SAIVA SIDDHANTA AND ADVAITA, Harish Damodaran [i can read with my eyes shut .TXT] 📗

six entities without a beginning and without and end.
Of these eternal entities, the Pati stands supreme because He is the only independent reality. All others have only dependent existence. They are not all supreme. Pati is the supreme spirit and the source of all being. It is the absolute of thought and God of religion. There would be no world of men and things if there were no God. Souls and material objects derive their being from the Lord17.
He is often compared to vowel ‘A’ that gives sound and life to all the alphabets. With out ‘A’ no alphabet or sound can exist. Like wise the world cannot exist without Him18.
His form is love; His attributes and knowledge are love; His functions are love; His organs such as arms and feet, ornaments like the crescent moon are love. The Lord who is beyond the reach of thought assumes the form of love for the sake of souls and not for His benefit19.
Difficult of access even to Gods, He is easy of approach to the bhakta. His name is Sankara the Bestower of bliss and is changeless20.
Consciousness is the essential aspect of the Pati. He is consciousness. He has a visuddha deha. His knowledge is natural. He is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. He is opposed to all imperfections. He is svatantra. He has the fullness of perfection. He is the embodiment of grace. He abides in all things eternally and completely. As per His order, the universe runs. But He is ordered by none. He dwells everywhere without being tainted by their imperfections. He creates the world, sustains it and destroys it in order to bestow upon the souls a state similar to His own. He gives the Pasu omniscience and limitless bliss.
The Saiva Siddhantins describe the Pati or Siva as having eight fold qualities. They are independence, purity, self-knowledge, omniscience, freedom from the malas, boundless benevolence, omnipotence and bliss.
Siva is pictured by the Saiva Siddhanta as executing fivefold activities. They are: srshti (creation), sthiti (preservation), Samhara (destruction), tirobhava (supression of malas) and anugraha (blessing). The entire universe is on the move, in accordance with His performance of these five functions. He is the gracious lord of the Pasu (Pasupati) and the mighty controller of the malas.
By the term ‘Pasu’ (which literally means beast), Saiva Siddhanta denotes what philosophers call the individual self. The Siddhantin admits the reality of Pasu along with its plurality. There exists an infinite number of Pasus; who are real, eternal, conscious and partless entities. From the beginning-less time they are associated with the pasas or malas or bonds. Thus their freedom is limited. But they can shed their malas sooner or later with the infinite grace of the Supreme Lord, the Pati. Till then, they have to suffer from the limitations enforced by the malas.
The Souls are classified in to three categories, in terms of the malas attached to them. They are Sakalas, Pralayakalas and Vijnana kalas.
The first group Sakala consists of all those souls bound by all the three malas- Anava, Karma and Maya.
The second group Pralayakala, consists of those Souls who have cast the Maya away. They are still under the power of the other two malas Karma and Anava.
By ViJnanakala, it is meant that the group of souls who have shed their Maya and Karma, but, still, are under the power of Anava mala. When this final mala, Anava, is cast off, the Pasu becomes liberated and becomes perfect to enjoy the supreme blessedness.
When the conscious nature is concerned, the Pasu is like the Pati. But they differ in the essential nature. Both are consciousness; but Siva is the giver of grace and the Pasu is the recipient21. Just as the body cannot function without the soul, the atman cannot function without the Lord. Its relation to God is as intimate as the relation of body to soul or Quality to its substrate22.
The Pati arranges worldly life, gives pleasures and pains to the Souls according to their karmas. Siva gives necessary physical and mental equipment and confers final liberation to the soul. The Pati is capable of knowing everything without the aid of any instruments. But, the Pasu knows everything, only when it is given knowledge by the Pati.
Even when liberated, the Pasu does not become one with the Pati. “The Jiva (Pasu) stands to God in the same relation in which the body stands to the soul23.’’ Even though the Soul is called cit, it cannot know without the grace of God. It needs to be equipped with the senses, and the mind; to have knowledge24. They are to be provided by the Lord, Siva. Thus, it is made clear that the Pasu is inferior, in nature, to the Absolute, Pati, in all respects.
The three malas Maya, Karma and Anava bound the soul, and limit its freedom. Hence they are called Pasas. These malas or pasas account for the miseries of life. They play a very important role in the Pasu’s passage to the realization of the absolute Spirit, the pati. It is upon the escape of the Pasu from the three malas that the release or the state of Mukti attained by the Pasu depends.
Maya is the material cause from which the Pati forms the world and constructs the body for the individual soul. Maya, by the creative function of the Lord Siva, becomes material for the instruments of knowledge and action and also for the objects of enjoyment for the soul, according to their karmas.
The soul is thus, provided with Maya. Thus it gets body, instruments of knowledge (senses) and the mind. Thus it becomes capable of doing its karmas and finally, of reaching the stage of release or mukti.
