The Philosophy of Meykandar
By Dr K.Loganathan 1995
PART II
2.0 The Genesis of Research Problems and their Methodological Implications.
One of the things that Meykandar makes abundantly clear and which constitutes his most significant contribution to world philosophy is that as long as the seeing of man remains cloistered to physicalistic and refuses to open itself for the hermeneutic, man will fail to encounter not only the psychical but also the spiritual, the world of the archetypes. He will be lost in the infinities of the spatio-temporal, cannot encounter the totalities and through that reach the metaphysical grounds where live the archetypes - the gods. The man who refuses to see beyond the physicalistic condemns himself to an existence where there is no escaping from births and deaths and hence existence that is essentially nihilistic.
This methodological concern is not unrelated to the current debates between the positivists and hermeneuts, even though not all hermeneuts can be said to move along Heidegger let alone Meykandar. However when we examine the research activities of both these two groups of researchers, it appears that in their conception of the problem itself, the methodology appropriate to solving it is already implicit. The hermeneuts are in fact formulating research methodologies appropriate to solving problems that are distinctive and BEYOND the research of the positivists. The positivists have a WAY OF SEEING and hence a way of Being within which numerous problems that are worth researching are NOT SIGHTED and even when sighted gets grossly DISTORTED by their methodological prejudices that sustain their positivistic orientations or ways of seeing and hence Being. We cannot overcome this conflict unless we unearth the GENESIS of research problems themselves and how unknown to the researchers themselves orient them methodologically. Otto Apel notes that there is a living engagement in life and all knowledge arises from this engagement, that every theory-formation be it positivistic or hermeneutic is primarily knowledge through reflection. The form of knowledge developed has as its apriori a type of living engagement in the form of a specific cognitive interest. It is this interest, the form and structure of it that determines the methodology (Apel, 1980. pp 49). This notion of cognitive interest, against the background of the existential analytics of Heidegger and Meykandar, appears to be too cognitive. It tends to exclude the emotional and the feeling oriented crises in life that are also instrumental for personal metamophorses, as research worthy. Furthermore such a way of seeing of the genesis of research problems does not seem to explicate the methodology with Temporal Analytics that has emerged as central in the hermeneutic sciences. So instead of talking of a living cognitive-anthropological involvement with life, we shall say existential involvement with life and note research problems not arising because of some specific cognitive-interestt but something deeper that we shall call ENIGMAS that emerge and grip the researcher compelling him to undertake a research to liberate himself from that enigma. The enigma that grips and forces him to search, to investigate is not simply a problem, a cognitive dissonance, a psychological maladjustment, a pathological condition and so forth; it is something deeper and for which men are prepared to sacrifice enormously. The enigmas are existential and touches the very heart of his way of Being in the world and which because of it, holds the possibility of changing it, transforming it.
2.1. THE ONTIC-ENIGMAS AND THE POSITIVE SCIENCES
Now we have to draw a distinction between what can be called (adapting Heidegger here) ontic and onto-enigmas. The existential enigmas are ontical or ontological in their very genesis and where ontical they give rise to the positive sciences and where ontological to the hermeneutic. The ontical look or way of Seeing (Ta. poRiliyak kaatci) presupposes a way of Being in which we do not have TEMPORALITY in the foreground of understanding but rather the WORLD-TIME mode of time consciousness. The researcher, possibly unknown to himself, comports himself to the world as PHYSICAL with events occuring within a spatiotemporal framework that makes referentiality (Ta. cuddu) possible and hence intersubjective agreements in terms of identity of reference. As distinct from this are onto-enigmas where the way of Being and hence Seeing is not ontical but rather ontological where Temporality takes over as the constitutive element of understanding along with causing the absence of referentiality that presupposes the existence of an objective spatiotemporal structure common to all. The ontological looks inwards towards the ways of Being itself, locating problems not in the impersonal spatiotemporal flux of events or a universe of numbers the behaviour of which are consistent with a set of universal laws, but rather in the very Being of man and hence in his own Existence as such. The onto-enigmas demand looking into himself, unearth the hidden elements that unknown to him constitute what he is as a being. These are more in the nature of personal crises, possibly arising because of the demolition of his fundamental beliefs and hence now demanding a reconstruction, a rebuilding, a renewal. The ontical in making the world purely physical, purely objective, purely mathematical - a universe of numbers, totally impersonal, totally out-there as a thing and so forth, also allows an INSTRUMENTAL GAZE and the enigma itself seen as a Technological problem and hence requiring instrumental interventions to solve it. Thus surfaces the possibility of experimental investigations, the use of an array of instruments for gaining a variety of quantitative data with the experimentation itself understood as a way of testing a hypothesis and theory as the set of basic concepts from which the hypothesis is derived. As Popper has pointed out experimental testing is in fact an attempt to refute a hypothesis or conjecture. Since an array of instruments are used the data is in fact readings of meter-like instruments and with the use of sophisticated statistical analysis, quantitative manipulations and so forth. The formulation of hypothesis or conjectures presupposes theories, a kind of technical register, a language-game (as Wittgenstein would put it) which continues to be modified, deconstructed, sometimes even thrown out with instituting totally new ones and so forth accounting for the shifts in paradigm that Kuhn has noted. The overall goal, the hidden motivation in all such adventures remains the formulation of a Universal Law or Laws in terms of which every event in the world be explained as instantiations of these laws ; understanding these laws means understanding everything. Armed with these laws, it becomes also possible to PREDICT every event in the future in the spatiotemporal flux of the quantitative universe so that ultimately there is nothing mystical or mysterious in Nature. Nature becomes an open book with REASON having destroyed every mystery in it. The neopositivistic aim of Unified Science has aspirations such as these. The success at this sort of explanatory attempts, furnishes scientific knowledge of an objective kind so that in future (and there is always a future) when such events are encountered, they cease to be problematic, fail to be mysterious, inexplicable, a surpise and so forth.
