---
type: Concept
bundle: shakta-darshana
bundle_version: "0.8.0"
id: shaktipata
title: "Śaktipāta — शक्तिपात"
iast: "Śaktipāta"
devanagari: "शक्तिपात"
description: "The 'descent of Śakti': the Tāntric doctrine of grace, in which the absolute's own power removes the soul's self-limitation, classically graded by intensity (from instant recognition to a gradual ripening) and classically NOT producible by any technique, since it is the precondition of effective practice rather than its product; NOT an energy transmission event one can book, NOT a touch-induced experience as the definition, NOT guru magic."
darshana:
  - Trika (Kashmir Shaivism)
  - Śākta
school_scope: "Systematized in Abhinavagupta's Tantrāloka (the nine grades of śaktipāta); operative across Śākta-Śaiva initiatory traditions where dīkṣā presupposes it. Modern guru movements use the term for initiation events; this entry documents the doctrinal category and flags the modern usage as reception."
text_source: "Tantrāloka 13 (grades of śaktipāta)"
reception_note: "Present śaktipāta as a doctrine of grace comparable to grace-theology in other traditions, not as a paranormal service. The modern initiation-event usage is documented as reception, without evaluating any specific teacher or movement."
tags: [shaktipata, grace, diksha, trika, shakta]
not:
  - term: "an energy transmission you can receive at an event (bookable śaktipāta)"
    why: "Modern spiritual marketplaces offer śaktipāta as a scheduled transmission (a touch, a look, a retreat). The doctrinal category is almost the reverse: Abhinavagupta's treatment makes śaktipāta the absolute's own free act (Śiva/Śakti removing self-imposed limitation), explicitly NOT caused by works, merit, or technique, and the PRECONDITION for authentic dīkṣā and practice, not their product. A bookable grace is, doctrinally, a contradiction; where a teacher's act coincides with it, the tradition reads the teacher as occasion, not cause."
    instead: "Define śaktipāta as the descent of grace: the self-limitation-removing act of consciousness-power itself, graded in intensity by the tradition, presupposed by initiation."
  - term: "a physical/energetic experience (shaking, heat, visions) as the definition"
    why: "Experiential phenomena reported around initiations are reception-side descriptions; the texts define śaktipāta by its FUNCTION (the fall of the veils, the turn toward recognition), not by phenomenology. Defining grace by side effects is like defining insight by the facial expression."
  - term: "guru magic / a power the guru possesses"
    why: "In the doctrine the guru does not own śaktipāta; intense śaktipāta may even bypass the human guru entirely (the tradition allows for direct, guru-less awakening in its highest grades). This preserves both the dignity of the guru-function and the absolute's freedom, and it is precisely the check against personality cults that the modern usage removes."
related:
  - /concepts/pratyabhijna.md
  - /concepts/kundalini.md
  - /concepts/cit-shakti.md
  - /concepts/srividya.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Śaktipāta -- शक्तिपात

**Not:** a bookable transmission, a set of sensations, guru magic

## What It Actually Means

Śaktipāta ("the descent of power") is the Tāntric doctrine of grace: the event, entirely free on the side of the absolute, in which consciousness-power removes the self-limitation it had itself assumed (see [pratyabhijna.md](pratyabhijna.md): the non-recognition ends because the one who imposed it lifts it). Abhinavagupta gives the doctrine its classical architecture in Tantrāloka 13: nine grades, from tīvra-tīvra (supremely intense: immediate recognition, possibly without teacher or scripture) through descending intensities in which grace expresses as the meeting with a true guru, the capacity for dīkṣā, or a slow ripening of orientation toward liberation.

Two structural points carry the doctrine's meaning. First, śaktipāta is uncaused from the human side: the texts rule out works, merit, and technique as its cause, since anything the limited self could do to compel grace would make the absolute's freedom hostage to the very limitation being removed. Second, it is the precondition of the path, not its summit: in the initiatory traditions, receptivity to dīkṣā is itself read as evidence that some grade of descent has occurred. Practice, in this frame, is what grace looks like from inside a life, not a lever that produces it.

The kuṇḍalinī connection (see [kundalini.md](kundalini.md)) is doctrinal, not mechanical: her rising is classically grace-framed, which is one more reason the technique-marketplace reading of both terms fails together.

## Audience Metaphor

You cannot decide to be struck by a realization. You can study, you can sit with a problem for years, and the seeing, when it comes, comes on its own schedule and sometimes to the unprepared. Śaktipāta is that structure, held as theology: the tradition's claim that the deepest seeing is reality's own act, that teachers and practices are the study and the sitting, and that selling tickets to the lightning is a category mistake about lightning.

## Citations

1. Tantrāloka 13 (Abhinavagupta) -- the nine grades; grace as uncaused; see [references/tantraloka.md](../references/tantraloka.md)
2. Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam (context) -- recognition as citi's own act; see [references/pratyabhijnahridayam.md](../references/pratyabhijnahridayam.md)
3. Cross-bundle: diksha.md (bhakti-marga v0.4) -- initiation, owned there; śaktipāta as its Tāntric precondition
