The Tamil Hermeneutics and Metaphysics - Part 25

 Sivayoga and Overcoming Sexual Morbidity

Saivism posses within itself a very deep analysis of human psychodynamics and in this, in some ways anticipating the important features of Freudian Psychoanalysis. 

It is not an accident that C.G Jung has subjected Yoga to an in-depth analysis along psychoanalytical lines in many of his writings. In the studies of Tamil Siddhas from Tirumoolar to recent times we also find very deep analysis of this and the identification of psychosis, neurosis and so forth and prescription of rituals and yoga practices by way of curing them and which constitutes the central impulse in Siddha medical system though only the herbal and pharmacological aspects are widely known.

One of the fundamental contributions coming from the Tamil Siddhas is the concept Naadi , which over and above the meaning of pulse beat also has the meaning that "which establishes naaddam", the seeking out something, desires that is stubborn. They classify them into Pingkalai, Idakali, Suzimunai and finally Guru Naadi. The word 'guru' , here has the meaning "large, enormous, foundational" and so forth. The Guru Naadi is the PULL unto BEING Himself and as constituted by ParaNatam and ParaBindu. The rest are constituted by Apara Natam (idakalai) Apara Bintu (pingkalai) and both together ( suzimunai)

When the nadies are constituted by the Apara Natam and Bintu, they establish inner pressures for worldly enjoyments especially the sexual in a wide sense of the word. When the psychic entity escapes these pulls and aligns itself with the founding Guru Naadi, it becomes essentially a mumuksu i.e. that which is concerned with attaining and enjoying Mukti. The Tamil Saivites call this Sivayoga and link it up with the visions of the Third Eye, the eye of transductive perceptions, vinjnjana kaadsi , as Arunandi would say.

It would appear that there is already an intrinsic PULL of all anmas towards BEING but only by a transmutation of the primordial sexuality into Bakthi, the transmutation of sexual love into divine love that being in the presence of BEING ( sanniti) that one can enjoy it genuinely. However sexual morbidity can arise on the way if the sexual is NOT enjoyed in the way it should be. And the right way appears to be as that under romantic and aesthetical and as constituted by Thirumal ( Vishnu ) and Brahma but more directly by Manmatan, the Hindu Cupid who has as his weapons (kaNai) Sugarcane, a soft bed, flower garden, breeze and love songs.

The Third Eye that every human being is capable of and Sivayoga, the discipline that keeps this eye open is said to be by Appar in this verse as that which will avoid the transformation of the sexual desires aroused by Manmatan into something morbid and hence destructive. The sexually morbid individuals may be, in addition to being psychotic also a killer, hence a dangerous kind of individual especially when he is also politically very powerful

142

kazai padu kaadu tenRal kuyil kuuval anjcu

kaNaiyoon aNaintu pukalum

mazaivadi vaNNan eNNi makavoonaividda

malaraana thodda matanan

ezilpodi ventu viiza imaiyoor kaNangkaL

eri enri iRainjci akalat

tazalipadu neRRi oRRai nayananj civanta

tazalvaNNan entai caraNee

Meaning:

Manmatan, the archetype of sexual desires has as his weapons : the sugar-cane that installs the desire for enjoying the pleasant, a bed suitable for the conjugal act, the garden that provides the mood, the breeze and pleasant music such as that of Kuyil that arouse sexual desires. When once Civa isolated Himself from Parvathy and concentrated as Makayogi in Kailash, there was a lack of happiness and enthusiasm to live among the living things all over the world. Seeing this Brahma and the Dark-hued Thirumal and Indra implored Manmatan to aim his weapons at Civa, arouse sexual desires in Him and make Him unite with Parvathy.

However when Manmatan attempted this, he and his weapons were singed to ashes by Civa when he opened His Third Eye, the Eye of Fire. ( Then Civa, on the pleading of Rati, the consort of Manmatan, restored life to him but only to be visible to Rati). The celestial beings realizing now that BEING can be FIRE ran way in fear pleading for grace. This BEING who appears with the Single Eye on the Forehead and in the form of FIRE, is my Father and recluse.

Commentary:

This mythical theme also well known, brings out another aspect of the Third Eye normally associated with BEING-as-Civa but not so far as as know, with Brahma or Thirumal (Vishnu). The close linkages this Eye has with the Form of Fire, BEING assumes and these forms in order to burn off sexual desires, the root cause of all desires is being brought out in this verse. And for obvious reasons: even tyranny and terrorism are products of desires probably twisted and misdirected forms of the sexual and hence once if this desires is eliminated from the interiority of the psyche, real freedom and humanity can be enjoyed and anma also rescued from becoming a tyrant.

