The Philosophy of Meykandar-4(Final)

 The Philosophy of Meykandar

By Dr K.Loganathan 1995

PART IV

4.0 The Limits of Reason and the Emergence of Genuine Metaphysics

4.1. Appropriating the Positive Sciences as Hermeneutics in General

We have seen that valid METATEXTS embody LEARNING of the sort where IGNORANCE of a kind is reduced; that rationality of man expresses itself in pedagogic terms in the hermeneutic sciences. Having got this insight into the nature of human rationality, we shall now have a second look at the positive sciences with the question: Isn’t there LEARNING in the positive sciences and hence they too are in a way hermeneutical?

We must note here that the Being of a person as a pure witnessing subject, in terms of which we have looked at the positive sciences in our account, and the consequent transformation of the world into an impersonal objective Reality, a quantitative universe, does not allow the notion of LEARNING to emerge at all as a way of understanding these scientific activities. That a person learns in doing research in the positive sciences is BACKGROUNDED in order to allow the objective stance to emerge to the FOREGROUND. What is thus backgrounded and thus forgotten must be re-instated to understand properly the essence of the positive sciences.

What is backgrounded can be termed a pure CURIOSITY which is Being-Without-Any-Technological-Interest. This unconcernedness about the technological possibilities and implications is the essence of PURE CURIOSITY and it is this that is backgrounded, and personal interest in the study made unavailable for consciousness. Once reinstated, the research ceases to be a mechanical affair, a robotic exercise. The researcher is INVOLVED, passionately at times, to UNRAVEL some mysteries now unfolded by Nature. He recognizes that some aspects of Nature escapes his understanding, that at the face of these features he realizes his own ignorance. It is this recognition of is own Ignorance that makes him a person CURIOUS to know the HIDDEN secrets of that phenomena. Such a way of looking at the practice of the positive sciences is no more ontical but rather ontological. The person recognizes his current state of ignorance, becomes curious as a result of it and undertakes researches to dispel it. What we have here is no more ontic-enigma but rather onto-enigma, an enigma that arises through the recognition of one’s own Ignorance and which thereby throws him to a TEMPORAL MODE of Being. It is this TEMPORICALITY that is submerged or backgrounded when the pure subjective-objective stance is allowed to dominate and TIME itself now seen as PHYSICAL TIME. However through this reinstating it and allowing it to be the founding Way of Being of the researchers in the positive sciences, we appropriate them also as a species of hermeneutic sciences.
All sciences are pedagogic hermeneutic as they bring about learning of different sorts. This much is clear now. But then why the distinction between the positive and hermeneutic sciences in the first place? Why the centuries old battle between the two camps? Why some sciences allow the suppression of the onto-enigma the CURIOSITY while other don’t?

The positive sciences in backgrounding the ontological and raising the ontical, transform the research itself into something physicalistic or quantitative as opposed to the nonphysical or non-quantitative. The subjective-objective stance, the reconstitution of the subject as a pure witness is possible only within physicalism. In transforming the generally ontological to the ontical, the physicalistic or quantitative seeing is instituted as the only possible ways of seeing. A reduction or refraction is effected in the phenomenology of the perceptual processes so that whatever that is SEEN is only the physical. The psychical and the spiritual are pushed to the background and remain submerged. This explains why measurements are so dominant in the positive sciences and along with it the use of an array of instruments and the application of mathematics, statistical analysis and so forth. Every phenomena is looked at physically, even the human sciences are reduced to physical sciences of a sort remaining systematically blind to the psychical and spiritual. The analysis also becomes essentially quantitative.

Pedagogic Hermeneutics in thus understanding the positive sciences, appropriates it as hermeneutically grounded physical sciences having their own advantages and limitations. The advantages is that we have now an immensely rational form of research into the PHYSICAL, a way of reducing IGNORANCE with regards to the PHYSICALITY of physis, the ever productive world of existence. They provide what we shall call alpha - type of learning, acquisition of knowledge about the essences of the physicality of physis, the kind of knowledge that allows applications in technology. The LIMIT of such sciences is that they are BLIND as to the psychical and the spiritual. Neopositivism can now be seen as that philosophy that remains unaware of this inherent BLINDNESS within which it operates, and extending physicalism even to areas where it is inapplicable.

