya

Freedom in the philosophies of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions is often thought to result from the cultivation of a liberating knowledge. This freedom is often negatively defined as release from suffering and samsara. Some traditions however additionally posit a freedom from the constraints of space and time as well, leading to extraordinary claims about the acquisition of supernatural states of existence. My paper explores one such occurrence of this theme within a philosophical narrative belonging to the Sanskrit work, the Mokṣopāya/ Yogavāśiṣṭha. The famous “Story of Līlā” discusses the freedom of movement between multiple worlds through its notion of an absolute “space of consciousness” (cidākāśa). The primary objective of this paper is to philosophically analyze this notion of cidākāśa through Vedāntic positions about space, externality, and ephemerality. Through this analysis, I highlight a dialectical tension latent within the Mokṣopāya’s spatial metaphysics, and propose solutions to this conceptual instability.