The Third Eye is the metaphysical eye and when that eye alone is open we have BEING as Makayogi, BEING as Cattan (derived from' 'cat", the Absolute)) , BEING as totally withdrawn unto Himself. There is SELF-CLOSURE and because of which he becomes forgetful of Parvathy, which literally means the Woman of the World. The Manifest World becomes forgotten, to speak metaphorically here and hence the world made insipid and lacking in every motivational dynamics much to the disappointment of Vishnu, the BEING of the Manifest World, the Purusha. All the living creatures languish and and suffer without any interest in whatever.

It is realized now that it is sexual desire that is the ROOT CAUSE of it all and that all living things derive their motivation or energia from this desire. So the archetypes of the worldly pleasures Brahma, Vishnu, Indra and so forth, to restore this primordial impulses to act, implore Manmatan to aim his weapons at Civa as Makayogi but who gets burnt to ashes along with his weapons when HE opens the Third Eye, the Eye on the Forehead that always emits Fire of intense heat. This simply means that when the anma is imbued with the intense desire for metaphysical illuminations, the desire to unravel and become clear about the hidden mysteries of Existence and which are beyond the physical and available only in the metaphysical realms is or can be so consuming that all the worldly desires .including the sexual, the most primordial of all, can be burnt off and singed to ashes.

This myth discloses a hidden aspect of BEING, that He can assume forms that would kill even the very obstinate and difficult to overcome sexual desires; that man and woman can attain real freedom , the freedom from desires by the Grace of BEING when he bestows the vision of the Third Eye for the creatures. This also means rescuing the anmas from becoming tyrants of a sort because of twisted nature of the sexual libido, it becoming morbid and thereby immensely destructive.

Civayoga understood here as the discipline that is concerned with opening the Metaphysical Eye and seeing everything with that Eye appears to be the solution Appar offers to prevent the emergence of the morbid individuals, somewhat psychotic and tyrannical, individuals who would never hesitate to kill even innocents to achieve their own desires . Morbidity of the mind is perhaps a product of sexual libido twisted and corrupted for lack of proper channels of discharge which consists in enjoying it within LOVE, that weapons that Manmatan installs and that too with the blessings of Thirumal etc.

ULLAGANAR.

( Editing and re-paragraphing by his student, Ari Marappan )

The Tamil Hermeneutics and Metaphysics - Part 24

  False Asceticism and Human Destructiveness.

As I plough through the Tamil Bakthi poetry especially the Saivite, I begin to understand more and more the meaning of Bakthi. Admittedly this is NOT something specific to the Tamil mind and perhaps universal, showing itself in various forms. 

In the Third Millennium B.C. itself, the enormously philosophical Sirbiyam of  Enhudu Anna, a Sumerian priestess and the daughter of Sargon the Great is already a beautiful poetry in Bakthi. Somehow or rather this dimension of religious experience has been cultured and developed among the Dravidian folks right from the ancient times and which I suspect is related to the centrality of temple in the religious culture of the Tamils. This may be true of the whole of India as temples are found in every part of India and now even overseas where the Hindu people are taking roots.

This Patikam of Appar is peculiar in that he seeks an UNDERSTANDING of the genealogy of HATRED that underlies the birth of tyrants and terrorists even in the name of religion or perhaps especially in the name of religion. Hence it again shows the HERMENEUTICAL thrust with which comes Tamil Bakthi. We must note that Appar could have become a terrorist for being born a Saivite then became converted to Jainism and then when he returned to Saivism he was persecuted severely by the Jains and the Pallava Emperor of the times who was a patron of Jainism. So he could have become a terrorists of a kind , all the ingredients were there though he did not.

Added to this is that he had a very unhappy family life that drove him to asceticism ( note: valiteen manaivaazkkai: I suffered family life) but however he did NOT opt for violence though he became a crusader of a kind to bring back Saivism and along with it Tamil language itself. What appears to have prevented him from becoming the hater of mankind and thereby the desire to wipe out the whole of humanity that he would have hated so much is Bakthi, pointing out that Bakthi in another aspect of it, though can install asceticism but not hatred, the visvakrasam, hatred for the whole of humanity and false or misplaced asceticism.

In the following verse he analyses the role of the WOMEN in the genesis of hatred of the world and how the desire for Metaphysical illuminations, metaphorically described as the visions of Third Eye helps out in the maintenance of sanity and the recovery of humanity and thus Bakthi itself. He also seems to imply that the third eye must be functioning along with the normal two - the desire for sexual enjoyment and exultations in intellectual pursuits - for the maintenance of sanity among the religious, the potential tyrants

