|
Having brought out the truth that religious life, in its essence, over
and above the purely philosophic, is a life of existential dialectics of
love in which the sexual love is transmuted into divine love so that it
comes to be known as Bakti, love of a profound kind towards BEING and no
other, through a process that is essentially purificational, now questions
are raised with respect to the MALAS, the elements these purifications
are concerned with. Even though the MUMMALAM was analyzed in the second
chapter itself, now a return is made but with different kinds of questions
in mind. The malas are not looked at purely psychologically where they
are seen as determining the existential , personal and social ways of Being
of individuals in the world and hence their personality but rather as the
sources on IMPURITY and hence that against which the religious struggles
are. The malas are seen here as those that do not allow PURE LOVE to flourish
and hence the genesis of Bakti. These are the impurities that necessitate
the various patterns of religious existence, the sadanas, consisting its
essence. The absolutions, purifications and cleansing that are central
in religious practices and hence all being different forms of cleansing
,<tIkkai>, questions are raised with respect to the manner in which
these are accomplished. The malas are seen now as the sources of the IMPURE,
ways of Being that are essentially evil and immoral and most importantly
those that do not allow the genesis of TRUE LOVE.
ÀòïÆ òÀ¢ œÀ´±€¥ ÀÒ›€ã
manniya kanmach chamaththitai malangkaLai
If thou made Thyself present within me solely on account of Thy SUPREME GRACE, and installed Thyself as the SAME on alienating the MALAS at the point where the Karmic elements that throw one to the phenomenal forms of historical existence is overcome or disengaged; Notes: The phrase <kanmach chamaththu> should actually be <kanmach chamai> , the working out or allowing the outward expression of the hidden action-schemas so that they are made visible and understood. The term <aruLvazi> indicates doing something out of PURE LOVE, a form of love that does not calculate the economics of one^s action. ; Ãò€î´
; munnaith
then I have no choice but to be with you like a slave, without ever seeking to depart from you and assert my independence and through this unquestioning attachment, total slavery, attain greatness and nobility. Notes: BEING is that which wipes out the presence of the three malas and a person who has successfully accomplished this is a < thEsikan> a radiant being. Such a person acquires physiognomic changes that reflect the inner purity and hermeneutic clarity that have been attained. ;ÀÏب
;maruvitu
Now if it is said that Thou do not stand one-with-me or as the SAME, as long as I am infected by these malas and hence remain impure; ÅÀÒ´ ±ÍÚ¤ -œÅÀÒÑ´ °'èÝí
ammalath thirivunj chemmalarth thaaLn-izaR
this too creates problems for then, on my own efforts I cannot disengage from these extremely recalcitrant malas and become pure and through that attain a dwelling within Thy direct and immediate presence. I cannot attach myself with what I ought to and through that move upwards in the developmental progress i.e. I have no personal agency in effecting my own personal development. -²ÑØòì
-thIrvinRu
Now if it said that whatever pertains to me or accrues to me now are entirely because of the dictates of Karma that I have earned; what accrues to me now is determined by the karma I have elicited through my own actions, then the constraints of maayEyam karma and Anavam are eternally present within me remaining always productive and enchaining me to the phenomenal and historical. I am condemned to an eternal engagement to the phenomenal world. Notes: If the embrace with BEING requires as a precondition the acquisition of the appropriate karmas that affords it, it follows that karma can never be overcome and neutralized and hence maayEyam and aaNavam; one is forever condemned to be with it and hence in phenomenal entanglement. ;Šòì Šòì
;onRu onRu
Then the ancient truth that unless these malas are violated and absorbed within Thee, attaining Being the SAME as Thee is impossible, becomes inconsistent now. Notes: The phrase <onRu onRu niRchaman> means that the malas are extirpated through allowing various kinds of expressions in some progressive order. Normally the first to go is maayEyam, that which distorts visions so that what something is in itself is not seen. Next in order is Karma, that which ties a person to the phenomenal, the historical. Then we have aaNavam, the ANTIBEING that forever acts to deprive the anmas any form of consciousness they may happen to have. ;µ'þÆò …èã´³
