Man is IGNORANT and this, he has been so from the most ancient times; the earlier we go into human evolution through regression into his primordiality, the more ignorant he is seen to be.
The absolute limit in this evolutionary regression is a condition of ABSOLUTE DARKNESS, the Sutta Kevalam, as the Saivas would say. That which creates this primordial condition AGAINST which he has to FIGHT is the ANavam, the metaphysical stuff; the Black Mass that does nothing but to destroy everything that surrounds it and comes its way. It is LIGHT HUNGRY, destroys and dissolves LIGHT wherever it is and in whatever form it occurs and breeds through that Darkness.
When BEING, that remains transcendent even to this and sheds light by VIOLATING the hold of ANavam, the human psyche gets EYES TO SEE, no matter how primitive may be the vision. Right at that moment, the psyche becomes PHYSICAL-METAPHYSICAL, bipolar in structure that Tirumoolar first articulates as "sat-asattu aanmaa" , the psyche that is simultaneously physical and metaphysical, that which seeks the absolute as well as the nonabsolute. The LIGHT draws the souls through a psychic phototropism of its own, unto BEING making it METAPHYSICAL and the DARKNESS breeding Anavam too attracts it through making DEATH desirable and hence PHYSICAL.
In the bosom of man there is both EROS and THANATOS ,( thanks to FREUD here) always in conflict.; the question: to be or not to be always raising its ugly head creating a crisis both personal and cultural.
Suruppak NeRi (Sumerian :.na.ri) of Suruppak, the Sumerian sage of ancient times begins his NeRi (na.ri) with the immensely arresting cosmological thoughts
Sumerian :" u-ri-a u sud-ra ri-a " which should be understood as :
Tamil: uu eria uu suud-ra eri-a : the time when there was fire (light) , the time when there was hot fire balls" and so forth.
The cosmology and in which creature evolution is written begins when the Darkness of Emptiness (Sumerian. gi-ria) was shattered by fires of molten lava spilling out , a notion perhaps suggested to them by the observation of volcanic eruptions in vicinity they might have lived ( the Indonesian archipelago, as I have argued for elsewhere)
When man becomes PHYSICAL and neglects the metaphysical, he becomes GODLESS and hence beastly, the pure acquisitive economic man who sees everything in terms of economics, measures happiness in terms of economic prosperity like what we see today, lost in the desert heat of meaninglessness that he calls postmodernism with its NIHILISM. Disruption of both personal and social becomes the rule of the day and AGGRESSION, the desire to KILL becomes the ruling passion. Modern positive science is methodical aggression on Nature, robing the treasures buried there through mindless and violent intrusion. The LAND ceases to be the SACRED PLACE, the Talam of Gods, a PLACE where divine powers make their presence visible to the physical eyes, a TEMPLE like it was for the ancients and like it is for the primitive people in their pristine naivety.
However when the notion of SCIENCE gets liberated from its physicalism and made HERMENEUTICAL and through that made to recover its originality, it becomes a tool for recovering the METAPHYSICAL WAY OF being, of living, of Existing. It allows DISCONSTRUCTION, destroy the ongoing and through that allow the emergence of the higher. Sometimes in this the personal evolutionary ASCENDANCE where the mesmerizing , the spellbinding magical attractions of the PHYSICAL, the maayasakti (thanks to Sankara here) of the purely material , is overcome and the metaphysical GROUND attained.
It is at this point that CONCEALMENT ( Tamil, tirobavam) as instituted by BEING is recognized as DISTINCT from the DARKNESS injected by Anavam . Concealment is positive in its effect. It promotes the noblest sentiments and highest forms of SACRIFICE.
It is concealment that institutes the philosophical quest, the free expression of search for the deepest where every discovery ushers in a fundamental shift in paradigm and for which reason the conservatives, particularly in religion , always try to arrest it for fear of losing their well entrenched position
And most importantly , every penetration into the Depths develops LOVE and shapes man as more humane and divine. And to the measure LOVE grows and becomes more and more UNIVERSAL , to that measure the transcendent CONCEALMENT is also withdrawn.
Hindu life as dominated by Brahamanism , submerging the LOVE fostering Bakthi , has become loveless life with the mind caught in the prison of caste and which makes even human interactions to be analyzed and regulated in terms of caste distinctions with so many social taboos .
The average Hindu person at the moment appears NOT to be able to think beyond caste, free of caste moorings coming from his birth , as his birth mark.
Where there is no LOVE, where there is no Bakthi, there appears to be no genuine objectivity also.
This life of LOVE unto BEING in which the transcendental concealment gets slowly withdrawn is the genuine life of Bakthi, of loving devotion to BEING. And because the death-bringing ANavam, always there ever ready to jump back and imprison the mind , is kept at bay , life is joyful , full of bliss, with love unto all irrespective of whatever difference that may prevail.
Life with BEING and hence genuine metaphysical life cannot but be beautiful and full of happiness, a life of CONTENTMENT and fulfillment., and it must be added here, of service or ToNdu. It is NOT an accident that the Bakthi revolutionaries are called TituttoNdar - the noble servants -- and caste distinction among them was supremely irrelevant.
All the earthly and physical desires are transmuted into the transpersonal and universal and hence given the eyes of Grace , the ArutkaN, that does not see any difference even if it prevails.
Ullaganar
( editing and re-paragraphing by his student )
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