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Dear murugappan,

SIDDHANTHIC SIMILARITIES FROM THIRUMANTHIRAM:  THE ORAL STAGE

The first 540 verses (first 3 chapters)confine to the description of the PATI qualities and the superego equalant of Freud (Siva qualities in general –ethics-esthetics-and praise of Siva).

From then onwards the chapters on yoga starts. They describe various ways of life which is good and that leads to salvation. They are the initial steps to self analysis. They are the initial steps in siddhantha self analysis. It is equal to a Freudian oral stage.   Like the child in the first year of life the individual is in a primary stage for the spiritual development. He is in the state of receiving form the mother. Like that the individual is in the receiving stage from the guru or god. He is preparing himself for the further stages. In this state he has to get the “iru –vinai-  oppu” by performing his duties.

He has to get the start in yoga way of life. By completing the yogic stages only he can leave this state to further steps in spiritual journey in saiva doctrines. For this he is completely dependent upon the guru. The sishya ( seedan)  is thus in a oral stage like position.

Iru-vinai-oppu refers to the  balance of actions in the human ethical responsibilities in the material world. There is a grace of god on which every man survives,grows and reproduce. The survival on the earthly base depends on his ability to master the physical environment. He needs food,shelter,security,love, happiness ..etc.  man’s strives must not interfere others for his survival. If there is growth of a body it depends on the effect on others.

 This is a fundamental law of physics and evolution. In the competitive process there is a need for ethics. The divine grace favours the ethical man. So man needs a material benefit from the physical world and for this there is a contribution from the divine .  the extraction of pleasure from the world and the divine grace depends upon the balance on an ethical scale.  The balance is very critical.

Freud suggested that exclusive self-love might not be as abnormal as previously thought and might even be a common component in the human psyche. He argued that narcissism "is the libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation," or, more simply, the desire and energy that drives one’s instinct to survive. He referred to this as primary narcissism. According to Freud, people are born without a sense of themselves as individuals, or ego. The ego develops during infancy and the early part of childhood, only when the outside world, usually in the form of parental controls and expectations, intrudes upon primary narcissism, teaching the individual about the nature and standards of her social environment from which she can form the ideal ego, an image of the perfect self towards which the ego should aspire. 'As it evolved, the ego distanced itself from primary narcissism, formed an ego-ideal, and proceeded to cathect objects'. Freud regarded all libidinous drives as fundamentally sexual and suggested that ego libido (libido directed inwards to the self) cannot always be clearly distinguished from object-libido (libido directed to persons or objects outside oneself).An aspect frequently associated with primary narcissism appears in an earlier essay, 'Totem and Taboo, in which Freud describes his observations of children and primitive people. What he observed was called magical thinking, such as the belief that a person can impact reality by wishing or willpower. It demonstrates a belief in the self as powerful and able to change external realities, which Freud believed was part of normal human development.

  According to Freud, secondary narcissism occurs when the libido withdraws from objects outside the self, above all the mother, producing a relationship to social reality that includes the potential for megalomania. 'This megalomania has no doubt come into being at the expense of object-libido....This leads us to look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing on of object-cathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary narcissism'. For Freud, while both primary and secondary narcissism emerge in normal human development, problems in the transition from one to the other can lead to pathological narcissistic disorders in adulthood.'This state of secondary narcissism constituted object relations of the narcissistic type, according to Freud', something he went on to explore further in "Mourning and Melancholia" - 'Freud's profoundest contribution to object relations theory...constitut[ing[ the dialectics of object relations and narcissism '.According to Freud, to care for someone is to convert ego-libido into object-libido by giving some self-love to another person, which leaves less ego-libido available for primary narcissism and protecting and nurturing the self. When that affection is returned so is the libido, thus restoring primary narcissism and self-worth. Any failure to achieve, or disruption of, this balance causes psychological disturbances. In such a case, primary narcissism can be restored only by withdrawing object-libido (also called object-love) to replenish ego-libido. According to Freud, as a child grows, and his ego develops, he is constantly giving of his self-love to people and objects, the first of which is usually his mother. This diminished self-love should be replenished by the affection and caring returned to him

The saiva tenets proposes the yoga as a method for striking it. Sadhana as it may called.  The right sadhana leads to the iru-vinai-oppu. This is like the state of the child in the Freudian oral stage( 0-18 months). Here the the child completelty depends upon the care from the mother. The needs of the child are oneside and the care from the mother on the other side. There is an optimal frustration for the child in this process as there is always a demand and care inequality. Like the man’s need and the god’s grace.

The yoga chapters are fundamentals to sadhana also. In a person’s life one will be doing yoga till his age of 60 or 80. That is completion of the whole active life, to get the” iruviani oppu”. This successful completion will lead to malaparibaham and then to sakthinipatham may be at his age of 80. The mukthi can be only at the time of death for most people.

The Freudian oral stage is only for a year but its analogue in siddhantham-the yogam, is the almost the whole life itself.( Let us see the attanga (eight) yoga steps, அட்டாங்கயோகம்one by one as per thirumoolar’s sadhasiva agama later in the book).

Herein the yoga the soul is preoccupied with self-mind&body. Yoga is a state of self absorption and it values the human mind and physical health. Its philosophical position is only to that extant. Yogic self absorbed state is akin to the child of one year age in terms of the paucity of metaphysics in both states. This is Freudian equaling of oral stage.

Here the soul has not got the proximity of god completely. It strives for the god’s attention through the attanga (eight) yogic methods. It gets the divine grace intermittently like the child gets the breast feed whenever it cries. Sometimes without even crying and sometimes even after a cry it does not get the feed. Similarly in the life we get the divine attention sometimes through our rightful conduct thus getting the primary narcissism. Sometimes we fail to get the attention of god or his help. This leads to the secondary narcissism. The yoga steps are only the beginning.

Therefore :Oral stage=yogic state=iruvinai oppu

Successful yogic life leads to malaparibahamமலபரிபாகம் and then to sakthinipatham சக்திநிபாதம். Then comes the final union with the sivam. There fore this yoga aspects are the beginning of the self analysis in siddhantham. By going through the yoga steps alone we can go to the next steps like malaparibaham and sakthinipatham. These three stages in siddhantham – attanga yogam,malaparibaham and sakthinipatham- are the analogues to the Freudian oral, anal and phallic stages.

Shall write more on these lines,

Affectionately,

Gandhibabu.