Each theoretical articulation is a new language-game, a new technical register, a re-description now with technically more precise definitions of concepts that are also descriptively more adequate, with greater validity. The individual researcher remains, in all these efforts of technical re-description, a PURE SUBJECT, simply one who investigates and in that bared all that is personal and individual. He has to submit himself completely seeing the world or at least a particular slice of it within the constituting of seeing by the technical register, theoretical framework. As long as the person remains locked up within this kind of seeing, and continues his researches without faltering or wavering in that stance, there is the development of more and more inclusive registers which has as its projection a future in which there is the formulation of the Universal Register, a technical language that would serve to explain all. Such a possibility remains the IDEAL, that towards which the positive sciences are moving, and would attain if allowed to progress unimpeded.
Now the problem with this ontic kind of seeing, the projective ideals that sustains this way of seeing and gives the normative criteria for decision making in research is that there is a BLINDNESS that accompanies it, a blindness in which the peculiarly HUMAN are not sighted and hence the human essences beyond its grasp, its understanding. There is a REDUCTION, instead of seeing what it is in itself; the human is reduced to a mechanical reality, a THING that is only an instance of a set of universal laws and hence something that like other physical realities totally manipulable, controllable, shapeable and so forth oblivious to any ethical constraints. It is here more than elsewhere that the limitedness of ontic seeing, its partiality and hidden dangers to cultural developments become abundantly clear. The hermeneutic philosophers, and Meykandar is certainly one of them, have for centuries voiced their protests against this dehumanization of man and along with it the human and social sciences. Though in India the technological sciences did not develop to the level they did in the West, positivism based only ontic seeing was not lacking. Most of the Buddhists logicians and Vedantic philosophers propounded darsanas in which the human was denied any significant essence, reduced to an insubstantiality or to Brahman, PURE LIGHT. The philosophies that sustained the humanistic traditions of the Tamils, at least from the days of Tolkappiyam culminates in Civajnaana Bootam of Meykandar, as the most profound text in hermeneutic science in which the human is understood as it is for what it is as a reality.
2.2 The Onto-enigmas and the Hermeneutic Sciences
Positivism in India, which shares with that in the West taking seeing as consisting of only the ontic seeing, is challenged by Meykandar: he affirms that not all seeing is ontical, there are ways of seeing other than this and that a true understanding of Existence is impossible unless we learn to see in ways other than the ontical. The first sutra begins with this protest and develops further and further ways of seeing deeper and deeper. For along with the above ontic-enigmas, there are also onto-enigmas that also arise from the existential engagement with life and with a structure of its own. Such enigmas arise usually when a person encounters a resistance to his understanding that throws him to a Temporal Mode of Being, a mode of Being in which he awaits for something that is a not-yet, till he resolves and overcomes that resistance. Such a Temporal way of Being, we shall call Situational-Temporality, to distinguish it from Fundamental Temporality that arises only within an understanding that comprehends the World-as-a-Whole. Such Situational Temporal ways of Being continuously emerge in our personal and social existence. When a friend all of a sudden becomes a foe, the happy mood is lost and replaced with that of melancholy, the loving wife becomes a devastating enemy, coherent and peaceful coexistence gives way to discontent and disarray and situations similar to these the onto-enigmas emerge gripping the researcher, throwing him to a way of seeing that is not ontical but ontological.
The peculiarity of the onto-enigmas is that the person gripped with it realizes the existence of a certain IGNORANCE , a certain DARKNESS in the understanding because of which onto-enigmas exist as an enigma for him. The onto-enigma highlights or discloses for the researcher the existence of a BLIND SPOT in HIS OWN UNDERSTANDING, which also impels him to remove it, to eradicate it by demolishing that ignorance. In this manner when this exposure of ignorance orientates him ontologically i.e. towards a Way of Being in which there is an awaiting for a way of Being that is a NOT YET but which is a strong possibility, a way of Being that he CAN BE but NOT YET, we have the genesis of an onto-enigma and which would result in hermeneutic scientific efforts to resolve if its character remains undistorted. The recognition of the presence of a DARK SPOT in ones own understanding is constitutive of onto-enigmas and as long as this essence is kept there without transforming it to the ontical, it calls for improving ones own understanding so that with regard to the phenomena in question, one stands under it, one gains a vision, an illumination that removes the initial blind spot, the patch of darkness in understanding. The avoidance of transforming it to the ontical and remaining steadfast within the ontological and seeking to resolve the enigma by a restructuring of ones own understanding and hence by self transformation brings about hermeneutic sciences as opposed to the positivistic.
