4.4 TELEOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY IN SAIVA SIDDHANTHAM:
“IRUVINAI-OPPU” (இருவினை ஒப்பு)
The term teleology denotes action, its purpose and
goodness[i]
while eschatology denotes the rebirth and the next incarnations[ii].
These two issues are dealt in the SS from the second sootram(verse) of the
sivagnanabodham.
The term IRUVINAI-OPPU denotes the balance between the
good deeds and the bad deeds. The concept of vinai(deeds) is common in most
Hindu system of schools. The deeds are
divided into these good and bad on the ethical aspects of worldly existence.
A soul(man) indulges in the worldly pursuits in order
to survive and propagate his species. These two are the fundamental biological
functions of all living creatures. The survival depends on the feeding. The
feeding comes from predation of other living creatures. The predation is
essential for the physiological living. The reproduction needs another living
organism through which the life is passed to another generation through ones
DNA.
The DNA carries all the information of the individual,
his family, ancestors, tribe, caste, creed and the entire evolutionary
information of the life! The individual’s thoughts, actions and behaviors are
coded into his brain memory. The memory is processed and kept in the remote
memory. The remote memory is taken by the RNA and taken to form fresh DNA
codes. The codes are transmitted to the
children through the sperm or ovum.
The child therefore gets these ancestor’s information
involuntarily through this DNA transcription
process. The child also gets the information of the parents and their
deeds through the time of parenting through verbal information and sensory
process about the ancestors and they get into the child’s behavior. This process is well documented by the
learning theories and behavioral schools of PAVLOV, SKINNER and ARON BECK.
The person’s deeds are hence from the ancestors and
the place of growth. Besides the individual is capable of thinking himself and
is able to do things on self accepted morality. These stages are well observed
by LAWRENCE KOHLBERG in his theories on development of morality in the child as
preconventional, conventional and self accepted moralities.
The vinai concepts are analogous to these
psycho-developmental process. The good deeds and bad deeds are product of the
genetic, environmental and conscious self actions. Thus the deeds are divided
into three types:
1.oozh vinai=deeds of
the ancestors(ஊழ்வினை)
2.pirar vinai=deeds of
the environment(பிறர் வினை)
3. than vinai=voluntary
self actions(தன் வினை)
Thus the worldly
existence brings us about to do all the three deeds voluntarily or
involuntarily. The wrong deeds and the right deeds are adjudged by the sivam.
When the balance is same the process of IRU-VINAI-OPPU happens.
It is a common question
how we could be responsible for our ancestor’s wrongs. How we could be punished
for this? Who is there to watch all this?
Let us take the example
of people with anti-social personality disorders. These are the persons who
have most of the features of the wickedness and evils we can think of in life.
These antisocial personalities are the people who have highest incidence of suicide(15%).
They also have 20-30% incidence of depression. Their off-springs are not
spared. The famous study on these people’s children was done in US in a town
called St.LOUIS.
This study reveled that
the children of the antisocial personalities have higher proportion of
psychiatric morbidity. The boys later go to develop alcohol dependence and the
girls to develop hystrionic personality disorders[iii].
The triad of hysteria,
alcoholism and anti-sociality is thus obvious. We now have proven data that
ancestors deeds in the form of “oozh “ஊழ்can manifest on the children.
Thus one has the duty
to cancel all his bad deeds and the environment and his ancestors by good deeds
to get the iru-vinai-oppu.
The rebirth phenomena
in Hinduism can only mean the future generations or the off-springs of the
individual. This evolutionism is hidden in many of the saivite works including
the St.MANIKAVASAKAR. he says “ from earliest forms like grass, tubers, worms,
animals and then to man the person gets
reborn. This process is tiresome and he wants to get rid of this.”
This saivite
eschatology is a pointer to the early evolutionism in saiva doctrines.
Speculative thoughts have always considered evolutionism in the east and the
west. The paleo-biological researches of LAMARCK and CHARLESS DARWIN have
proved this later in clear logical light
in 19th century.
[i] Teleological terms such as "function" and "design"
appear frequently in the biological sciences. Examples of teleological claims
include:
- A
(biological) function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to
predators that they have been detected.
- Eagles'
wings are (naturally) designed for soaring.
Teleological
notions were commonly associated with the pre-Darwinian view that the
biological realm provides evidence of conscious design by a supernatural
creator. Even after creationist viewpoints were rejected by most biologists
there remained various grounds for concern about the role of teleology in
biology, including whether such terms are:
- vitalistic
(positing some special "life-force");
- requiring
backwards causation (because future outcomes explain present traits);
- incompatible
with mechanistic explanation (because of 1 and 2);
- mentalistic
(attributing the action of mind where there is none);
- empirically
untestable (for all the above reasons).
Opinions
divide over whether Darwin's theory of evolution provides a means of
eliminating teleology from biology, or whether it provides a naturalistic
account of the role of teleological notions in the science. Many contemporary
biologists and philosophers of biology believe that teleological notions are a
distinctive and ineliminable feature of biological explanations but that it is
possible to provide a naturalistic account of their role that avoids the
concerns above. Terminological issues sometimes serve to obscure some
widely-accepted distinctions.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/
[ii]
[ii] Mythical eschatology, then, can be defined in terms of the
“myth of the eternal return,” which posits a cyclic view of history. In
religious festivals, the lost time of history is regenerated and eternity is
represented. Through the ritualistic repetition of the creation of the cosmos,
the impression of transience is proved wrong. Everything is shown to remain in
place, hope is
inherent in memory, and future salvation is depicted as a return to the
primordial origin or to an original golden age. In mythical eschatology, the
meaning of history is found in a celebration of the eternity of the cosmos and
the repeatability of the origin of the world.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/192308/eschatology
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