The Siddha Quest for Immortality ‘While the non-Siddha proclaims that, in order to escape the wheel of birth-and-death the only course open to man is the attainment of spiritual freedom crowned by physical, bodily death, the Siddha maintains that one must overcome physical death in this life itself and ‘live forever’…the great work that lies before man is to purify one’s body and sanctify one’s life, and integrate the two…into one eternal monad, so that body and life become identical.’ The Poets of the Powers ‘Siddha writings are at once most thrilling, even sensational but at the same time the darkest and only very little-known texts in Tamil. They represent a complex and provocative puzzle: flashes of stunning intuition, knowledge, even deep wisdom as well as results of effective practice seem to be mixed with incredible naivete, hardly acceptable superstitions, and dark and amazing claims.’ Plagiarists and impostors? ‘Even Indians themselves, when raised on the niceties of early twentieth century English or Anglo-Indian culture, described the Siddhas as “plagiarists and impostors”, “eaters of opium and dwellers in the land of dreams, their conceit knowing no bounds.’ Siddha Iconoclasm ‘You begging bullocks! In ochre robes, with matted hair, with water-vessels, rosary-beads and walking sticks, you have forsaken your women and roam about the country wide and large begging for a grain of boiled rice! Idiots!’ Further extracts below: Extract Foreword The Tamil Siddhas cannot be regarded as one homogenous ‘movement’ or ‘school of thought’ manifesting a unified, well-defined, uniform ideology. A great number of elements have entered into their thinking, some of them pan-Indian, some of them apparently specifically South Indian or Tamil. On the other hand, their overall ideology has, of course, several basic doctrinal tenets in common. As we shall see, some of these tenets are in amazing correspondence with the most recent developments in modern physics of post-relativity and quantum theory era. The schema of dense and subtle matter is one of those tenets: according to ultimate Siddha thought, subtle matter constitutes the inner body of man; matter is nothing but crystallized energy, and a manifestation of infinite and universal mind (‘subtle matter’ reappears in the theories of physicists of our day). An accomplished Siddha is someone who has learned to harmonize his awareness with this subtle (sub-atomic?) matter of which he is composed. The Siddha alchemist can live in the mode of constant appearance and disappearance, manifestation and dissolution, of subtle matter and energy; and all matter forms a continuum. Neither matter nor consciousness are ultimate, for both have their source in something still ‘beyond’, in Civam which can not really become object of knowledge. Hence the Siddha poet speaks often of ‘silence’: Silence, unmoved and rising, Silence, unmoved and sheltering, Silence, unmoved and permanent, Silence, unmoved and brilliant, Silence, broad and immense like the Ganga, Silence, unmoved and increasing, Silence, white and shining like the Moon, Silence, the Essence of Siva. The only possible predication of the ‘something’in which both matter and consciousness have their source is Void, Emptiness. Hence, again, one of the key-terms appearing in Siddha poetry: vettaveli, cuniyam ‘utter emptiness, void’, veliyirveli (liter.) ‘void in emptiness’ i.e. supreme, absolute Emptiness; or, simply, veli (liter ‘open space; space; openness’) ‘emptiness’: Gods made out of wood Gods made out of stone Gods made out of palmyra fronds Gods made out of bone Gods made out of rags Gods made out of dung Gods made out of saffron bags There are no other gods but VOID (Civavakkiyam 503/510) must be stressed, however, that by this emptiness is not meant a substantive emptiness like ‘an empty box’. It is emptiness which is a plenum And man can come into contact with this Void. How, that is precisely what the Siddhas tell us.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 15:43:52 +0000
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