The notion that hermeneutic sciences are concerned with overcoming resistance to under-standing a phenomena by self-transformation towards standing-under it, that Deetz and others have articulated and which we are articulating here within however, the notion of onto-enigma, needs to be re-examined more thoroughly and carefully to wrest out some hidden notions in it without which the spirit of Metaphysica Universalis of Meykandar cannot be grasped at all.
The self-transportation from a state of NOT under-standing towards a standing-under is an ontological movement that results from activities that do not consist of instrumental interventions but rather interpretive in nature or as we shall call ontopretive, consistent with Pedagogic Hermeneutics that we are proposing. But these interpretive (or ontopretive) movements as belonging to ontology - as belonging to the question of what are really there? - are in fact attempts to SIGHT a phenomenon, a reality that remains hidden, buried in the underground of consciousness, lurking in the Depths, remains somehow covered up, disguised camouflaged and so forth. The investigatory or ontopretive activities are in fact archeoductive, an ontological seeking to see what is there in the Depths, beneath the surface and because of which the onto-enigma exists as such. Thus the ontological seeking begins with casting the problem as multi-layered or polylevelic with at least two levels of structure for every phenomena: Surface Structure (S.S) and Deep Structure (D.S) which interact and continue to be present simultaneously. Every phenomena is seen inherently hierarchical in structure, with at least TWO levels of structure. The onto-enigmas arise and are constituted as hermeneutical when an element in the S.S of a phenomenon resists understanding in the sense that one cannot locate and be with an element in the D.S. of the same phenomenon that founds it. When a person has not YET sighted that element of that D.S that founds the problematic in the S.S., he is thrown to a state of Situational-Intentionality, that of wanting to sight which also institutes Situational-Temporality, a way of Being as NOT YET but with a future possibility of a distinct kind as immensely available.
With this grasp of the meaning of hermeneutic sciences, we can also see its link with the notion of TEXT and why the hermeneuts are so much preoccupied with this notion and enshrine it as central in the Hermeneutic Sciences.
The notions of S.S and D.S that the ontological inquiries presuppose can be made sense only in relation to the notion of TEXT for it is only TEXTS and TEXT ANALOGUES that can have such DOUBLE structures or even possibly more. There is a level of structure within which the onto-enigma is allowed to emerge and another level as underlying that which has elements within its sighting which would eliminate the enigma, the blind spot in understanding. The onto-enigma is accessed first at the phenomenological or S.S. level where sighting is no problem, a level that locates the original emergence of the problem. It is within a TEXTUAL presentation of a phenomena, and within the S.S. elements of the phenomena considered as a TEXT, where the enigma is allowed to emerge as it is from within itself, unaffected by the interpretive or manipulative tendencies of the researcher. For example accurate transcriptions of conversations, letters written to friends, doodlings and spontaneously drawn sketches as in some psychoanalytic studies, the erection of monumental structures, inspired poetry, writings in the form of essays, autobiographies, the private speech of young children and so forth are TEXTS which when obtained within a phenomenological attitude, an attitude of openness, of letting-something-be as it chooses to disclose itself, can serve the emergence of onto-enigmas. (more details on this in the next section)
The TEXTS with respect to their S.S - that which is visible for everyone without occasioning serious disagreements and even if they arise, resolvable purely with reference to the factical structure of the text - is the objective presentation of the PROBLEM or ENIGMA in the hermeneutic sciences. The enigma that invites hermeneutical efforts, is allowed to present itself as it is, from within itself so that all researchers are able to SEE it and on SEEING so come to be thrown into an ontological Mode of Being, constituted by Temporality of time consciousness. A researcher thus gripped by an onto-enigma assumes a way of Being in which he awaits a FUTURE Way of Being which at the moment remains only a possibility but which is also a necessity to FREE him from that enigma. The researcher thus freed, stands-under the enigma, has now an understanding that FREES him from being caught by such enigmas again. He is also made FREE to be caught by other enigmas either related or unrelated to the solved.
Thus the origins of hermeneutic problems and the attainment of solutions, the resolution of onto-enigmas are not simply objective exercises, a mental acrobatics of complicated statistics and so forth but rather something that transforms the possibilities of Being of the researcher himself so that he is no more the same person he was before, earlier on. The researcher who has solved an onto-enigma now understands a phenomena and through that has liberated himself from being thrown into some situational temporalities by some surface structures of textual presentations of phenomena. He has conquered them waylaid them, broken their mystery and thereby freed himself from being temporally affected by them.
The concept of MOKSA articulated in this book is directly related to the above notion of freeing oneself from temporalities by understanding a phenomena that can be sources of onto-enigmas. The more a researcher battles with such onto-enigmas and emerges victorious, the more AUTONOMOUS he becomes. Progressively he becomes less and less onto-enigmatic and thereby less and less prone to being thrown into the intentional, Temporal Ways of Being. He masters existence and lives unaffected by the diverse phenomena surrounding his existence, sometimes even constituting it. By standing UNDER them, he LIBERATES himself from them. Such a way of living is said to be authentic existence by Meykandar. As a person persists in such authentic existence, the onto-enigmas become progressively deeper touching upon the universalistic at the deepest level, at which point the person becomes a mey jnaani, the genuinely philosophic, a description of which is available in the fourth part of this book.