We overcome this blindness and error by delimiting the scope of such sciences to the physical and introducing simultaneously other sciences that we shall call provisionally the psychological and religious, in which we have the beta-type and gamma-type learning. All phenomena, particularly the human, OUGHT to be researched in relation to these three different types of learning in order to acquire an understanding that is non-reductionistic, comprehensive and full. All these sciences are distinct sciences each unraveling the hidden secrets of Nature, thus thereby standing in complementary relationship to each other.

4.2 The Limits of Rationality

Our appropriation of positive sciences hermeneutically and thus viewing them as a species of hermeneutic sciences, the elucidation of the logical structure of the hermeneutic sciences and thus all sciences, is in fact an elucidation of what human Rationality is, the human exercise of REASON is. Whatever that obstructs the full expression of Rationality such as this are prejudices, in the negative sense, in the sense of vinai of Tolkappiyar. What REASON battles with are these prejudices, the internal deep constraints that obstruct the full expression of REASON in every sphere. The positivist who does not recognize the psychical and spiritual, the dogmatist who does not allow the appropriation of religion as a specifies of spiritual sciences, philosophers who remain trapped in their own metaphysical citadels are prejudiced as they are not OPEN to the prevalence of science in their inquiries.

The full and philosophically satisfying, immensely illuminating founding of these sciences, will require deep explorations into an area of hermeneutics that can be called FUNDAMENTAL PEDAGOGIC HERMENEUTICS, within which can be practiced Fundamental Ontology, philosophy as rigorous science, as dreamt by Husserl. This fundamental hermeneutics is not pure phenomenology but rather something that can be accessed only after looking at all sciences as pedagogic hermeneutical, as ontological and raising questions about the presupposition that is there as the primordial layer in all such hermeneutic investigations that become differentiated later as the so many different hermeneutic sciences. We shall not do it here but note that it has been done by Meykandar in this book that we are introducing. His investigations can be reappropriated into ours and through that establish in a sound hermeneutically derived metaphysical basis that all sciences are the Alpha, Beta or Gamma-type learning and all learning are of these types. These three basic types of learning exhaustively enumerate all learning, there is no learning beyond these. This has the implication that the full exercise of REASON is constituted by these learning and hence the LIMITS OF RATIONALITY as such. The human Rationality exhausts itself when it gives full expression to these three types of learning also termed paaca jnaanam, pacu jnaanan and pati jnaanam in Saiva Siddhanta.

This is an enormously important insight that it allows us to push further and inquire the NONRATIONAL, that which is beyond the reach of human rationality, if any.

To answer this important question, which is hermeneutical itself though of a different order altogether, we have to secure a TEXT relevant to the question or access the one this question itself presupposes. What is presupposed is clearly a HERMENEUTIC WORLD, a world the different regions of which generates all the ontological inquiries, hermeneutic sciences quite exhaustively. It is a WORLD which allows us to LOCATE a region for any hermeneutic and hence any science whatsoever.

At this juncture it is necessary to introduce the distinction between existential understanding (Ta. iruntaRivu) and reflective consciousness (Ta. eNNaRivu) or simply between understanding and consciousness. Understanding, looked at this way, emerges as the GIVEN when a person DWELLS in a region in the Hermeneutic World mentioned above. It is NOT something acquired by his own efforts but something that is presented to him the moment he begins to DWELL in a certain REGION (Ta.. KatraLi) in this immensely vast hermeneutic world which is also the EXISTENTIAL WORLD, that which constitutes what existence is in the first place. What is given thus to a person as his DWELLING in a region constitutes his UNDERSTANDING that he re-presents to himself as a TEXT. The verbal and nonverbal TEXTUAL productions- speech, discourse, writings, artistic productions, architectural monuments, in short his behavior as a whole, his PRAXIS - arise as elements that exteriorize this inner givenness of understanding. These are the things that are researched upon, the sources of the onto ontic enigmas that provide the basic impulses for researches as such.