;n-aayEn uLLaththu
The solution to these problems is suggested in the following lines which occur as a prelude to another series of inquiries following this chapter. - Àòé òé'¿
; manRa kunRaap
Oh Thou the Faultless and Pure, out of infinite grace, Thou hast assumed the concrete form of a human person with the bodily apparatus of the senses and other organs and through that instructing me and purifying me by disclosing deep TRUTHS, hast thou uprooted totally the karmic elements that bind me to the phenomenal and historical and swallowed the impurities through the archetypal presentations of the Blue-throated Siva form. Now I exist without any of these impurities and hence do not deviate from what is right and agreeable. The central notion is that <vinai vEraRap pariththal>- uprooting the karmic factors and cleansing the anmas so that there do not exist any desires for the worldly and phenomenal and historical. The person is dehistoricalized so that a certain universality comes to prevail. The cultic religions, dogmatic beliefs, ideological commitments, enslavery to traditions and so forth are transcended so that the person is FREE and exists totally liberated, relieved of all the phenomenal binding desires. Commentary:
1) Genuine religious life, the life of self purification, an absolution
of inner impurities that have been part of the interiority of anmas from
the beginnings, is a life of Bakti, a life of Transcendental Erotica, of
union and separation with BEING all conditioned by PURE LOVE. When the
anma remains fully in the divine embrace of BEING, in an ecstatic union
of supreme self-transcendence and self-forgetfullness that belongs to that
embrace, it remains fully WITH-BEING, never ever alienating itself (oruvuthal)
from BEING. This rapturous union, the ecstatic embrace is the ULTIMATE
mode of BEING for the selves under the spell of Bakti. But the penetrative
gaze of Arunandi , locates problems even here.
If PURITY is a precondition for the embrace, then such an embrace is an IMPOSSIBILITY for the anmas , as the absolution of the impure also require the same. Only by Being in the PROXIMITY of BEING that the absolution itself can be realized. There is a vicious circle in this kind of explanation and having pointed it out, Arunandi demands a solution. 2) Neigh, if it is said , the Supreme EMBRACE is not a total impossibility,
it is eminently available to all the anmas irrespective of any difference
but on condition that prior to it they acquire the right sort of karmic
deposits, or action traces and inscriptions ( amaintha karumaththu iyainthavai)
- the meritorious deposits of the morally right actions. There must be
ETHICAL PURITY attained through effecting the morally meritorious actions;
the karmic impurity must have been violated and destroyed from within by
the self itself by being sensitive to ethical dimensions of actions so
that karmic traces of the appropriate kind come to prevail.
3) The phrase <onRu onRu niRsaman aayin allathu niRpeRal illa> raises another dilemma. The phrase <niRsaman> must be taken as equivalent to <niRsamai> i.e. being worked out by BEING itself. The < samai> has the meaning of cooking i.e. subject the anmas to thIkkai so that through sufferings of various kinds the karmic deposits are uprooted and expelled from the interiority of anmas through allowing EXPRESSIONS of various sorts either in real life events or in the world of imagination. Those that remain hidden in the unconscious must be grasped as elements of conscious understanding. BEING is not only a GURU who instructs but also a psychotherapist who schedules various kinds of treatments , including in the realm of the imagination, so that the hidden and unexpressed gets externalized as a visible presence and through that either get rejected if felt disagreeable or incorporated as the same as self if found agreeable. Since this means exteriorizing the hidden and subterranean, something that cannot be done without the GRACE of BEING, and which means also liberating self from being caught in historical flux, being eternally in the web of arccaaa maayai, phenomenal world , as suggested above, becomes now contradictory. If the EMBRACE of BEING requires as a precondition the attaining of appropriate karmas that make the anmas deserve it, then the anmas are not released of the malas and hence continue to be imprisoned to the world of arccanaa maayaai, the phenomenal world. On the other hand attaining union with BEING requires releasement form these malas through extirpating them by allowing expressions of various kinds, there must be releasement from the phenomenal and not further and further enchaining. A contradiction is seen here by Arunandi and he requires that it be solved. 