But this is not the only relevance of the above analysis for introducing the book. We shall now point others and how without the presupposition of the analysis of ontic-onto enigmas we have given, the book will be quite unintelligible.
2.3 Metatexts and metametatext
The above analysis allows us to draw a distinction between a TEXT and what can be called a METATEXT, a text about a text. When certain elements in the S.S. of a text generates an onto-enigma, and it is solved by sighting an element of D.S. that serves to understand it, the understanding becomes illumined, a region of Darkness in understanding gets lighted up so that the darkness or ignorance is no more there. The improved understanding attained, the illuminations reached allow the person to linguisticalize the understanding thus reached. Such an articulation which is explicatory in nature about certain features in the TEXT about a primary TEXT which is in the nature of the given. Such a metatext, it should be noted, can in turn become a primary TEXT thus inviting a deeper hermeneutic exercises or archeoductive movements of understanding. Thus the progress in hermeneutic sciences can become progressively deeper and deeper ultimately reaching a GROUND LEVEL beyond which the hermeneutic inquiries cannot be pushed.
The understanding and thus REASONING as such can move bidirectionally-- in the direction of physicality and hence measurements statistics etc and in the direction of meta-physicality and hence in the direction of hermeneutic sciences where the qualitative intepretive praxis becomes dominant.
In this way of looking at the complicated movements of human understanding, as exemplified throughout the world, there are the positive and hermeneutic sciences each going about in its own way but both aspiring to a LIMIT, an IDEAL. The positivists dream of formulating a Universal Register, a logical syntax that would function as the language of a Unified and Universal Science, thoroughly rational and totally universal. The Hermeneuts on the other hands (as it has happened in India where the hermeneutic sciences have been in vogue from ancient times) have as an ideal of Absolute Understanding that confers absolute autonomy to whoever possess it with Universal Metatext or metametatext as that which articulates it. Such a text that embodies the deepest and the most comprehensive UNDERSTANDING ever possible for man is genuinely the Siddhanta, the final in the matter of human understanding.
'Civajnaana Bootam is a meta metatext and hence a universal metatext in the above sense, a text that understands the whole of Existence in its primordiality and hence universality and because of which the contents are appropriately Metaphysica Universalis. It does not seek to found a school of thought vis. a vis others; it does not seek to found a new religion in opposition to others on the basis of some mystical illumination, a divine message the author is privileged with and so forth. It goes beyond all these human frailties to the bottommost level of the human mind where exists the genuinely universal in man and articulates them in a rational manner, as should any scientific text be it positivistic or hermeneutic. In thus being and including within its scope all philosophies, religions, ideologies and sciences and seeking to illumine all these passions of man, it stands not only outstanding but unique.
The text is also metaphysical in nature because of its ontological orientations, the seeking to go beyond the S.S and locate elements in the D.S. that would explain the structural peculiarities in the S.S. The researchers within the ontical do not do this - they remain locked up within the universe of numbers seeking to discover universal laws. What we have in Civajnaana Bootam is the development of metaphysics as a specifics of hermeneutic science that serve to explain in a rational manner the meaning of human existence as a whole, that takes into account the vast range of its cultural accomplishments.
We shall take up this issue again in later parts as everything relevant to the issue cannot be articulated at this juncture without developing the theme a bit further.
2.4 Hermeneutics and Metaphysics
A comprehensive view of human understanding, the way it moves or made to move is both ontical and ontological or physical and metaphysical. This much is clear now. Neglecting one in favour of the other is simply maintaing a blindness, closing one eye in favour of the other. The ontical gaze is tied to the physical, the historical in which the understanding developed remains spatio-temporal and referential in nature. The time consciousness is World-Time, a linearly ordered endless progression of movements any slice of which is infinitely divisible like the set of real numbers in arithmetic. The spatial intuition remains directional - `heres and `theres, space infected with ticai, directions. The ontological on the other hand stands on the S.S. but looks towards the D.S having whatever in its visage a TEXT with such duality of structure. And because of it, it is Temporical, oriented towards a Future State of Being which it is NOT right now but which remains a distinct possibility for itself to be. The mind is projective, stretched out towards a FUTURE.
In this two ways of seeing and hence Being, the ontological is more fundamental as it makes us understand the Temporicality of Being, of understanding, of reasoning , of how TIME has become a fabric of human understanding. The ontical accommodates the competency to see the events in the world in terms of TIME but remains ignorant of the origins of this competency. It exploits a competency purely as a given, as intuitive without seeking to unravel the mystery surrounding this competency.
Only within the Modes of Being that are distinctly ontological or strictly hermeneutical in our sense that one can understand the presence of Time reckoning competency in man and unravel the mystery surrounding the intuition of Time as such. A man is thrown towards an ontological Mode of Being that is simultaneously Temporical only when he encounters a TEXT the surface structures of which disclose an enigma - something he does not understand, something that escapes his comprehension. Such onto-enigmas, as already pointed out earlier disclose the presence of a DARKNESS in his own understanding which has to be dispelled, removed. It is this recognition of the presence of ignorance in his OWN understanding that throws him to the temporical, ontological mode of Being. And from this it follows that should there be no such ignorance within, such temporal modes of Being will not arise and the individual will not ever be Temporical! Such an understanding as this in which there is no ignorance whatsoever and because of which the individual is absolutely autonomous, totally liberated, forever outside the temporal modes of Being is what is called Civajnaanam, absolute illumination, the main theme of the present book.
