Tamil Language and Agamic Science - Part 1

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia.

The Tamil Hermeneutics and Metaphysics - Part 16

Disconstructing Tat Twam Asi 

We have noticed that we are infected with TIME in our existence and that we are both I-T, intentional-temporality and P-T physical-temporality. But the new insight we have wrested out in our hermeneutic reflections is that the famous Tat Twam Asi is in fact an oblique way of putting the IT dimensions of existence and where it is more fundamental than PT the physical temporality in the sense that once IT is no more there would be no more also PT.


But we can disconstruct IT only if we disconstruct our INTENTIONAL way of Being, a way of Being where we continuously search for this and that, get pushed hither and thither, be pulled here and there etc. Disconstructing INTENTIONALITY requires that we BECOME non-intentional or as it is said in Indian circles, attain the state of "desirelessness", the PaRRu aRRaan PaRRu of ThirukkuRaL. Where we attain this state of Being, there is no IT and hence no PT as well. And hence NO TIME at all. It is a state of Being of the self where understanding exists as the understanding of a self but without TIME and because of which it is Absolute , the civacattu of Meykandar, Civanjanam or simply the Jnanam of Nyanasambantar that he distinguishes from maRainjanam, the scriptural understanding and puts above it.


And that it is TIMELESS also means the language , the ordinary vaikari type with syntax as constituted by Verb Phrases and Noun phrases becomes IMPOSSIBLE for without the notion of time, such linguistic structures are just impossible. One cannot simply SPEAK and hence in enjoying the Nyanam, one can only be Deeply Silent, hold oneself in the
famous Mouna Muttirai.


But does this mean that COMMUNICATION ceases to be?


No , I do not think so. My Deep Silence and the Posture I assume during those precious moments are in fact communicative. But I can be more specific here by assuming the posture Cin Muttirai, with hand gestures of a special sort where through gestures I communicate something profound and deep but without speaking. In enjoying the nyanam, the Absolute Understanding, my tongues are locked up but NOT by body and the hands. They begin to speak nonverbally and communicate something that even scriptural languages cannot communicate.


My language has been, I notice now, both verbal and nonverbal or the bodily, the language of Mudras. Now at this final state of Being, verbal language drops out leaving me only with the nonverbal, the bodily!!


Thus in disconstructing myself from INTENTIONALITY I disconstruct also from the hold of the scriptures, hence the hold of Brahma. Also the states of transductive perceptions, the aRituyil and hence also the world of Vishnu. I must learn the scriptures with the help of Brahma and having done that transcend that world and enter that of Vishnu. And having learnt all that I have to in the world of transductive perceptions , transcend even that and go beyond the world of Vishnu, BEING-as--the- Manifest- World


But these fundamental discontructions : am I doing myself? That will be impossible for at this point we are NOT disconstructing one kind of intentionality and allow another to take over. Here in this ultimate disconstruction we are doing something more fundamental, more drastic -- disconstructing the intentional disposition itself, the KILLING of the Ego-Self itself. So it has to be something AGAINST my WILL , something done on me and by something else. But at this point only BEING remains as the ONE above Brahma, as the ONE above Vishnu and hence absolutely transcendent BEING, the ParaCivan.


This BEING, this ParaCivan ( or whatever name you may choose) is the one who disconstructs me and catapults me into the state of Being timeless, and hence experiencing everything non-temporically, as it is in itself, the CattaRivu of Meykandar. Because no temporality as a component of my understanding, there is only Cuunyam, a NOTHINGNESS as a that, just as Meykandar observed : cattu etir cuunyam


And I can progress in this only by allowing myself to be thus disconstructed by BEING by becoming willingly egoless and humble. I allow myself to be thus disconstructed without any resistance when I understand that BEING is LOVE and that I can TRUST Him absolutely. My Love develops into Bakthi and within Bakthi , I happily allow myself to be disconstructed continuously by BEING and in the way He sees fit.


I have NO CHOICE really for I am given to understand that "aadduvitaal aaroruvar aadaataaree?" the famous words of Appar: if played by BEING, who can refuse to play? 



ULLAGANAR

The Tamil Hermeneutics and Metaphysics - Part 15

I am This and That and This ...: The "tat twam asi" 

So let me continue with my reflections undeterred by the noise of the False elites, knowing well that I cannot expect more than these from them and having also experienced something worse in the hands of others especially the religious fanatics of all shades for whom metaphysical reflections are monkey tricks, useless mental acrobatics. But in the History of Metaphysics this is NOT new. The early Alwars and Nayanmars were Pey's and Buuthams ( ghosts and gobblings). Perhaps I am also one in the eyes of the naive and the false elites. So let it be. Nothing is lost by this.