The enigmas of both kinds set in process reflections upon the TEXTS which manifest themselves as research. A certain IGNORANCE surfaces to the fore and various kinds of research are instituted to remove this Ignorance. Thus what these research provide is reflective consciousness or consciousness in general, consciousness that lights up understanding and removes the Darkness, to speak metaphorically, that prevails there. The sciences provide CONSCIOUSNESS or illuminations that remove ignorance that prevails or permeates our understanding. Such reflective clarity becomes the context of scientific assertions (Ta. ceyyul) or metatextual articulations about the primordial TEXT (Ta. vazakku) that is a givenness. Here we should note, as was noted by Tolkappiyar two millenniums ago, the ceyyuL or metatextual utterances cannot transgress the vazakku, the TEXTUALLY appropriated given understanding. Such transgressions are illegal, illogical, inconsistent with the rational principles guiding all valid scientific research. The METATEXTS cannot articulate MORE THAN what is there, possibly hidden, in the TEXTS themselves. Anything contrary to this, is a violation of REASON, something invalid. Having noted this BOUND to the exercise of reason, the expression of rationality, we should also note that the transportation from one dwelling to another in the Existential World is beyond the resources of the technology that may arise as a result of consciousness gained through such investigatory reflections. Whether physical, psychological or religious, the utties as such cannot reach beyond the dwelling attained as given. The applications of rationality have their LIMITS, they cannot reach BEYOND the dwelling that is appropriated as one’s own.

This enables us to grasp our inability of a fundamental kind - we cannot transport ourselves from one dwelling to another in this EXISTENTIAL WORLD, in the journey that we call existence. There are forces at work beyond our reach that do this job. At the limits of rationality we meet a MYSTERY that is beyond our rational capacities. The dwellings that we have is seen as a givenness, a gift. So is also the transportation from one to another. This is the transcendental quality that the Tamils described as ARUL, a GRACE that permeates the whole of existence. There is GRACE in the world working ceaselessly to provide dwellings to the creatures and transport them to another at the point where it becomes appropriate.

The workings of this ARUL is what is described by Heidegger, as the uncanniness of the World, as the TAO by Lao Tzu, the WAY that leads to the one, to the TWO and so forth. This is also that which is rendered poetically and metaphorically as the DANCE OF SIVA, enacted in the assembly by Tillai, the SPACE where everything is originated, the SPACE of this Hermeneutic or Existential World. The Dance or PLAY of BEING which is symbolically rendered as SI-VA-YA-NA-MA is in fact the five fold universal processes of production, retention and annihilation and through them hiding and disclosing.

4.3. Ethics and Reason

We have secured an important insight to secure an understanding of events in Existence, the historical happenings. All are TEXTS the Surface Structures of which is what we are normally aware, but the Deep Structure of which is a DANCE, a PLAY that we shall call a Deep Play. The events in life are instantiations of this Deep Play; such deep plays enact the drama that we call the events in life, our experiences. Having grasped this we are faced with the problem of determining a DIRECTION for all these deep plays. Do they have one or are they simply haphazard events with no order about them so that as the Radical hermeneuts such as Caputo would say `anything goes’ and advocate on that basis an ethics of dissemination, an ethics of letting-be without any restraints and constraints.

However appealing this notion can be, it is not the case in our existence. Even at the deepest level there is always an ETHICS that regulates REASON. But in terms of the global or existential hermeneutics where we have discovered Deep Play as that which underlies the historical occurrences, we can see a DIRECTION and hence a hermeneutic basis for ETHICS.

For transportation of dwellings, in view of the IGNORANCE with which our understanding is permeated along with consciousness, can be in the Direction of greater illumination or consciousness or the converse. The converse constitutes the FALL and man is already fallen in having IGNORANCE as part of him along with consciousness. The FUNDAMENTAL ETHICS emerges when transportation is effected upon dwellings. Where it is in the direction of greater illuminations it is felt GOOD, while in contrary case EVIL. These are feelings fed into the understanding as a guide towards choosing which hermeneutic world he should dwell and which he must avoid. .