It is clear that it is only within the ontological, the state of Being outside Time is thinkable, timelessness understandable. And because of this also that of Timeness, understanding having temporicality with which it has to deal with in every one of its efforts. More specifically it points out that it is the PRESENCE OF DARKNESS in understanding, the dark patches in understanding that is directly related to man being temporical in his existence.
Meykandar calls every form of understanding that is temporical cudduNarvu and the understanding itself acataRivu and the understanding that is not so, cudduNarvu inRi niRRal, is cataRivu - absolutistic understanding.
The importance of the distinction between the ontical and the ontological should be reasonably clear now. Timeness cannot be absolved from understanding as long as the seeing remains fixated to the ontical - within the ontical, Time can be infinitely divided and understood as an incessant flow of momentary particulars as did the Buddhist logicians Dignatha, Dharmakirti and so forth and as is being done currently by the logical positivists but it cannot be absolved, eliminated overcome disengaged and so forth. This possibility is thinkable and attainable only within the ontological, the attainment of this state of Being articulated as MOKSA, attaining absolute illumination that makes the attainment of this releasement possible. And MOKSA in this sense and because of it, is articulated now as the MEANING OF EXISTENCE, that FOR-WHICH existence is. This also allows Meykandar to explicate the meaning of Authentic Existence: it is now that which resolutely seeks the attainment of this MOKSA, chooses only those ways of Being germane to it and avoids all others that are detrimental to it. Where the possibility of MOKSA is firmly entrenched and the whole of existence comes to be organized as for attaining MOKSA, we have the authentic existence, the theme of the fourth and final part of this celebrated text. However the most important of the above distinction for philosophy as much is that metaphysics, in the true sense of the word, is impossible within the ontical and is eminently possible only within the ontological. Any philosophy that claims to be metaphysics but which does not go beyond spatio-temporal intuitions are false metaphysics, exercises in human imaginations rather than articulations of TRUTHS. This observation is that with which Meykandar begins his text and draws a distinction in the first sutra itself and elaborates in the arguments in the commentary appended to it.
Metaphysics is possible only within the ontological for only here that totalities can be posited and transgressed and hence reach Grounds that are genuinely meta-physical, the BEYOND the PHYSIS, taking `physis in the original Greek sense of originary emergence, a notion akin to `puuttal or `toonRal in Tamil. For having noted the presence of Temporality because of Darkness in understanding one can project regressively towards a primordial condition of absolute DARKNESS as much as progressively to a condition of absolute illumination, that we have already noted above. Existence can now be understood as something that has emerged from a primordial originary condition of absolute Darkness and which is heading towards a state of absolute illumination. Existence is inherently kinetic, dynamic - there is inherent to it a movement with a direction of its own, that is towards MOKSA. However it is only in our regressive projections towards the originary that we are in a position to SIGHT the genuine metaphysical Realities. The entities that are anaati, uncreated, unoriginated which creates originates fabricates everything that constitute what the world is, existence is. The metaphysical realities are unsightable within the ontical for within that seeing no matter how venturesome we become, no matter how imaginative we become we cannot go beyond the infinities limitlessness backwards and forwards, upwards and downwards. There is always timeness and therefore always the beyond, the after, described in privative terms as limit-less, in-finite, im-mortal begining-less and so forth.
Within the ontological, and through a regressive projection within it we can reach a condition of TOTAL DARKNESS, a condition of NO APPEARANCES whatsoever, not an Emptiness, a Nothingness but only a DARKNESS, a DARKNESS that hides within its womb everything in a state of unmanifestation. This is the condition that is termed `ilayippu by Meykandar, a condition by seeking to understand which has given the Metaphysica Universalis of the text he has written.
If in this regressive projection we encounter a condition of absolute DARKNESS, a condition where all the appearances are resolved to a limiting point of undifferentiatedness or unmanifestation then there must be a stuff that causes this Darkness, the ANAVAM, the ANTIBEING and another that violates this and makes appearances possible BEING i.e. an entity without which there can be ways of Being of entities as such and because of which it is known as SIVAN - that which confers Being as such. It should be noted here that we are distinguishing carefully the Being of an entity and its appearances, its phenomenal presentations. While Being does not show something beyond itself, and in this Meykandar would agree with Heidegger, the phenomenal presence of an entity without which the Being cannot be known beyond itself to a reality that serves as the Causal Ground for its appearances and which is SIVAN, the BEING. All phenomenal presentations are subject to the historical flux - the muuvinaimai, because of which temporality is realized experientially. An entity has Being in the sense that it is there, it is not a nothingness even as unmanifest in the primordial condition of total darkness. But this entity cannot appear, come into historical circulation, assume flux-prone series of appearance on its OWN. It requires the GRACE of a BEING that can violate the ANTIBEING that forever throws the Being of entities as unmanifest, in the womb of Darkness with no appearances whatsoever. The phenomenological presentations, the appearances is termed tooRRam and because of which an entity is understood as an existent, uLatu. For an entity that has Being, require the GRACE of BEING to be existent.
