The Hermeneutic Analysis of Religious Experience as Expounded in Jnanamirta Kattalai - Intro Part 6

 The Metaphysical Explanation

Heidegger takes it that the basic question of metaphysics is: Why are there essents rather than nothing? Why are there essents, why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?[17] 

The question is said to loom in moments of great despair, in search of a new meaning for existence when the older ones lose their weight and become obscured. This is the most basic, most comprehensive of all questions for it includes even nothingness, not because it is something but because it is nothing. "This 'why' does not move on any one plane but penetrates to the 'underlying' realms and indeed to the very last of them, to the limit; turning away from the surface, from all shallowness, it strives toward the depths; this broadest of all questions is also the deepest."[18]

In the context of Indian philosophy this question was posed as the basic question of what is meant by 'mukti', 'nirvana', 'samadhi' and so forth. In Saiva Siddhanta, as the author of this text is abundantly clear, this same question is asked as the basic question of existence. But in view of the specific descriptions the system has justified for understanding the being there of the existents constituting the world, this basic metaphysical question is posed with a specific structure of its own.

Why the cosmic activities of Civa-Sakti, the Supreme Intelligence-Power creating myriad of forms out of mayai with births, deaths, pleasures and pains and so forth?

Why are the psyches, countless in number, permeated through and through with anavam? And hence acquire the chaining, delimiting, binding karma and maya?

What is the ultimate meaning of all human (and animal) endeavors, struggles?

Why the Dance of Civa at all?

The concept of paramoksa as purusartta, attempts to answer such metaphysical questions. The objective world is as described. The surface level and deep level structural descriptions which one may call an integrated and coordinated philosophical and scientific (in the broadest sense) descriptions, tell us how the world is. But such descriptions do not unearth the meaning for the world to be and to be thus. The phenomenological descriptions describe the objective world and provide a faultless understanding but since the meaning of existence is not a constituent of the cosmic process, it becomes beyond the power of such descriptions to unravel the meaning of existence. 

The question then necessarily becomes meta-physical, i.e. beyond the descriptive understanding of the world.

But the answer to it could not be independent of how we understand the existents, how we describe the objective world. Yet the 'meaning' of existence is not implied by the objective description - the linkage between the two is not logical. The objective description provides constraints for selecting one among a multitude of possibilities. It provides an insight that allows us to intuit and affirm one among the many possibilities as the possibility for oneself. And this is affirmed when the FUNDAMENTAL INTENTIONALITY is sighted and owned as one's own as well.

The possibility that is affirmed by the author and shared by all who live by Saiva Siddhanta, is the gaining of absolute freedom, liberation from servitude, bondage and so forth that the beginningless permeation of the ego with anavam has brought about by doing things that would increase the flow of Arul from Civa-Sakti into the innermost being of the psyche. The meaning of existence is to liberate ourselves from anavam, that stuff that has been within our psychic constitution throwing us into utter darkness, complete blindness, absolute ignorance. The Dance of Civa is there for enabling us to extricate ourselves from the clutches of anavam, if we so desire. Without that Dance, we cannot learn, acquire knowledge and thereby reduce the hold of anavam bit by bit. Without that Power that manifests itself as Desire, Consciousness and Movement and exercised by Civa, we cannot act and learn and hence acquire knowledge.

Becoming a psyche without karma, maya and ultimately the anava chains with the Grace Power of Civa is the ultimate meaning of existence. 

We can strive towards this absolute freedom, absolute autonomy that only Civa himself has by worshiping Him intensely and thereby transforming our selfhood and assimilating into the 'selfhood' of Civa himself so much so that we become indistinguishable from Him. In this terminal phase of our existence, in 'selfhood' we can become identical with Civa. We can exist without any blemish, completely free and autonomous, without the slightest inclination towards samsara, completely away from the gateway to phenomenality, full of Love for all creatures who are still struggling, endeavoring consciously or unconsciously to liberate themselves.

What the hermeneutic investigations of the world processes disclose to us is this possibility for us to own and appropriate as our own possibility. This possibility which is there in the world is opened up for us, disclosed for us to seize upon and live by it or reject and seek others.

There is no compulsion but only an illumination, a disclosure that an individual can always choose to reject though he would be immensely foolish to do so.

In Saiva Siddhanta, the phenomenological description of the objective world and the metaphysical explanation of the meaning of existence hang together as one piece.

This kattalai, brief as it may be, is a comprehensive literary piece that brings out very clearly the internal coherence that is so distinctive of Saiva Siddhanta.

- end of introduction.


Loganathan @ Ullagananar

( editing and re-paragraphing  by his student )

( photo from https://pixabay.com/en/adler-bird-bird-of-prey-raptor-339128/ , with thanks )