Why students fail? The Agamic Science Explanation.

Why students fail? The Agamic Science Explanation.

I now want to bring to your attention the case of a number of secondary school children who, while excelling earlier, but as they reach the age of 17 or thereabouts slowly begin to decline for reasons unknown to themselves, parents or even the teachers.

Sometimes the matter becomes so serious for the caring parents that they seek even psychiatric help. The subjects that I have isolated for mention here are usually very bright and are capable of very intelligent conversation but who slowly decline.

Such subjects while being very intelligent but decline because they slowly lose their capacity to pay attention to what is being taught by the teacher. They have the habit of SWITCHING OFF halfway and let their mind wander into a world of fantasies. Their cognitive processing is dissociated from classrooom context and gets trapped into the inner world of ideas that quite often the subjects are aware but are unable to do anything about. Their preoccupation with the inner world as opposed to the outer world becomes almost an obsession.

Because of this, there comes to prevail DISINTERESTEDNESS in classroom interactions and other social activities. They tend to withdraw from both the physical and social world because of their ENCHANTMENT with the inner world of fantasies.

In my conversations with them I also learned that such subjects are AWARE of such developments within themselves but feel they cannot do anything about it except worry. Frequently they also feel frightened because of loss of control over their own thought processes. They feel they are being trapped into a strange world of fantasy but are unable to stop it.

How do we explain these changes? Unless we get an adequate explanation of this change in cognitive processing, we cannot solve the problem of the students to recover what they have lost.

My explanation through my ACCESS TEST and the Siddha medical system is as follows:

The human psyche is always being pulled by fundamental metaphysical entities of Natham and Bindhu separately and jointly. The psychic pressures established by Natham brings about cognitive processes of thinking and analysing type (Ida kalai Nadi) and that of Bindhu, the feeling and emotional type (Pingkalai Nadi). The joint functioning of both Natham and Bindhu brings about cognitive processing of the ILLUMINATING TYPE that also simulataneously destroys the IGNORANCE already there.(Suzi munai Nadi). Here I must mention that the Idakalai are enunciated by Natham and Pingkalai by Bindhu and suzimunai by their joint presence.

Now through my ACCESS TEST, we can see how their psychic functiong is gradually pulled deep into the PINGKALAI i.e. to the exclusive dominance of Bindhu which on its own breeds the cancer of the cognitive: the uncontrollable and excessive production of ideas and fantasies. The Natham is that which CONTROLS and regulates and puts an ORDER or LOGIC into thinking. One can link up this with Freudian REALITY principle. When the STRONG presence of Natham, is eliminated for some reason or other, which will be quite evident in the ACCESS TEST, we notice the decline in cognitive processing of the students.

The treatment then consists in doing something that would RESTORE the presence of NATHAM in their psychic functioning.

Ullaganar.

( Note : Our copyrighted ACCESS TEST serves as a powerful psychodiagnostic tool not only in identifying students in similar situation as above but also in a wide range of issues, in almost every aspect of human existential struggles. Consultation is available for those who are interested, for a fee. Please contact us for further info. More info regarding this test in our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/593469494088854/  )

Divine Deities Are Not Imagination - Part 3

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia, Penang

Divine Deities Are Not Imagination - Part 2

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia, Penang

Divine Deities Are Not Imagination - Part 1

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia, Penang

The Tamil Hermeneutics and Metaphysics- Part 6

The World as Text

Philosophy in the genuine sense of the word or metaphysics as such begins when we take the WHOLE WORLD as a TEXT that needs to be understood. 


Because the SEEING the WORLD AS TEXT is textual, the Global, Local and Sequential organizational structures pertain to it. There is also from the communicative point of view the Extentional-Intentional structures as integral components of it. It is this distinction that in traditional metaphysics, both in the East and the West , that goes by the name of Appearance vs Reality, phenomenal vs noumenal, physical vs metaphysical and so forth. It is also with this kind of SEEING presupposed that Meykandar begins his celebrated Civanjaanabotham, quite unique in this not only in India but also the whole world. 


BEING is shown as the Ground of WORLD INTENTIONALITY where it is shown to exist as the ordaining principle, the ANai , the presence of which is felt by us in our moral struggles. Our ethical constitution forces us to acknowledge a transpersonal SOURCE for our ethical essence , that which is ABSOLUTELY PURE and which in turn purifies us.