Now this BEING is also described as `antam-aati and `sangkaara kaaraNanaay uLLa mutal", central notions in Saiva Siddhanta, without understanding which the whole text will be unintelligible. It is also necessary here to understanding the distinction between Being and appearance or phenomenality.
BEING and ANTIBEING are in combat with BEING as the POWER always regulating the presentations of ANTIBEING itself. The appearances of the entities cannot be reduced to state of no appearances unless ANTIBEING is allowed to pervade the entities. This allowing, speaking here of course metaphorically, of the prevalence of MALAM, the ANTIBEING, is `done by BEING and on account of which BEING is cangkaara kaaraNanan, that which is instrumental for the dissolution of the world. But if the entities escape from this state of no appearance and begin to have appearances, then it has to be because of BEING and no other as there is nothing else that can violate the hold of MALAM and provide it with presentational forms. Thus BEING is antam-aati that which is instrumental for the dissolution of the world and simultaneously its emergence, appearance.
While these points are argued for rather elaborately though the statements are rather cryptic, there is another point which needs to wrested out from the above arguments.
The notion that the Being of entities does not show, disclose something behind them is articulated in Saiva Siddhanta by the term anaati - that which requires nothing else besides itself for its Being. The Being of entities is nonoriginary, they ARE and because of which they can get into the phenomenal circulation. BEING and ANTIBEING are such entities - anaati - they are there and in being-there they do not point over their shoulders to another as their GROUND. And to this category of metaphysical realities, are to be included innumerable psychic entities, the pacus.
The reasons are quite obvious. The phenomenal presence of psychic entities resists any reduction to the physicalistic, to the ontical ways of seeing. Their essence emerges as distinct and irreducible and which is available only within the ontological seeing, ways of seeing in which what are seen are TEXTS, and hence always with a DUALITY of structure. When a person or even for that matter any living creature is seen as a TEXT, the presence of a psychic entity as the D.S. of that creature can be noted and their reality understood. The psychic entities are there in the world as resisting any reduction to the physicalistic. And if that is so, then certainly there must be at the metaphysical level with a Being of their own, as entities already there though certainly as unmanifest. Thus in addition to BEING, MALAM, we now discover that innumerable psychic entities are present as metaphysical realities and which altogether fabricate what we call the phenomenal reality, existence, the world and so forth. The central principle at work here and in terms of which the metaphysics is being articulated is known in the Indian Philosophical circles as `Sat karya Vada which can be formulated here as: only entities with Being can appear as phenomenal realities. Pati, the BEING; paacam here the ANTIBEING and pacu, the innumerable psychic entities have Being and hence not only anaati but also those which fabricate the phenomenal reality as such.
This metaphysical understanding was first announced by Thirumular around the 6th century AD and which is recovered by Meykandar as a philosophical TRUTH, something axiomatic in the philosophical excursions of the mind, in the first sutra itself by the assumptions of the distinctions between the ontical and ontological movements of human understanding.
This is also the Saiva understanding of the Genesis of World, the theory of Creation of the World and everything in it, a theme common to all religions but here articulated within the framework of Fundamental Ontology, something that remains still peculiar to Saivism
2.5. The Metaphysical Essence of Man and his Ethicality
Before we go on to discuss other themes by way of introducing the essences of this philosophically profound text, another important implication of the distinction between the ontical and ontological and how it bears on human essence must be drawn out to make the text as a whole and more particular the second sutra intelligible. It is here that Meykandar overcomes the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Sankara and numerous others wherein they have attempted to dilineate the mahavakya `Aham Brahman asmi and so forth in their own ways but most often monistically.
Among entities that are metaphysically real, there are the psychical and non-psychical and among the psychical the human and non-human, distinctions fundamental and which are carried over into the syntactic structure of languages. Now the human beings are distinctive among the psychical because only they are linguistical and on account of which they are singled out as `uyar tinai, in Tamil grammar and contrasted with the rest that are `akRinai. In the Dravidian philosophical tradition, it was also known at least from the days of Tolkappiyam (3rd century B.C.) that the linguisticality of human understanding is simultaneously with time-ness, that man has an understanding of Time, and that his understanding of Time splits to World-Time and Temporality. The syntactic structure of language, the fundamental division of sentences into Noun Phrases and Verb Phrases (Peyarccol and Vinaiccol) is possible only on the basis of time consciousness with Verb Phrases having time notions implicated either in morphology or others and divisible into the tensical or world-time and temporal or the intentional time (vinai nilai kaalam and kuRRippu kaalam). Linguisticality of man is contemporaneous with time-ness and hence the moment he transcends temporicality - the proness to reckon in terms of Time - he ceases to be also linguistical in the ordinary sense. However this does not mean communications ceases - he communicates translinguistically, through the so called mudras, of which mounam - Deep Silence - is the most significant.
