Sutarsan and the Destruction of Ego-inflation
Genuine mythologies are different from mental fantasies that border science fictions of a kind, a product of cognitive processes gone cancerous, fantasies produced without any control.
Genuine mythologies as products of transductive perceptions painfully gained by gifted individuals and they EXPLAIN the historical phenomena so that we have a better understanding of it. This means that they allow interpreting them and relating them to the natural or historical. Genuine mythologies in Hinduism are of this sort though it is intermixed with so much that are pure fantasies that disclose no meanings except a certain kind of bizarre fertility of the mind.
In the following verse Appar attends to the cases in which a person can become tyrannical when he gets initiated into the metaphysical realms, the realms of the night journeys where the hidden and the concealed are disclosed and the person who experiences this becomes somewhat TRANSPERSONAL and sometimes ego-inflated because of that. The Asura who lurks in these realms of the night journeys is called Calantaran , meaning he who lurks in the waters, here the paaRkadal, the ocean of milk over which lies the Atisesha and over which sleeps Thirumaal or Vishnu.
It is a Saivite mythical theme in which Vishnu figures but drives in the point that Sutarsan is the weapon that can kill Cantaran, a mythical theme hermeneutically very significant. Sutarsan is a symbolically a disc but the meaning indicates that it is the Vision of TRUTH that can kill Cantaran, the Asura of Ego-inflation.
More analytical comments below.
143
tadamalar aayirnagkaN kuRai onRataaka
niRaivenRu tan kaN atanaal
udan vazipaadu ceyta tiumaalai entai
perumaan ukantu mikavum
cudaradiyaal muyanRu cuzalvittu arakkan
itayam piLanta kodumai
adalvali yaazi aaziyaan avanukku aLitta
avanaam namakor caraNee
Meaning:
Tirumaal, one of the root archetype of BEING is said to sleep over the KundaliNi snake over the ocean of milk. When such a BEING was disturbed by an evil force, Calantaran, Tirumaal to combat and defeat him, began to worship Civa to procure the disk, Sutarsan , as a blessing from HIM. When he started his worship with a thousand flowers and when he noted that one was missing, he plucked out one of own eyes with that as flower and completed the prayer. Civa pleased with it generated the disc by creating a whirlpool of light with his brilliant feet and granted to him. This disc, the Sutarsan, a powerful and terrible weapon which split open the chest of Calantaran and killed him. This Civa who is capable of this is really our recluse.
Commentary:
Now Appar takes up the problems men face and sometimes even become tyrannical as a result of what can be called the night journeys, journeys into the Depth Psychological World, the metaphysical realms and which world is said to be ruled by Tirumal, or Maha Vishnu, He who is known as the archetype of aRituyil, the false sleep in which seeing continues however. This seeing is NOT the ordinary seeing with two flesh eyes but rather the Third Eye, the eyes of night dreams, and lucid dreams, visions of transductive perceptions that erupt in the case of some individuals and catches them by surprise and where the world of unconscious becomes visible for the first time.
Such experiences emerged when the soul is possessed or taken over by this Tirumaal who is said to govern this world. He is said to operate sleeping over the coiled thousand hooded SNAKE, Atisesha and over the Paarkadal, the ocean of Pure Milk, mythic themes that need to be interpreted and understood. The Snake, Atisesha is the Coiled Power, the Kundalini, the enormous psychical ENERGY that is required for enjoying and persisting in the realms of transductive perceptions. It lies on the PaaR Kadal, the ocean of Pure Milk and which means Pure Consciousness or some kind of deep metaphysical understanding. Thus it explains the PRECONDITION for an individual to be blessed with the grace of Tirumal and hence gaining illuminations about the concealed metaphysical realms.
However even here emerges the evil force Calantaran, which literally means "he who resides in the waters". For sometimes individuals forgetful of BEING and that whatever extraordinary metaphysical illuminations that they enjoy are actually gifts of BEING and that there can be many such individuals, in fact anyone who satisfies the preconditions can enjoy it. Such individuals become EGO-INFLATED and begin to think that they are UNIQUE and SPECIAL and hence someone like a messiah who has come to rescue the whole of mankind and so forth.
Though the metaphysical journeys have the capacity to destroy all the mental constraints and delimitedness of understanding, and changes the personality in the direction of transpersonality, but sometimes it so happens that they become intoxicated with such revelations and mesmerized by such visions, begin also their political activities in which they seek to REALIZE the new image they have of themselves. They become like a politically ambitious warriors who set out to conquer the whole world and bring it under his ONE umbrella and hence messianic individuals of a kind who set out to conquer the whole of the Spiritual World so that the whole of humanity become submissive to him and ONLY to him. In fact he makes people FORGET the true source of all greatness -- BEING Himself -- and worship also becomes displaced, from being unto BEING ONLY to the messiah-like individual.
This is being possessed by the Evil Force Calantaran and about which Tirumal cannot do anything. For it requires someone TRANSCENDENT to the realms of the Night Journeys, transcendent to the world of the transductive persons. Tirumal knowing this, prays to Civa, who is noted here as BEING itself, the Absolute that beyond and above which there is NOTHING. He has a prayer and with sacrifices appropriate to the boons that he is praying for, the Disc of Cutarsan. But for this he has to give up one of his own eyes and which means that he has to give up being caught up in the world of Night journeys and look BEYOND and ABOVE with the understanding the realms of night journeys do NOT exhaust the WORLD as such.
The word "sutarasan" means sudar - tarisanam, the witnessing of BEING as Radiance or su-tarisanam , authentic seeing or Truth-Seeing. It is forged by BEING Himself out of a whirlpool created by the DANCE of His feet of Light, sudar adi. And this means that the WEAPON that can finally KILL ego-inflation and thus reduce such paranoiac individuals to become REALISTIC and humble is the vision provided by sutarsan, the vision of TRUTH as such, that which makes an individual truly mystical and at the same infinitely humble and gentle and of course a True Bakta.
In the iconography of Tirumal we have this Disc on the left shoulder and Conch on the Right. The conch stands for CALLING people unto to metaphysical world through the art of Upatesa, metaphysical discourses. But now he is also endowed with Sutarsan which means that Upatesam is combined with search for TRUTH, it is organized so that it ceases to be purely imaginary, a flight into the world of fantasy but rather a meaningful delving into the depths always mindful that only TRUTH must be sought and that one should NOT be misguided on the way into becoming the messiah and so forth.
ULLAGANAR
( Editing and re-paragraphing by his student )
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