4) In the interactional transactions between a GURU and sysya- a student- , over and above the pedagogic, hermeneutical and so forth, there exists also processes that are cleansing,i.e. tIkkai whereby the malas present within the interiority of the anmas are dislodged and thrown out. Having been made PURER in this way, the sysya is LIFTED UP to a higher dwelling that affords a form of existence that is closer to BEING. The GURU as the tEsika, the radiant individual, cleanses the sysya through his inner PURITY that radiates in the personality. Over and above the pedagogical, it is this living presence of PURITY that somewhat attracts the anmas and in that movement unto the GURU also cleanses them. BEING who is absolutely pure, cleanses the ordinary anmas through its own presence in the person of a GURU but whose psyche is taken over and possesed. For Arunandi, Meykandar is certainly such a GURU<vinai ili>, someone free of prejudices of whatever kind, the <vinaiyin n-Ingki viLangkiys aRivin munaivan> of Tolkaappiyar, someone free of obscurants and distorters of whatever kind. The genuine GURU models a form of PURITY and which acts on the sysya providing a horizon to judge it^s own actions and thoughts in terms of that. The impure and dirty will appear so only against such a horizon of purity and nobility and what is seen as impure against such a horizon, will be dislodged and extirpated from within by the anmas themselves. Such is the mechanism of self-purification which is quite distinct from the instructional or discursive. 5) The human GURU is only a surrogate; it is SIVA, BEING as the blue-throated who acts during these tIkkai type of cleansing. For the impurities that are cleansed off are indestructible- they can only be dislodged from its current presence in the psychical interiority of the anmas and having dislodged, they have to be kept away in a save place and remain enclosed there. This save haven for the impurities is the ^blue-throat^ of BEING, speaking of course metaphorically here. This store for the POISON of aaNava malam, present in their ciththam., the deepest recesses of the mind where emerge the desires, that BEING withdraws from the anmas and keeps it within his body so that it does not get recycled. The mythic account says that it is Parvathi, the WOMAN or the BEING fully with Bindu, who stops the poison at the throat itself so that BEING and the world itself is saved. Perhaps it is the tireless productivity of the WOMAN that saves the situation. The MASCULINE in the spirit of combat, loosens its grip on the anmas and tends to swallow the poison within itself so that it does not re-assail it requiring further combats. The FEMINE, however, holds it before it enters the digestive system so that the poisonous efficacy remain unrealized. The life processes in the world continue unaffected by the accumulated concentration of DEATH bringing poison , the psychic impurities that make one indulge in the immoral, unethical and so forth. This also discloses that the cleansing tIkkais are simultaneously DEATH overcoming; there is life renewal through the reduction of wastage or squandering of psychic energy. Sexuality is a double edged sword, one side ensures life renewal; the other side leads to death bringing quarrels. Both the Bindu and Naatham must be in a happy union for the avoidance of self-destruction. Part 2 1) We have seen that under the impulsions of the psychotropisms, the
anmas gravitate towards BEING and when the psychotropisms of the phenomenal
world are supplanted we have the emergence of Guru Nati, muktotropism that
make the anmas seek union with BEING and hence existence as conditioned
by it. The problems is that in this gravitation towards BEING, how the
anmas are purified and hence qualify for the embrace of BEING remains a
mystery. A proximity is attained by processes that are different and because
of which emerges the cleansing and which in turn brings about PURE LOVE
that gets transmuted into Bakti. The malas must somehow be dislodged from
the interiority of the anmas and because of which occurs the moving closer
to BEING. Even if the pulls exerted by the tropisms are there, there is
no movement towards BEING unless the malas are violated in proper order
andthe anma made PURE and hence in a condition fit for the loving embrace
of BEING itself. It is purity that is instituted by true love that endears
the anmas to BEING and because of which occurs the embrace. It follows
that being in a loving relationship with BEING unleashes processes that
bring about the tIkkai, the cleansing.