In this he distinguishes himself from the Vedantic where inquiry begins with " Then therefore the enquiry into Brahman" which ALREADY presuposses the TRUTH of Brahman, the reality of which is one of the central questions of genuine philosophical/metaphysical enquiries.


Meykandar avoids this by taking the World as TEXT which is COMMON to all and constitutes THAT which needs to be understood and without anything like Brahman. to begin with at least.


In Civanjaanabootham the presence of BEING itself is shown by taking the WORLD AS TEXT and noting the discontructive (sangkaram) processes there. The reader is taken through a journey where the eyes are opened and through unfailing logical reasoning, is taken towards seeing for himself the presence of BEING, the Primordial as that capable of the disconstructive-disclosive processes, the cangkaara kaaraNaakiya mutal .


The world as a whole has the WHOLE-PART structure for anyone to see who, on seeing it, would NOT dismiss the EXTENTIONAL as mythiya, an illusion, an incomprehensible magic-like reality etc. But in addition to this it has also the Athikaara muRaimai, a sequentiality though at this level it is also cyclic or repetitive. The whole world is WITHDRAWN and reissued, terminated and re-initiated, dissolved and disclosed, disconstructed and renewed. And this episodizing happens at all levels, the Global and Local. The whole world and everything in it, the microscopic and the macroscopic , the psychical and physical are NOT FREE of these episodizing -  terminating the ongoing and initiating something else simultaneously as there now and which before was concealed. 


A close look at these episodizations disclose the five-fold component processes of : production, sustenance, disconstruction and through these those of REVEALING and HIDING, the Pancakrityas which are also understood as the functions of mantra ci-va-ya-na-ma. The AGENTIVE CAUSE, Nimitta Kaaranan , of these episodizing activities is BEING for which reason HE is also known as Pancha kiruttian, THAT which is the agent of these five fold processes.


Now it is only at this point the difference between Tamil Vaishnavism and Saivism emerges at least in the version of Visistavaita. While Vaishnavism sees and acknowledges the Whole-Part structure of the world and builds its metaphysics, that which goes under the name of Visistatvaitam, on it, it FAILS to see the Sequential Structure, the Athikaara muRaimai, the presence of DYNAMIC MOVEMENT, the Dance that is universally present and which pertains also to the world as a Whole. Nammazvaar noted this but his insight here was NOT developed further by the VaishaNava Acaryas , it would appear. BEING as the world as a whole and thus contains as its bodily parts everything in it is Narayana, the ancient Purusha . Not that it is false but this Narayana does NOT DANCE and hence BEING as Narayana is only a PARTIAL understanding, that which enables us to comprehend the Whole-Part Structure but not the MOVEMENT based Sequential Structure.


Now it is NOT that , to be fair, Vaishnavism does comprehend the Pancakritiyas -BEING , but it appears to see it, within BEING-IN-the-WORLD, as the functions of the antharyaami. But however the point of Meykandar is that to disconstruct the World as a WHOLE , the BEING must be transcendent to it. The BEING IN the whole world as only the IMMANENT reality CANNOT disconstruct the whole world as such.


But why this is important?


It is enormously important for it is the understanding of BEING as the absolutely transcendental to the whole world in addition to being immanent, that we begin to UNDERSTAND the presence of ANAVAM as the metaphysical substance underlying the destructive but NOT the productive and BEING as Siva, HE who SAVES the psychic entities by exerting his POWER over it. In failing to transcend the World as a Whole and remaining fixed to being IN it, Visistatvaitam fails to acknowledge the presence of ANaavam and hence works with a Fundamental Ontology that is quite defective in an important way.


Now Advaita Vedanta, by dismissing the whole world as magical, irreal, dream-like , illusory i.e. aarObitham, addhyaasa and so forth fails to SEE the whole world as a TEXT with a duality of structure. By wrongly interpreting the Neti, the negation of the Upanishads, it DOES NOT SEE the world as whole that points towards an INTENTIONALITY, through its EXTENTIONALITY.. the Deep Structure through the Surface Structure features.


These differences are NOT minor. They mean totally different ways of life and have different kinds of implications not only for the religious but also the personal and social existence.




ULLAGANAR
( 9-2-1998 )

The Tamil Hermeneutics and Metaphysics- Part 5

TEXTUALITY AND INTENTIONALITY
 

We must keep to the notion that until the very end understanding is TEXTUAL, in an extended sense of the word,   and that too with the primordiality of SEEING. 

