The Evolutionary Odyssey and its Grand Finish.
This is a patikam of amazing beauty with an inner coherence of its own and in which are disclosed so many meanings of immense existential significance. We should not fail to notice that every verse centers on a travel, a pilgrimage, that of traveling towards AiyaaRu and reaching it and only in the course of which the various observations on animal sexuality and the happiness they produce and because of which they dance and sing is observed.
The AiyaaRu serves as the Final Destination and literally it means the Divine (Ai) River (aaRu) and which may be another name for the GaGka that flows on the tuft of Siva serving as the Tiirttam, the Pure Waters that cleanse the souls of their filth, the Malam and makes them absolutely PURE and with that FIT for being blessed with Moksa, the final redemption.
This he is trying to reach and in fact reaches the AiyaaRu and enjoys with that the final Baptism of Waters, a theme that runs across as a common ritual also in all the Semitic religions perhaps as an input from Sumerian times. This pervades the popular religious thinking of the Hindus as having dips in GaGka and Kaveri, which also exists in other religions in different forms.
But what kind of pilgrimage is the GENUINE pilgrimage and which is only hinted at by these rituals or symbolic behavior?
We get a clue to this in the immensely meaningful verse below that comes towards the end (and naturally of course!) of the Patikam.
11.
vaLarmatik kaNNiyinaai vaarkuza laaLodum paadik
kaLavu padaatator kaalaG kaaNpaan kadaikaN niRkinReen
alavu padaatator anbodu AiyaaRu adaikinra pootu
iLamaNa naagu tazuvi eeRu varuvana kaNdeen
kaNdeen avar tiruppaatam kaNdaRiyaatana kaNdeen
Meaning:
There is Siva appearing as Candrasekaran wearing the growing Crescent Moon on His head as an ornament and Uma with Him as the One who blesses women with long flowing hair that stimulates sexual feelings. Singing both of them I stood with the final resolve to see them not together in union but separately standing alone, I came to AiyaaRu with boundless LOVE for them. And there on the way I saw, destroying all my hopes the virile bulls coming embracing with love the young and beautiful cows. At that point I saw with my mental eyes, the Divine Feet of Siva, (where he creates the males and females of all species with agitating the Naatam and Bindu). Thus I saw what are impossible to witness with the fleshy eyes alone.
He claims that he stands at the final stages of a journey, of his metaphysical odyssey, KadaikaN NiRkinReen. He has come to the END of the pilgrimage, the Yaattirai. But what kind of Yaattirai and what kind of Final Stage?
It cannot simply be the travels around various kinds of temples, shrines, sacred rivers and hills for they are there always and one can always revisit them and continue the journey endlessly. So the Yaattirai that opens his eyes towards the Dance of Siva and Sakti at the DEPTHS of the normal and everyday sexual behavior of animals, can only be a subjective pilgrimage, of self-evolution, of evolution of the subjectivity where it reaches higher and higher pakkuvam, a kind of subjective MATURITY that allows the seeing of the Divinity behind animal sexuality that the prudish and the Vedanties will either look at with disdain or invent metaphysical systems where it is very conveniently forgotten.
There is another way of looking at this Yaattirai and which may account for he describes that at this point of his subjective evolution there is ‘aLavu padaata anbu”, Boundless LOVE, a subjective condition of Wholly of Love and like BEING Wholly-For-Others and hence Egoless.
The Yaattirai is in fact the Whole of Evolutionary Pilgrimage in which he has taken the shapes of various animal and animal-like human beings and now FREE of all of them by having evolved ABOVE them. For it is interesting that in the verse, he describes only animal sexuality but not at all animal-like human sexuality and when he talks about human beings he talks of those great ones who have freed themselves of this sexuality: ARRu aruL peRRu NinRaar.
Thus the observations on animal sexuality have double meanings. One is the naturalistic description of the animal sexual behavior given objectively like a naturalist. But other is the METAPHORICAL - these elephants, bulls, pigs, birds and so forth are human beings who are animalistic in various ways. Some people behave as if elephants, as if pigs, as if bulls and so forth. These animal essences are there in the human beings as the karmic deposits of their earlier life forms and which are lodged in their unconscious mind, making them behave like such animals and so forth. Thus the Yaattirai Appar describes is the Evolutionary Odyssey where after enjoying various animal births and has come to human forms retaining the phylogenetic memories of earlier life forms as part of the Prabta Karma and now has evolved to a condition of being truly human, the PURE Human and which is FREE of any trace of animal sexuality. This view is reinforced for it is only this animalism-free human essence which can be one with aLavu Padaata Anbu, boundless LOVE for all including certainly even animals and plants.
Now the question arises: has Appar reached the Grand Finish or not?
He visualizes this as Siva and Sakti ‘KaLavu padaatavoor Kaalam’ , a moment when they are NOT in union. This is his THINKING as to the ideal possibility but in which he is disappointed for with this mental expectations, he sees the bulls and cows coming together with sexual desires animating their behavior. His expectation is foiled; there is NO MOMENT where Siva and Sakti remain dissociated, union severed and live as separate entities. Men can THINK of such possibilities, isolate Sakti, as Amman and become the Saktas, isolate Siva as Brahman or Sunyata and remain idealists of a kind practicing a monastic way of live. Appar fails in such expectations and learns the TRUTH that both are always together, that BEING is a Siva-Sakti complex, an Androgynous reality always and who dances the Dance of Bliss TOGETHER.
This vision of the Dance of Bliss of Siva-Sakti is the TERMINAL vision and that which constitutes the enjoyment of Moksa itself and which is simultaneously a destruction of ALL false views such as that of the Saktas, Vedanties and such other idealists.
ULLAGANAR
( editing and re-paragraphing by his student )
No comments:
Post a Comment