Now such ethical feelings in addition to arising at the point of major shifts in dwellings (conversions!) even within a dwelling that are inhabited, there exists ethical feelings particularly in relation to actions. An action issues from inhabiting a sub-region of such dwellings and where it contributes towards the destruction of Ignorance possible within that REGION as a whole, it is felt good, otherwise bad, despicable, evil and what not. Thus the rational exercises of man within dwellings and in among dwellings in the fundamental (or transcendental) sphere of the Hermeneutic World, Ethical feelings emerge unimpaired even in the full exercise of Reason, guiding it in the direction of greater illumination. There is a DIRECTION for the movement of existential understanding and hence consciousness, a direction that is called by Meykandar an aaNai, a decree (in the second sutra) in view of its directivity and hence founding what is called iruvinai, the double action of accepting or rejecting that is always manifest itself in choices and judgements.

We should note that within the ontical stance of the positive sciences a sighting of ethics is impossible. The ontical submerges the hermeneutical or ontological and hence the recognition of IGNORANCE as also part of our constitution, the source of our enigmas and hence existence as researchers. But once we recover the pedagogic hermeneutical origins of enigmas and hence the being of Ignorance in us along with Knowledge, the presence of ethical feelings and their regulatory character is also sighted. Reason is NOT autonomous; it is regulated by an ETHICS that has its origins outside it. This is the most important implication of Civajnaana Bootam as a whole that is discussed in Sutra 2 and many other places particularly in the final part.

The metaphysics of Civajnaana Bootam, while allowing for flux but also allows for the flux-immune absolutes, transcendental metaphysical realities, entities, substances with a Being of their own that remains unaffected by the flux-prone phenomenological drama. When we penetrate through and go beyond the flux-prone world of experiences, world of continuous differentiation and we see them as a DANCE, a PLAY then we can also note that it is the DANCE of BEING, the PLAY of SIVA, the SIVA NADARAJAH, BEING as the supreme Dancer. SIVA enacts this DRAMA, this PLAY in order to educate us about the necessity to extricate ourselves from that involvement, entanglement. Hence there is already a DIRECTION for our hermeneutic endeavors in the most generate sense: we have to illumine ourselves in order to gain releasement for only understanding something that we can remain unaffected by it. If we understand what we encounter, it ceases to throw into temporality and when we understand Existence as a whole then we gain releasement from the need to exist i.e. Be-in-the-world as such. This does not mean, it should be noted, we cease to BE - Being is indestructible - but only that the phenomenal phases of it are transcended.

This brings us the question of the distinction between cat aRivu and acat aRivu, absolute and non-absolute knowledge that are discussed in the enormously difficult sutras 6 and 7 and which form the basis for articulating the meaning of authentic existence in the second part of the treatise.

4.4. Universal Love and Absolute Illumination

The recognition of a presence of a DIRECTION in our existential understanding and that PROGRESS involves reduction of IGNORANCE as regulated by ETHICS, also point to a possibility of a transcendental limit to this movement. At the level of dwellings and transportations from one to another that is more inclusive and correspondingly a more progressive reduction of IGNORANCE as such, i.e. within the progressive-historical movement of understanding as a whole, we can locate a LIMIT in the form of an absolute reduction of IGNORANCE, a state in which there is absolute illumination, a fully formed consciousness without any shadow of ignorance. This was called by Meykandar `Sivajnaanam’ or `cat-aRivu,’ a consciousness that has been there always as the presupposition of all our hermeneutic inquiries. Since all scientific knowledge both positivistically and hermeneutically and hence rationally constituted understanding, reflectively attained consciousness now submerges into this and fuses with it completely, it is called acat-aRivu, the non-absolutistic understanding or Knowledge. All scientific knowledge is only contributory, open to be reformulated, restructured, and possibly also deconstructed, differentiated and finally transcendended into this cat-aRivu.

Man on this account becomes cat-acat, one who in his understanding has the capacity for both the absolutistic and non-absolutistic understanding, torn always between the two in his existential struggles particularly in his ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas end when he gets transported to the region of absolute illumination, ThiruciRRampalam. Till then man is, in the words of Heidegger a being whose Being is always in question. We must note, at this level of philosophic reflections, that we do not have the effective-historical movement, the fusion of horizons of Gadamer but something more. We should note another aspect of this transcendental dynamics - it tends in the direction of atemporalicality, the dissolution of temporality itself, a notion that gets articulated in Dravidian philosophy by Thirumular (~6th cen. A.D.) and explored further by Meykandar and many others. Absolute illumination is atemporical and hence the transcendental movement leading towards this has a dynamics and rules of its own. This becomes the highest hermeneutic endeavors of man, the core part of what is truly religious. In the Dravidian circles such an exercise was termed Prasada Yoga, a form of meditative practices concerned with liberation from temporicality.