It is through the experience of happiness and sorrows, the Pasu begins to attain knowledge. The senses and the mind, made up of the Maya, can give rise only to imperfect and partial knowledge. Thus the individual soul, or the Pasu, is handicapped. It is seen, that Maya provides only partial knowledge. But, as the proverb says, "Something is better than nothing", with the help of this mala, called Maya, thus, the soul is set to function. By this initial "take of", the soul gradually becomes capable of finding and pursuing its way up to its ultimate goal, the mukti. So the Maya supports the souls as a launching - pad in their pursuit of the absolute reality, the Pati.
Maya is of two fold forms -Suddha Maya and AsudhaMaya. They act as material cause to Suddhaprapancha and asuddhaprapancha respectively.
Suddhamaya is not associated with Anava and Karma.It is suddha or pure. Out of Suddhamaya, the Lord has created the body, instruments and the world of the Vijnanakala group of souls.
SudhaMaya acts as the first cause of the four modes of speach namely; Vaikhari, Madhyama, Pasyanti and Suksma.
Madhyama helps to form determinate knowledge in the mind of him who utters it and it is heard only internally because it is soft in nature. It is residing in the throat and is not acted upon by prAnavayu.
Pasyanti possesses in a very subtle from, the several letters manifested and distinguished in the madhyama sthana; and resides in the throat. It makes the indeterminate knowledge possible.
Suksma exits as a sound in the karana sarira, and makes knowledge possible while Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari which evolve from Suksma are destroyed it persists as Sudha Maya.
In addition to its function as the first cause of four modes of speech, Sudhamaya acts, as the first cause of words, letters, mantras, tattvas, bodies, objects of enjoyment, organs and all other things required for the partially released souls like the Mantresvaras, Mantramahesvaras and the Anusadasivas.
AsudhaMaya is actually the first cause of our universe. It is the seed of the universe. It is inert. It pervades souls with the bodies, organs and words. It is pervaded by the Pati. Therefore, it is the assumptive power of the Lord. It is delusive because, it causes delusive cognition.
It is out of asuddamaya that the body, instruments and world of Pralayakalas are produced.
From Asuddhamaya arise Kala, Niyati and Kala. From Kkala arise Vidya and Raga. These five tattvas: Kalatattva, Niyatitattva, Kalatattva, Vidyatattva and Ragatattva together called Pancakancuka or the five cloaks. They are the five casual tattvas.
Kala is the sense of time. It is distinguished into past, present and future. It sets time limits for the universe. Kala causes the universe to function in accordance with Karma. Kala causes the creation, sustentation and destruction of the world25.
Niyati allocates, by the command of Lord Siva, the experience of pleasure or pain as the fruits of Karma (deeds) to the doers.
Kalatattva partially removes the evil of Anava, illumines the connative Energy of the soul and thus enables the Pasu to experience the fruits of its deeds. Other wise, the soul would have been incapable of experiences. It is Vidyatattva that arises from the Kalatattva that illumines the cognitive energy of the soul and making it capable of experiencing. And finally, it is the Ragatattva that enables the soul to distinguish between the happiness or sorrow of the experiences.
Karma means ‘action’. It is produced by the activity of manas, Vak and kaya (thought, words and deed). It is depending upon their past karmas that the souls experience pleasure or pain. The sakala souls, in order to experience the fruits of their karmas, take infinite number of births, one after another, and go to and return from heaven and hell again and again.
The positive effect of Karma is explained in the Siddhiar. It is Just as pain caused by the surgeon is the inevitable means to lasting good, the Lord by making the soul experience the consequences of its deeds, leads to get rid of mala altogether26.
Karma is of three kinds-Prarabdha, Sanchitha and Agamiya. Prarabdha is the past Karma accumulated due to the past deeds of the Pasu. The Pasu has to enjoy its fruits in the future lives. Sanchita is the present karma. What the Pasu performs at present has its own fruits. The Pasu has to reap it in the future life. Agamiya is future karma. The Pasu, because of the Prarabdha and Agamiya Karmas, has to experience pleasure or pains in the future. This leads to further Karmas in future. This is Agamiya Karma. “In experiencing the fruits of past deeds, the souls forget that their experience is made possible by the will of the Lord and wrongly think that their experience is due to themselves; wherefore agami begins”27.
Thus the Pasu is caught in an endless chain of karmas. He can break it to attain release, only with the help of the benevolence of the Pati. Sivagra yogin gives the reason why the Lord takes away the karmas. According to him, the Lord who dwells in the hearts of all souls is inseparably existent in them; He takes their deeds Himself.
Anava is the primal bondage for the souls. It is eternal and beginningless. It is attached firmly to the souls as verdigris is to copper. The soul gets its name Pasu from its attachment with Anava mala as SivaJnana Siddhiyar says ‘‘its intelligence power are eternally concealed by the pasa, (the Anava) and hence it is called Pasu’’28. This shows the important position of Anava in the system of the Saiva Siddhanta.
Anava is an eternal cosmic evil. "Anava is one, but by virtue of its infinite capacities, it thwarts the cognitive and affective functions of the souls". If Anava is once removed, the souls will be freed to their essential nature as intelligences. "If we find the soul’s intelligence manifest sometimes and not at other times, if we find it parviscient, these conditions must be due to an external factor; and that