The seeing, the darsana,  generates an understanding and that in turns generates a TEXT-short stories poetry,  essays , artistic productions,  architecture,   dance, dramas, in short everything that is produced by man. We are using the notion of TEXT  in a very large and extended sense  by noting a similarity that prevails  between the WRITTEN texts and  the nonwritten, the verbal and nonverbal.

Every product of man is  a TEXT with its attendant DUALITY of structure. We must also remember that all texts have TWO distinct kinds of  organization: the whole-part and the sequential that Tolkaapiyar called  Pakuthi-thokuthi and Athikaara muRaimai. 


Now with regard to Whole-Part  relationship , it may be possible that the INTENTIONALITY of the author may NOT be available as element of its structure. But this NOT SO with respect to the sequential. The sequentiality discloses  the decisions made by the author  consciously or unconsciously  and in this DISPLAYS his INTENTIONS.  Thus viewed from this perspective,  all TEXTS are extentional-intentional where the extentional is the REPRESENTATIONAL and intentional  disclosive of the  mind of the author. 


Thus through reaching the intentional elements of  TEXT, say a letter written by a friend, we reach the mind of the individual and SEE through the extentional what the author really wants.

My understanding of  the intentional component   of the  letter  and not say the language or the style of writing or the colour of the ink etc. makes me  UNDERSTAND my  friend and what kind of fellow he is : concerned, loving, caring, cynical, jealous, rude, cultivated,  polite etc.  In reading the letter, we bypass the  language etc. and  LEAP towards the INTENTIONAL and thereby the SELF of the person.  


Thus the intentional component of  TEXTS become enormously important for psychology , not the psychology that  conceptualise measures and ascertain but for a psychology that  SEEKS to UNDERSTAND people -- what they are, how they actually feel, respond, react etc.

As Tirumular has said long ago: when we see the wood of an wooden elephant, the elephant recedes to the background, and when we see the elephant the wood recedes and becomes invisible -- it is there but not seen.

The language  in the same manner absents itself when the MEANING , the INTENTION is noted and grasped.

Now we must introduce  a distinction between  personal-intentions and transpersonal-intentions.  For the TEXTS in addition to being the normal, the ordinary , those that directly related to  LIVING as such,  there are the SCRIPTURAL , the METAPHYSICAL  where the concerns or ordinary life are  forsaken for the sake of Mystical , Unconscious or the Metaphysical.  


Here too the two kinds of organizations are available- the whole-part and sequential.  The SivapuraaNam of Manikavaasagar  is NOT ordinary poetry of mundane life.  It transcends the mundane  and discloses the mystical, that realm of understanding outside the normal and for which reason it is classified as mystical.

But here too there is sequential organization. Whose intentionality is it that is shown? There is NOTHING mundane though  some may be personal . But the personal is submerged to allow the TRANSPERSONAL to display itself . The transpersonal is the same as BEING, the God .


In metaphysical poetry, the individual will is submerged and the Divine Will is allowed to shine forth.  Through leaping towards the INTENTIONALITY of such metaphysical TEXTS we reach the DIVINE . Thus each reading of SivapuraaNam - not simply reciting it mechanically but understanding it - is simultaneously the experiencing of the DIVINE and for which reason they also become religious.  Such texts by their metaphysical qualities serve for us to reach the metaphysical and Divine  within us.

This applies to  reading and understanding  scriptural lore of any kind: they facilitate the submergence of the egoistic individual and enjoy the transpersonal DIVINE.

In such transcendenses are born  metaphysical insights  and which later become systematised as coherent  philosophies.
 

ULLAGANAR

( Editing and re-paragraphing by his student )

Real and Imaginary Agamic Field in Agamic Science Part 2

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia

Real and Imaginary Agamic Field in Agamic Science Part 1

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia.

The Tamil Hermeneutics and Metaphysics- Part 4

The Textuality of Understanding and the Primordiality of Seeing (or Darsana).

What unites the  Phenomenological Movement of the West initiated  by Husserl with the Tamil is the notion of "return to the things themselves" , a constant theme in the name of  Iyal neRi,  a return to the natural which really means  away from the secondary authorities of all sorts.  The Natural World and  Existence ,  the experiences   that we have there  is that which needs to be studied and understood  for redeeming ourselves.  All the secrets that will evaporate our existential anguish is there in the world .   The scriptures that are unrelated or unrelateable    to existence, to the personal and social themes, become purely meaningless mental exercises.

But in the Tamil, the "things" to which we must return including the experiences are  appropriated as TEXTS  ( in the extended sense )  and which in turn are products of SEEING.  

