Today, I have come to understand why gurus in the past kept their students with them for some 12 years before they impart their teachings. It was to avoid confusion arising in them. I have come to realize that it is we who tie the knot and struggle to undo it later. In current times, just like everything else, spirituality is available at the touch of a button or key. We pick up everything, take up everything, from the net and books, and end up confused or worse still, harming ourselves. In reading and listening to a vast spectrum of subjects by authors and gathering opinions of others, we have filled our minds to the brim, analysing and forming opinions, often connecting something with something else. I guess this is what I did too. In seeing the sufferings of others, back in my bachelor days, I tried hard to connect and fit these with the numerous aspects of God, namely beauty, peace, tranquility, love, compassion, and kindness as portrayed in books, sacred texts, discussions, etc, but as it did not tally and neither did it register, I became confused and angry.
Similarly, listening to Sadhu Om's verse that "AnDavan aaTchiyil adharmamey illai", "There is no Adharma in God's Governance", I wrote in a post and posed a question,
"If there is one thing that I still cannot comprehend, it is the verse in the above song that states there is no Adharma in God's governance - AnDavan aaTchiyil adharmamey illai enDru, when all the sacred texts speak about virtues, dividing them into Dharma and Adharma, and tell us to take up the former and not fall for the latter."
I came to know from a Siva Thondan, a reader and friend, whom I asked to enlighten me on this, that I had connected the verse that belonged to one in the state of Pati to what we undergo as Pasu in the state of Pasam.
Indeed, as he wrote back, the question has become the Teaching. Agathiyar had asked that I read the Tirumanthiram and that Tirumular shall come to clarify. Although it might seem that I asked the question, as he puts it, we both believe that Tirumular had initiated this learning.
Before answering this question, it is worth pausing to honour it. This is not a casual or superficial question. It is the question of a sincere seeker who has sat long enough with the sacred texts to feel a genuine tension and who has the intellectual honesty to name it rather than smooth it over. The sacred texts speak constantly of Dharma and Adharma, of right action and wrong action, of the path that leads toward liberation and the path that leads deeper into bondage. And yet here is a verse singing with full-throated confidence that in Andavan's governance, in Shiva's own administration of this cosmos, there is no Adharma at all. How can both be true?
Asking this, he answers that,
... both statements are entirely true, but they are spoken from different levels of reality, addressing different aspects of the soul's journey.
I had tried to see it from my stand. I looked up to the divine as living in the skies and looking down on us without lifting a hand to help those who suffered forgeting that he was very much part of us and our sufferings too. Agathiyar told me later that if I shed tears, he too would shed tears. After having me let go of all that I desired, and instead have me carry out his desires, only to have me drop it all, recently, in asking that I let go of him too, he asked how else can we be one, driving the concept that we were one. But Pasu has us believe that we are separate. "This is the level of Prakriti Maya", I have come to learn. We come to learn further that
Moving upward through the Tattwa structure, we enter the seven Shuddhashuddha Tattwas — the level of Asuddha Maya, where the soul is being prepared and equipped for embodied experience.
Kaala Tattwa is the principle of Time — the cosmic framework within which karma ripens. Niyati Tattwa is the principle of cosmic ordering — the force that ensures each soul's karmic fruits return to that soul specifically, at the right time, in the right circumstances, for the right evolutionary purpose. Together, these two Tattwas constitute what the tradition describes with great precision as Shiva's administrative wisdom — the divine module building by which each soul's birth is assigned a specific syllabus of experiences drawn from its accumulated karma.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The tradition describes Maya with a phrase of extraordinary precision: Agatitha Gatana Patiyasi — the super specialist in combining things that are impossible to combine.
What does Maya combine that seems impossible? Among other things, it combines the soul's freedom with the soul's bondage in such a way that the bondage itself becomes the instrument of freedom. This is the deepest paradox of Saiva Siddhantam: the very Pasam — the bonds of Anavam, Karma, and Maya — that obscure the soul from Shiva are simultaneously the curriculum through which the soul grows capable of receiving Shiva's grace.
And it is Maya, in collaboration with Niyati and Kaala, that ensures this teaching reaches the soul in precisely the form it needs.
Maya is the lamp that provides limited light in the night of spiritual ignorance — not the light of liberation, but enough light to keep the soul moving until the dawn arrives.
I guess I have arrived at the level of the Suddha Tattwas, going by what Agathiyar told me and what my friend has shared.
Now we arrive at the summit — the five Suddha Tattwas, the level of Shiva's own nature — and it is from this level that the verse speaks: AnDavan aaTchiyil adharmamey illai.
At the level of Shiva Tattwa (Tattwa 1) and Shakthi Tattwa (Tattwa 2), there is only Para Nada and Para Bindu — pure consciousness and pure power, preceded by Will, and preceding Will, by Karunai — Love.
It was the divine who put forth the question and gave the answer too. He too feels the same in answering it, crediting it to
To Maha Siddhar Thirumoolar and through the radiant lineage of the blessed Nayanmars, the Samaya Kuravars, the Santhana Kuravars, and the venerable Acharyas of Saiva Siddhantam. Should any merit be found in these words, the credit belongs wholly to them. Any faults are mine alone.