Meykandar brings to these issues profound insights that are to be found nowhere else. In this progress towards atemporicality and hence an ahistorical Mode-of-Being, he distinguishes two stages. The first involves extricating oneself from ANTIBEING the cause of the ontical, the positivistic that underlies the human finitude. The fourth and fifth sutras deal with this matter and we shall mention it only briefly, sufficient to follow his arguments in the text itself. The second source of temporicality emerges in when finitude is overcome but not Alterity - there is temporicality as long as understanding even universalitized continues to understand in terms of an Other, which underlies all SEEING as thus. Absolute illumination involves both these Modes of Being.

The ontical is overcome by the destruction of DARKNESS in understanding which involves more than metaphysical illumination. It is the total destruction of the Unconscious so that understanding does not have any dark patches of Ignorance in relation to the world. And this involves the destruction of Unconscious in stages. What Meykandar maintains is that it is NOT sufficient to access the TRUTH of the Being of metaphysical realities but also must UNDERSTAND their essences that underlies their phenomenological presentations, their ilakkaNam - their essences, how they disclose themselves from within themselves. This involves two stages: that of accessing a realm in which their phenomenal presence abounds and then that of bringing their essence into the clarity of rational consciousness. Since ontopretations provide the access, the noting of the Being of the metaphysical realities which in the first instance may be articulated in mythical, metaphorical or symbolic terms, there is another species of hermeneutic activities - we shall call `into-pretations’ - that which brings the symbolical and so forth into the realms of non-mythical, non-symbolic purely conceptual rational consciousness. In Hermeneutic texts there is considerable confusion - the word `interpretation’ is used non-discriminately to both onto-pretations and into-pretations. The into-pretations, as used here, is akin demythologising - the transformation of the mythic, symbolic, metaphorical and so forth into conceptual and hence rational language, the final articulation of rational understanding that is totally non-mythical.

This is what Meykandar calls `ilaadattee aintu arattai eytal’ in 4.3.2. The "iladataanam" is the region of clarity, of totally clear consciousness. When the wakeful state of vigilance, dream states and such other states of transductive perceptions - the five different states of Being - are brought to the foreground of consciousness, they become transparent, totally conceptual devoid of any mythical, symbolic and metaphorical allusions. The symbolically accessed is now conceptually appropriated. It is this kind of theoretical thrusts within the hermeneutical that has led to the formulation of Mantrayana, a topic still peculiarly Indian with Thirumular’s Thirumanthiram still standing as the most outstanding. The essential features of mantrayana as outlined by Thirumular is presupposed in Meykandar in many places throughout the texts particularly in the 4th sutra.

Understanding everything in the world in terms of the language of mantras and hence in terms of the PLAY of BEING, the DANCE of SIVA, departicularizes the mind definitizes the understanding for understanding now becomes thoroughly universal as there is no more World-Time to reckon with, no more hiddenness or concealments of the working of the phenomenal world.

Now the overcoming of World-Time does not mean yet the overcoming of TIME as such for there now emerges Temporality in its total purity, Temporality that does not translate to World-Time of the physical. There is no hiddenness, concealment as such in the phenomenal world. But however there is MYSTERY, mystery surrounding BEING, the thirobavam as it is termed in the Saiva agamas. The Thirobava is the concealment of BEING that has been there right from the beginning but remained transfigured into the phenomenal. Now however when understanding has overcome the phenomenal engagements and can see everything in terms of Mantras, in terms of the DANCE, the mystery of BEING presents itself as Other and the psychic entities exist conditioned by the projection `I am That’ in which `That’ is a presentation of BEING. The existence is no more Being - [BEING], that is Being in which the presence of BEING is understood and because of which one is ethical but rather BEING - [Being] i.e. existing as if BEING itself with forgetfulness of its own Being, a form of existence that is known as Bakti, living in supreme LOVE of BEING. Meykandar maintains that such a form of existence is not only authentic but also the most desirable for it is in the course of such existence that the Alterity of BEING is overcome and temporicality as such. The unflinching unabating, undiminishing LOVE of BEING or BAKTI is that which will bring about authentic existence in which BEING is no more an Other, the self standing as SAME as BEING without ever BEING becoming an Other. This is attaining moksa, the ultimate END of the immense evolutionary progress of the individual. Meykandar provides a very detailed account of this in the fourth part of this text particularly in the final sutra.