Man is linguistical and he is so because he has an understanding of Time. In this observation we have outlined provisionally the human essence, where he differs from other animals and establishes himself as distinct. This also means that he is ontico-ontological hence always in search of knowledge, of understanding, always a researcher. When we look a bit deeper into this without ever forgetting the ontico-ontological thrusts of this researches, we notice that his understanding is essentially FINITE and all these research are for destroying this FINITITUDE. While this may be missed within the ontical, it cannot be within the ontological, as research within that mode of seeing are for destroying an IGNORANCE and on the destruction of which there is hermeneutic releasement, a local definitisation. As more and more hermeneutic journeys in the ontological distinctions are taken, more and more ignorance destroyed more and more releasement attained. If can term that which destroys the inner darkness, the ignorance the LUMENS than we can see that hermeneutic journeys ILLUMINE the person, make him less and less ignorant. It is for this reason that such a movement of understanding is termed LEARNING as there is destruction of ignorance, reduction of its scope than in researching along the ontico-ontological directions LEARNS and through that gains LUMENS that help him to destroy the inner darkness.
When we look at LEARNING as such along these lines, we can see that it has emerged from a condition of TOTAL DARKNESS and tends towards a state of Absolute Illumination, absolute clarity. There is a DIRECTION to this learning, it is already there as constitutive of the human understanding itself serving as an inner constraint, emerging at the critical moments in the decision processes that determine what ought to be pursued and what ought not. Man is not FREE in his search or research, it is as if there is a hidden hand always guiding him. He is taken along in his hermeneutic journey to a location of absolute illumination, though by forces that remain hidden, concealed. Thus in the existence of man, there is already at work a direction giving force or PULL that take him along a WAY already prescribed as that which he OUGHT to take.
Thus the Being of man is peculiar in that there is already a DIRECTION, a WAY that he for his own good better not transgress. There is then an ETHICAL constraint that accompanies all his ontico-ontological adventures, a constraint that exists till the point of MOKSA, absolute illumination, a point where learning as such also ceases to be. Thus man is already ETHICAL in his Existence, in his Being-in-the-World. This is another level of clarity in our investigations into the essence of man. Man is not only a creature with an understanding of Time, not only a creature concerned with Learning but also immensely ethical, with ethical principles that ensure that he does not transgress the WAY, the direction of movement already prescribed as something that he OUGHT NOT transgress.
Now when we push further into this essence, noting that it is in the direction of absolute illumination, then we note that man in his Being-in-the-World has already within himself an understanding of BEING for it is BEING and nothing else among the metaphysical realities that is RADIANCE itself, PURE LIGHT, absolute illumination, the Brahman, the resplendent LIGHT that understands everything as they in themselves are. Thus the Being-in-the-World of man is peculiar in that there is already an understanding that is directed towards fusing with BEING, being-in-absolute-oneness with BEING. This is the state that we have described as {BEING - [Being]}, which is formulaic for the notion: Being-in-the-World as such. Man in his Existence is not free to do whatever he likes - there is already a DIRECTION, a DECREE at work and because of which he is thrown to ethicality, to moral principles, to the elicitations of Karmic traces through the actions that he effects and over which he has NO authority. The manner of the presence of BEING in the Being of man which he recognizes by the ethical constitution of his own self, is that which is described as advaita, the SAMENESS when Not-Other of BEING with the Being of man. It is that quality that distinguishes man from the beast, and makes him essentially spiritual to the extent he recognizes it and foregrounds it in his Being-in-the-World.
In the wake of this understanding, it is possible now to explain the notions of Karma and Maayaa Malam that are central to the metaphysics outlined in this book and which are understood along with the ANTIBEING as paacam - chains that bind man to the earthly, to a worldly circulation of births and deaths.
2.6 The Chains of Karma and Worldly Cares: Or Why man is a Sinner?
The notion that there is a direction in the ontico-ontological or physico-metaphysico efforts of man, that there is WAY that he ought not transgress in his existential adventures, that there is a Decree constraining man to a PATH ( that Meykandar calls aaNai in sutra 2) is an insightful understanding, an illumination which in its wakes raises a number of further questions. The basic question is of course why it should be like this. What necessitates the need for a guidance, constraining of activities and so forth.
One immediate answer is that man CAN deviate from the WAY, he can FALL outside it and go astray, deviate from the RIGHT route and FALL prey to the evil forces and so forth. This is something like what the Christians say : that man is ia sinner. But such a proneness to FALL, which is already in man is termed Malam (the Dark) in Saiva Siddhanta, the cause of the evil, immoral, beastly in man. Over and above the PULLS that sets him on the WAY, there exists PULLS that cause him leave that and fall outside. This pull that acts contrary to that BEING, the most AUSPICIOUS is the ANTIBEING, the MALAM, literally the DARK. Man is already in the DARK, that is his primordial originary condition, a born sinner. But this PULL is a pull that becomes operative only when he is pulled outside it and put on the WAY, the way of absolute illumination, total clarity. But a weaker manifestation of it is CARES for the earthly, to the physicalistic, materialistic and so forth, Maaya Malam. There comes to prevail a BLINDNESS with respect to the ethical essences, spiritual and genuinely philosophic possibilities. Gripped by the earthly CARES which is ultimately a weakened form of the pull of ANAVAM, the ANTIBEING, the supreme finitizer, the atomizer of existence, that which makes the soul 'sin-nathu" man backgrounds the higher possibilities of Being-in-the-World which are in fact Being-one-with-BEING and foregrounds Being-one-with-the-World, the earthly, the mundane, the common, the non-philosophic. This Maaya Malam makes him become attached to the physicalistic, the tangible, the sensorial and causes him exult the ontical, the physical to the total exclusion of the ontological or Metaphysical. There comes to prevail an inner resistance against anything unconscious, mystical, mysterious or in the Depths, a prejudice of a deep seated against anything intangible, anything upon which the hands cannot be laid, anything that cannot be grasped by the senses and their instrumental extensions.