We see this from the Sumerian times itself  in  their concern with language both  the eme-gir, the written AND the eme-sal, ther spoken.  Tolkaapiyar continues this in terms of CeyyuL  and  Vazakka. 

The most important thing here is the eme-sal or Vazakku that brings us to the living stream of life, how things are in the  world, as part of the LIVING process . It is the power of living language   to make us to be in touch with  LIVING  process as opposed to the fossilized and dead.

 And it turns out that the primordial existential structure is  seeing, that living is seeing  and  that there is SEEING  only because of a pre-existent SHOWING and whatever thus seen is retained as TEXTS to be further interpreted and understood.  The primordial act of  seeing, the pratykasa (  , porutu-aksa = Su. ig-tag-ga), even concrete objects such as the trees and hills yonder are NOT seen in themselves but only as we are LED TO SEE and seeing thus fabricated  generates an understanding that is retained as TEXTS.  Otherwise we cannot explain why the same object is seen differently by different people, as so well attested in studies of perception.

Such TEXTS constitute our understanding, the consciousness and the continuous production of TEXTS, the movement of understanding , the flow of consciousness.  But all such seeing-fabricated TEXTS have DUALITY of structure, the Surface and Deep and because of which they always IMPEL interpretative movements of understanding, the practice of UTTI ,  throwing one   to Hermeneutics in that process.  

The hermeneutic way of Being is so close to us that only  after noting repeated failures to fathom the human mind  by other methods that we become self conscious about our hermeneutic bearings.

Our THINKING becomes genuine when  a content of our understanding is secured as a TEXT and noting its Surface Structure  features,  venture through ontopretive  movements ( = utti, Note:  slightly diffferent  from  the common  interpretive)  to locate the elements in the Deep Structure that Agentively  determine the the morphology of the Surface Structure. 

The face of that person who sits in front of me is a TEXT, the swollen eyes, tight-lipped mouth etc. are Surface features that point beyond themselves towards his Being  as the Deep Structure elements that fabricates his countenance as such that I term  in an impressionist way  as 'sadness', ' melancholy',  'unhappy', 'distressed' etc. But  I DO NOT UNDERSTAND him till I locate the elements of Deep Structure that may be unconscious , subconscious  or even half-conscious etc. to the individual, the elements that remain CONCEALED, the Tirobava. He knows he is sad , depressed etc. but is NOT SURE why he is so and even if he knows why he is so , he may NOT UNDERSTAND why he should be  so.

It is here that the need for ACCESS TESTS arises and along with all other tests , techniques and dream-like experiences that would disclose even vaguely the structure of the UNCONSCIOUS  that  contains within itself the agentive elements that remain the causal factors  of his distress, melancholy etc.

The Access Tests make visible the primordial SEEING that has on its own generated TEXTS that structure his understanding and through that creates his ways of Being in the world which sometimes happen to be the distress-type. The Counselor locates these D.S elements  and makes the person concerned to also SEE it and through that GAIN an understanding of the origins of own distress. This deeper understanding  is the CURE for the malaise afflicting him Having UNDERSTOOD the real CAUSE of distress and Melancholy , a solution presents itself and which enables him to SEE differently and because of which UNDERSTAND existence differently. 

Thus Hermeneutic Counselling  centres on the notion of Engineering the SEEING, changing the way a person habitually sees and allow him to SEE truthfully  so that no falsities enter into his understanding.Truth is the healer of all malaise and Hermeneutic Counselling is a form counseling  that promotes  this kind of psychic healing.

We should  note here that Indian Darsanas or metaphysical systems  and perhaps the whole of  the fabrique of philosophic thinking in the East is for the purpose of this kind of counseling,  the upatesam.  

The Agamic tradition analyses  the praxis of such a  system into Tantra Kalai, (the ritual practices) , Mantra Kalai ( the recitation of mantra) and Upatesa  Kalai ( counseling).

We should  not fail to note that  Bhagavad  Gita in essence ,  is actually  a text in counseling using for this purpose the    metaphysical insights of the very ancient Samkhya System.  In order  to elimate the  doubts and uncertainties in the  mind of Arjuna, counseling is done  by Krishna , to  CLARIFY his mind and through  that make him  continue with his course of  actions without any uncertainties now.

ULLAGANAR

( editing and re-paragraphing by his student )

( photo of Edmund Husserl taken from wikipedia with thanks )