The absolute illumination is not only the supremely clear but also non-interpretive. There is nothing confronting understanding and hence no hermeneutical efforts of whatever kind. Meykandar states this rather clearly `cat etir cuuniyam’ (7th sutra) i.e. there is only Nothingness against absolute illumination.

This non-interpretive understanding is understanding something by standing that in itself , as it is in itself. hence it is unmediated - there is no TEXT as such and hence no interpretive movements, a mode of understanding that has been always the mode of understanding of BEING. Now it should be noted that this is a LIMIT in the evolutionary history of an individual, a psyche and that the psyche continues to BE however without descending into the phenomenal circulation. The phenomenal history ends for a psyche, it is no more historical, it becomes ahistorical. Now this does not mean the end of the DANCE, the PLAY, the presence of the phenomenal reality as such. The world is not teleological as Hegel seems to have claimed but only the history of an individual psyche. The SPIRIT is not entangled in the World Process as are the psychic entities and is not enacting the dramas of life for realizing itself - there is no necessity for it as it is already totally illumined. The World Processes are pedagogical - BEING in the Spirit of a GURU, a TEACHER of magnificent kind stages the World Play to instruct the psychic entities and dispel the darkness with which they are entangled. This DANCE is an act of ARUL, unbounded LOVE for BEING is LOVE itself as they say Anbee Sivam. And this DANCE will go on endlessly as there are innumerable numbers of souls to be redeemed, to be transported to ThiruciRRampalam, the Realm of absolute clarity, total unmediated non-interpretive understanding.

Cncluding Remarks.

It is hoped that sufficient has been said by way of an introduction to this magnificent classic in metaphysics, a text of outstanding merits, a text unfortunately the philosophical world is not sufficiently acquainted with. This somewhat lengthy introduction is deemed necessary not only because the text itself is very concise and cryptic but also the notes we have added by way of elucidating the underlying flow of thoughts. Those who want a more detailed discussion may refer to my Tamil commentary to the same TEXT, the basic contents of which I have provided in this translation though in a slightly different format.

The time has come for the Tamil Saivites to bring back Civajnaana Bootam into their philosophical preoccupations and investigate its essentials only in relation to other Indian darsanas but also world philosophies as such. There are striking similarities between the Taoism of Lao Tzu and Saiva Siddhanta, between the philosophy of Heidegger and other Western Hermeneuts and Meykandar. Such comparative studies are hardly entered into by Modern Tamil Saivite philosophers, one of the reasons why Civajnaana Bootam is hardly known to the West.

The Vedanta of Adi Sankara and others have given a wrong impression of what Indian philosophy is and for obviously good reasons. The emphasis on the irreality and nonsubstantiality of the phenomenal reality of Sankara's Vivartha Vatha, has for generations past created a negative attitude towards existence, a distaste of a deep sort as a result of which the impulses to investigate it were killed right at the roots. The most important implication of this philosophy - Metaphysica Universalis as the most inclusive Hermeneutic Science - is not only it recovers Existence for philosophy but also articulates in an impressive maner the most universal in man, a sign of great philosophical maturity in itself.

This maturity is not an accident, there is a historical background underlying the emergence of Civajnaana Bootam in the Tamil soil for as recent studies have indicated and to which we have made some references long long before the Greeks, the Aryans and possibly even the Chinese, the Sumero-Dravidians were already philosophical, were already hermeneutical and who in their culture, unlike the contemporary Egyptians, emphasized pedagogy and for which there were even schools for children, royal academics for scholars and Temples were virtually colleges of a sort. It is inevitable that a tradition that has been scientific in the hermeneutic sense should have attained such depths and universality such as is available in this text.

We conclude this introduction with the hope that the publication of the English translation of this book will enable the world at large to attain insights nowhere else to be attained.