3) The impulse to combat the evil within does not emerge from BEING itself. BEING provides only the horizon within which the impure can be SEEN as impure and that too depending upon the psychic distance. The seeing belongs to the anma and it can see the evil and ignoble as so only by having the radiant presence of BEING in the background as the CLEAR LIGHT that^s also PURE. When LOVE is pure, it is sanctioned by BEING and hence something that is seen as right and something that can be enjoyed without any feelings of guilt. When it is impure, for e.g. simply carnal, lascivious , promiscuous, adulterous and so forth, they appear as something wrong, immoral, unethical , unsavory and not in good taste. The battle in the life of LOVE is this kind of battle and hence something that touches the EROS, the powerful libidinal force that needs to be tamed and brought under control. Each sexual impulse must be reflected upon against the horizon of the divine presence and weighed as to whether it breeds genuine bliss or guilt. The conscience must not be overlooked and dulled to justify an immoral course of action through imaginary pacification and justification. We must keep the presence of BEING, even if distant, firmly entrenched in the psychic interiority of the anmas so that there is no seeing the impure as pure. Where there are failures there issues forth feelings of guilt, depressions, melancholy , mental and physical tortures , the fires of HELL, as signs of failure in the battle against the impure. The anma should at this point pause a bit, withdraw from whatever course of action it is involved with and reflect upon it so that it is measured against the presence of BEING more carefully. 4) This life of inner combat that cultures the blind and immensely powerful libidinal force is again made possible only by BEING in his DANCE in which He alternatively throws out and withdraws the fundamental Siva tatvas of Naatham and Bindu. When the Bindu is suppressed or withdrawn and Naatham is made to be present exclusively in the psychic interiority of the anma, in the region of the siththam, the place where emerges the desires. Its sun-like nature with the accompanying heat, makes the person violent, aggressive and destructive. When the lovers are both in this kind of psychic interiority and co-exist, somehow or other violence will break out , intense battles fought out so that there results separation, disunion and departing company from each other. They run away from each other because of the unbearable pains that these fights generate and seek out alternative loves to replace the lost. However slowly but steadily there is cooling off and the emergence of Bindu that unifies and re-establish new unities, cements the fissures and balms the wounds. The separated lovers come back together with more love for each other and simultaneously with better understanding of themselves. Or they may part company forever depending upon the quality of love that existed between them. True love returns along with reunion. The shallow gets destroyed and never gets restablished. It is in such discontructions that occur in the life of EROS that brings about the severance from the worldly, the phenomenal. The earthly life as conditioned by the psychotropisms of lumenotropism and so forth come to be replaced with that of Muktotropism , and at which point the erotic LOVE also gets transformed into genuine Bakti. 5) The life of Bakti, the life of divine love, is not without its pining and whining. But there is a categorical difference. A man and a woman deeply in love yearn to be together so that each can enjoy the androgynous archetypal form within themselves so that there is a saturation of Bindu and Naatham deep within. It is the presence of the arthanaari archetype, the androgynous ammaiappar that provides the fulfillment the innate sexuality demands and unavailability of which throws the person without a firm existential foundation. However at the level of Bakti, it is PURITY of heart that ensures the continuos presence of BEING and which nurtures feelings of Bakti. When BEING withdraws himself from the Bakta, the person in Bakti, he is lost and whines and pines for the renewed presence of BEING. The purity that maintains the strong presence of BEING is the life of THONDU, selfless service to the good of humanity. When the Bakta becomes forgetful of Sivaththondu, of being and existing without ego, without selfness, BEING withdraws or conceals Himself. To the extent the ego is in the foreground, BEING is in the background. To Maintain oneself in the life of Bakti, one has to maintain oneself continuously in the life if Sivaththondu, of selfless service. The BEING must be allowed to be present within and this can be done only by pushing the ego to the background. The combat in the life of Bakti is a combat with self- violence is turned inwards towards the self itself so that egoity is continuously battled with and destroyed. The life of Bakti is a life of ego destruction, the destruction of the ^I^ and ^my^. The self must be maintained as Wholly-For-Other and never at all For-Self-Itself. 6) Being at the level of muktotropism is neither being dominated by
Bindu attired Sakti nor Naatham clothed Sivan. Naatham and Bindu are available
continuously and in various measures in the form of the great gods -Thirumaal,
Maheswara, Sathaasiva and so forth so that the human sexuality does not
arise at all. When the worship of such great gods develop and along with
it Bakti itself becomes purified, shorn off its cultocentrism, BEING presents
itself as ArutPerunjCOthi, an inner radiance of PURE LIGHT, being in the
presence of which breeds karuNai- love sympathy and care not only for other
human beings but also for other creatures including the nonsentient ecological
. The cultic Bakti is transcended in the direction of UNIVERSAL LOVE .
Everything all of sudden appear as BEING itself; BEING is seen as present
in everything, everything is BEING presenting Itself in countless number
of ways out of ARUL and all for the benefit of the anmas, to redeem them
so that they eventually live the SAME as BEING, be in the world in such
a way that only BEING is present in them and not the ego. Such an anma
irradiates the radiant presence of BEING within, the presence of BEING
as PURE LIGHT and on account of the person becomes a thEkisan, the illustrious
and radiant, the ultimate mode of Being for all anmas.
|
This page is created and is maintain by Suba. Copyright Suba - 26/11/1998 |