141

nalamali mangkai nangkai viLaiyaadiyoodi

nayanat talangkaL karamaa

ulakinai eezum muRRum iruNmuudamuuda

iruLoodu neRRik orukaN

alartara vanjcimaRRai nayangkaividdu

madavaaL iRainjca matipool

alartaru cootipoola alarvitta mukkaN

avanaam namakoor araNee

Meaning

The WOMAN, the source of all the good things, was amusing Civa with the form of a tantalizing and alluring beauty and immensely pleasing and good natured Angel. But while playing thus she inadvertently closed the two eyes with her hands, and the whole universe became engulfed in thick and growing DARKNESS so that there was NOTHING manifest as there to behold with the eyes. But at that point only the right and left eyes were closed but not the Third Eye, eye on the forehead. But noting this Darkness , the frightened WOMAN saw with the remaining Third Eye and implored Civa and at which point He restored the Left Eye of the Moon and Right Eye of the Sun ( Vintu and Natham respectively) and made her happy. This BEING with the THREE eyes has become our recluse

  

Commentary.

A very difficult mythical theme, something that is immensely puzzling specially in connection with the general theme of this Patikam, viz. the genealogy of monstrous irrationalities that underlie the emergence of the tyrannical in world history.

To make sense of this myth, we have to note that BEING does not have eyes in the ordinary human sense and also that Uma does NOT play to amuse BEING in the ordinary sense. So these mythic figures are prototypical and say something about the historical man and woman and hence stand for any man and woman just as the Hero and Heroine of the Sangam Poetry stands for the typical man and woman of all times. Thus we have to understand the meaning in terms of Hermeneutic Semiotics, the meaning communicated in the language of mythologies without ridiculing them as senseless and meaningless only because the meanings are not immediately obvious.

All human beings are endowed with THREE eyes, the left eye related to right hemisphere , the right eye related to left hemisphere and one in the forehead to the Deep Brain, the point where the brain stem meets the cerebellum etc., called the localized Citambaram or CiRRambalam by the Saivites. The Siddhas also explain that the right hemisphere of the brain is given over to Vintu and the left to Natham which respectively establish the inner pressures for sexual enjoyment and intellectual achievements. The third eye related as it is to Deep Brain, is concerned with metaphysical desires, that which underlies the birth of the ASCETIC in man ( and woman) and the attaining of Mukti.

The typical man is subjected to TWO different kinds of manipulations by the typical woman, the Play that arouses sexual desires and that which arouses interest in cognitive competencies. These are two fundamental DESIRES that sustain EXISTENCE but which can unfortunately be made UNAVAILABLE under certain circumstances. The Woman can close these eyes of a man and at which point DARKNESS engulfs. What does this mean?

The darkness here means NOT the absence of the world but rather psychological darkness , a total DISINTERESTEDNESS, a metaphorical darkness. The world even if is there, it is made supremely unappetizing and irrelevant and hence psychologically something inexistent. Hence there seems to be NO EXISTENCE as well.

But fortunately even at this point the Third Eye remains open for it appears to be an eye in man that a woman cannot close or shut down with her tantalizing PLAY and which means the pressure for metaphysical desires remains something in man beyond the reach of the sexually and otherwise alluring females. It remains, because of that, forever OPEN and hence that which gives meaning to existence but not the physical but the metaphysical.

Of course this means ASCETICISM, being closed to the worldly and being mindful only of the metaphysical. But why should this be frightening?

It is here that we see the relevance of this mythical theme to the general theme of the Patikam. For such an asceticism can not only generate a blindness to the world and its charms, but also make the person become DESTRUCTIVE towards it. He does NOT have EYES to see them and if it thrusts itself forcibly, will only provoke the desire to ANNIHILATE and turn it really into an inexistent.

Here lies another genealogical account of the tyrannical, the intense desire to wipe out the whole world, to make the whole universe desolate and nothing.

But nothing to fear. The woman learns her lesson and realizes the worldly eyes must NOT be closed and she should not even playfully close them. Once the sexual and intellectual desires are made ABSENT in the world, there is a possibility that TERRORISM would result. There will be the destruction of the world because of monstrously powerful instinct in that direction.

In order to avoid this and for sanity and balance to prevail in the world, the sexual and the intellectual that comes along with it, the right and left hemispherical functioning of the brain must go on.

ULLAGANAR

( editing and re-paragraphing by his student, Ari Marappan )

Inertia, Newton's law and Lord Nadaraja

 

n this video, Sivakumar explains how Newton's Law has been beautifully captured in the image of the dancing Lord Nadaraja. He explains how inertia is pictured in the dancing Nadaraja and introduces something known as 'sombal' in Tamil, which I have translated as 'negative psychological inertia'. It is a kind of feeling which stops us from moving forward, which according to Sivakumar is inherent in all living beings. It must be mentioned that Newton's Law only covers physical objects but the ancient Tamils discovered that inertia is not just for physical objects alone, but it also exist in living beings. The idea of inertia in living beings is unknown in modern physical science but the Tamils discovered it's existence in living beings since ancient times.