I exist therefore BEING is. 


This is a fundamental achievement of my own, an accomplishment through a massive disconstructive effort, an act whereby I have extricated myself from the purely physical and natural and allowed the metaphysical and the supernatural to open up itself in the horizon of my understanding. And with it, I notice now, my understanding as to what EXISTENCE is,also changes , and changes for the better.


The undiferentiated naive notion of existence becomes differentiated into TWO basic types: Being-only-with-the -World (BWW) and Being-only-with -BEING (BWB). My existence can be purely physical with purely materialistic concerns and which I disallow, as a crass dialectic materialist or the rationalist of the recent Dravidian variety or the ancient Carvakas of a kind, anything that smells nonphysical, anything beyond the reaches of the five senses; or it can be purely metaphysical where, I, like a Advaita Vedanti, would consider the physical and natural world a dream-reality, somehow there and about which I cannot speak anything, anirvacana, and somehow there through a mayasakthi, a power that escapes my comprehension.


But I notice that I am BOTH, I am, as Thirumular said long ago "Cat-acat Anma" a thinking being capable of BOTH. I notice that I background or foreground alternatively in my understanding these possibilities to be. When I push BWW to the background then, only then, I foreground BWB. And I shuttle between these two, unable to be fully in one of these but always BWB pulling me unto itself as if a magnet, the Kaantap Pasaasam of Meykandar. There is a strange fascination for BWB within me and I succumb to it even when the world calls me crazy.


And now I look at this state of Being of myself and the fact that now I have gained a more differentiated understanding of EXISTENCE. I have been saying that all these have become realities because of my own disconstructive efforts. But how then I disconstruct in such a way that I gain an understanding of existence that is true and more differentiated?


I could disconstruct only because in my vision there is a THAT that I want to be, fuse with the THAT so that it ceases to dangle in my mental horizon providing me a goal, calling unto itself and inviting me to be that. And with this I notice that right from the beginning my understanding has been PROJECTIVE, in the Heidegerian sense, future oriented with the three ektases of time or temporality - the future and hence the present and hence the past. There are thousands and thousands of these 'thats ' and "thises" that infect my understanding and configure me as one restless and always trying to be this or that, accomplish this and that. Thus my understanding has been structured by Tat Twan Asi, Thou art That. It is a result of such 'thats' in my understanding that I can be disconstructive at all.


Understanding is projective and here I agree with Heidegger but I find that I have to part company with him when he says that the Da-Sein moves from itself to itself by itself. For if the dynamics of my growth in understanding were to be this sort, I would understand only the Da-Sein (whatever it is ) and NOT the presence of BEING. My understanding MOVES but moves in the direction of BEING, I am projective only because I am PULLED out of my closedness , delimitedness , atomicity etc by BEING. And this I realise and formulate it in terms of the makavaakkiyam "tat twam asi", perhaps in a sense quite different from the Upanisadic sense but somehow akin to that.


And when I reflect further I notice that I am TEMPORAL when my state of Being is of the sort "tat twam asi" and this temporality is INTENTIONAL-TEMPORALITY (IT), the KuRippuk kaalam of Tolkaapiyar and different from the PHYSICAL-TEMPORALITY (PT) of the astronomers. And furthermore I notice that I am purely in IT when I exist as BWB and purely in PT when I exist in BWW and hence because of my inherent duality, cat-acat anma nature of myself I am both IT and PT , a being oscillating between these two states of Being.


But because BWW can be discontructed and made to recede to the background but NOT BWB, I also learn that IT is more fundamental and that it is only because I am IT that I am PT. I cannot measure out TIME using the regular motions of the planets or the immensely regular photonic expulsions of the subatomic particles unless I am already in IT. I am in essence INTENTIONAL, my understanding is configured by Tat Twam Asi and hence something founded by throwing me into IT.


My existence is founded by being thrown to be in TIME in the forms IT and PT in which IT in more fundamental and which cannot be disconstructed as can PT be. There is something peculiar and fundamental about IT and the INTENSIONALITY that underlies it.

But does that mean I cannot disconstruct from IT also? That I cannot free myself from INTENTIONALITY as a fabrique of my understanding?


Now understanding that is temporal in both these senses is acattu, as the Saivas are fond of saying, it is non-absolute in the sense that it can be displaced, sublated and backgrounded i.e disconstructed. This means my fundamental intentional way of BEING can also be discontructed.


At that point what happens to Tat Twam Asi? Does it still hold?

We shall attend to this next. 



ULLAGANAR