The PULL of BEING that put man on the WAY, not only makes him ethical but also ontological, genuinely hermeneutical in his researches. It OPENS up his eyes, his vision to the nonphysical in nature, the psychical and what lies within it viz. the spiritual.
Death Moksa and Resurrection
Now another set of questions that emerges in the wake of our insights into the notion of the WAY, the presence of a DECREE and so forth, pertains to its structure. If the WAY is the way towards MOKSA, which is the end of the WAY and beyond which NOTHING is conceivable, and in fact there is only NOTHINGNESS, a Suunyam, then the question arises: what is the relationship between Death which is phenomenal and Being on the WAY? Does Death put an end to the journey or does it not? It is in the wake of such questions that Meykandar articulates the notion of punar uRpatti, repeated resurrections and hence the notion of existential repetitions and along with it the notion of Karma as that element of reality that regulates it. If MOKSA is the END of the WAY, then till moksa existence must continue and hence there must be the resurrection of the anma, the psychic entity so that it gets another birth, another opportunity to live. The Being of the psychic entity can never be destroyed and it is beyond the reach of death which is purely phenomenal. Even moksa does not touch the Being of the entity, it continues to BE as ever even on attaining moksa. What comes to an end in Moksa is not Being but EXISTENCE - Being-in-the -World as such. The psychic entity that has attained moksa, has come to the end of the WAY, does not cease to BE but ceases to EXIST, a distinction of utmost importance, a distinction that puts Saiva Siddhanta at variance with the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Sankara and a host of others. The anma does not become Brahman at Moksa, it does not cease to BE an entity of its own, i'st Being remains unaffected by the attainment of MOKSA.
What ceases however is Existence, Being-in-the-World, being put into an existential circulation with an endless repetition of births and deaths.
Meykandar develops these themes in a masterly fashion throughout the text and hence we shall contend here with pointing out the essences. But it should be indicated here how the notion of Karma is highly relevant. If Existence persists till the point of MOKSA, and it is a sequence of births and deaths with a possibility of evolving into the higher and closer to MOKSA, there is a mechanism at work that sustains this journey, maintains the continuity, ensures evolutionary changes when justified. Karma or mula karma is said to be this mechanism already available as there in the world, a metaphysical reality of its own. There is an intimate relationship between the bodily endowments a psyche gets at its birth and the actions effected. While instrumental facilities of a bodily frame - both physical and mental - and an environment appropriate to it makes possible the effectuation of actions, it is the kind of actions effected that ensures evolution and hence nearing MOKSA or a falling away from it. Actions that are facilitative in this sense are PuNNiyam, the right, the good while those not so are Paavam, the evil, immoral and so forth. The morally sanctionable actions elucidate Karmic traces that ensures not only being within the WAY but also progress in it. The morally objectionable elucidate traces that cause the FALL, departures and deviations from the WAY, the neRi, falling towards the pull of ANTIBEING, the DARK.
Thus in this analysis, Karma though it enchains an anma to Existence, but one kind of it, that elucidated by the effectuation of PuNNiyam type of actions, the morally right is that which will take it closer to Moksa and hence enormously important. And because of this Siddhanta, unlike Vedanta and other forms idealism, emphasizes the enormous importance of ethical principles in existence, the need to live a morally unobjectionable life. Existing should NOT be abhorred, should not be thought as a snare, as a trap but rather a challenge, tricky at times but which contains within it the WAY and mechanisms that would ensure one being in the WAY and progressing in that pilgrimage-like journey.
Meykandar attends to these problems in the sutra and the sutras in the final part, payaniyal. We hope sufficient has been said by way of introduction to follow Meykandar in many other deeper things he says in the texts proper about these.
We have drawn out the several implications for metaphysics of the notion that human understanding moves along ontico-ontological lines and that both directions of movements must be taken into account in any philosophical inquiry about human understanding, existence, the meaning of Being and so forth. Given the truth of this duality of the hermeneutic efforts, it would follow that the kinds of metaphysics that is outlined by Meykandar is in fact a TRUTH, and hence something that demands compliance. However, the truth of this way of functioning of the human mind itself may be questioned, its reality and facticity may be doubted. In the next part we shall attend to these issues and through that also bring out the kind of LOGIC that is implicit in the structure of the text itself. There is a LOGIC in Civajnaana Bootam which is quite unique and which unfortunately has been misunderstood by many traditional scholars including, I believe, his own students Arunandi who has to his credit the massive Sivajnaana Sittiyar, itself a very elaborate commentary-like elucidation of Civajnaana Bootam itself.