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Dear murugappan,

FREUDIAN  STAGE CONTEXTS IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SAIVA SIDDHANTHAM:

FREUDIAN PHALLIC  PHASE:

Around the age of 3 the child enters the phallic phase. The phallic stage of psychosexual development heralds the arrival of the oedipal level of development, in which relationships become more complicated than they were in the past. The emphasis is on triangular or three person relationships, instead of dyadic or two person relationships. The phallic stage is also characterized by greater tolerance of ambivalence and the ability to maintain an internal representation of the absent object.

Another major contrast between pregenital stages of development and phallic stage is the nature of the child’s libidinal activity. In the oral and anal stages, such activity , for the most part, is autoerotic in that the child’s sexual impulses are derived from one’s own body. Pleasure is still derived one’s own body in the phallic phase, but that period of development is also characterized by the fundamental task of finding a love object that will establish later patterns of object choice in adult life.

Oedipus complex :

The period of life between the ages of 3 and 5 is known as the oedipal stage of psychosexual development because the culmination of infantile sexuality –oedipal complex- occurs at that time.

 The oedipal stage of development is of central importance in pathogenesis of neuroses and many anxiety disorders. Oedipal issues are also important in the psychodynamics of character neuroses and high level personality disorders, such as histrionic personality. The Oedipus complex presents a developmental challenge for the child, and the resolution of the child differs according to the child’s gender.

Resolution for boys:

first love object of the male child is his mother. Unlike the little girl, the little boy does not have to shift his affection to another parent at the beginning of oedipal phase. The male child essentially falls in love with mother. He wishes to be the center of her world. It becomes apparent that such are interfered with by the relationship of his father and mother. As a result, he  begins to view his father as a rival. 

Freud repeatedly noted that the chief source of the boy’s anxiety is that father will retaliate by removing the child’s external genitalia. The male child’s investments in keeping his genitals  supersedes his desire for mother and renounces them. This phenomenon is termed as castration complex.

Resolution for girls: Freud was frank throughout his writings about his difficulty in understanding psychological development of girls. In attempting to explain the resolution of the oedipal complex in little girls(called the Electra complex), Freud noted that the discovery of their genital state leads to feelings of inferiority and narcisstic injury and –to penis envy.

Contemporary psycho-analysts  however regard penis envy, only as one aspect of the feminine identity, not the origin of it.

Thus the phallic stage development is discussed next we shall move to their analoy in saiva siddhantham particularly from the arrangement of chapters in thirumandhiram by thirumoolar.

 THE FREUDIAN PHALLIC STAGE ANALOGY IN THIRUMANTHIRAM:

Sadhasiva agama by Moolar( திருமூலரின் சதாசிவாகமம்)  is taken for further study  in the similarities between Freudian and saiva siddhantha literatures. There are advantages in taking Thirumanthiram for this analysis:

1)it is estimated to have been written in 5th  century. Hence it has antedated all the 14- sastra texts. Therefore we get a glimpses of the earliest roots of saiva schools. It represents the earliest 9 siva agamas. Hence also called as sadhasiva agamam. It is widely revered by saivite scholars.

2) it has 3000 verses in all. Therefore we get a most elaborate description.

There are disadvantages as well :

1) the chapter arrangements, language, style of narrations need an expert Tamil interpreter

2) as the number of verses are too many there are chances for arbitrary inferences and selective abstractions. Nevertheless the overwhelming similarity between the style of narration in these schools is surprising enough.

Let us now go to the next stage of the analysis of thirumanthiram  were the father-mother-son relationship analogies are found. The verse from 818-837 describe the pariyanga yogam  ,  here the physical relationships are described very explicitly. This is a prelude to the subsequent oedipal like relationships we are going to see. As such they do not have a literal meaning and they have a symbolic connotation only, to the attraction of opposite genders. In fact the later verses detail only the siva-sakthi union .

We are trying to make an inference out of the arrangement of the poems and their order and numbers about the progression of the soul from sakthi and then to sivam which may have a similarity to a fruedian type of child-mother-father relationship.Let us see the these verses and move to the verses related to sakthinipatham.

ATTACHMENT WITH MOTHER GOD:

From the 1000th  verse the soul is attracted towards the Sakthi (oedipal complex) (சக்திநிபாதம்).  The following chapters in thirumanthiram deals with saktha(i) chakras:

AthAravAthEyam

EroLichchakkaram

chaththipEtham^

thiripurai chakkaram

chAmpavi^maNTalach chakkaram

thiruvampalachchakkaram

n^avakuNTam

n^avAkkari chakkaram

pUraNa chaththi

vayiravachchakkaram

vayiravi man^thiram

Sakthi bedham, adharavadheyam, and the meditative charts for Sakthi worship occupy the next 600 verses. This is analogous to mother-son relationship (as the soul is symbolized as nandi it has to be taken as a male child). The glory of mother god is written all in greatest possible manner. The fact is some 20 percentage of the total verses are devoted to sakthi worship should remind us the importance of this mother god worship pattern.

The praise of sakthi  thus clearly portrays the importance given to the mother god pattern of worship. From the self preoccupied stage in the oral stage the soul leaves actively towards the mother god.  The preoccupation with sakthi(sakthinipatham) and subsequent liberation from Sakthi and the efforts to move towards Siva are expressed in the next 200 verses ending with aradharam. 

( the sakthi worshiping pattern in the fifth century AD has become an independent sect. shaktham as it is known tosay is a dominant religion in certain parts of india like Bengal. It gives more importance to these chakras like sambavi chakra,bairavi chakra,eroli chakra..etc. these chkras and the more complex mandalas of concentration together form the many rituals in shaktham. The concept of yantra are also there which is actually the chakras and the rituals put together . The yantra ,mandala and chakra concepts later became obsorbed in budhist sects like Tibetan Buddhism and still later in the far east asian Buddhist religion. They have more physiological, mechanical and many occult elements. These aspects are of great intrest in western scholars . Besides some of these concepts have some semblance to the JUNGIAN  psychoanalytic techniques.)

psychosexual development:

In the Phallic stage of psychosexual development, a boy’s decisive experience is the Oedipus complex describing his son–father competition for sexual possession of mother. This psychological complex indirectly derives from the Greek mythologic character Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and sexually possessed his mother. Initially, Dr. Freud applied the Oedipus complex to the development of boys and girls alike; he then developed the female aspect of phallic-stage psychosexual development as the feminine Oedipus attitude and the negative Oedipus complex; but his student–collaborator Carl Jung proposed the “Electra complex”, derived from Greek mythologic character Electra, who plotted matricidal revenge against her mother for the murder of her father, to describe a girl’s psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father.

Oedipus — Despite mother being the parent who primarily gratifies the child’s desires, the child begins forming a discrete sexual identity — “boy”, “girl” — that alters the dynamics of the parent and child relationship; the parents become the focus of infantile libidinal energy. The boy focuses his libido (sexual desire) upon mother, and focuses jealousy and emotional rivalry against father — because it is he who sleeps with mother. To facilitate uniting him with mother, the boy’s id wants to kill father (as did Oedipus), but the ego, pragmatically based upon the reality principle, knows that father is the stronger of the two males competing to psychosexually possess the one female. Nonetheless, the fearful boy remains ambivalent about father’s place in the family, which is manifested as fear of castration by the physically greater father; the fear is an irrational, subconscious manifestation of the infantile Id. Electra — In developing a discrete psychosexual identity, boys develop castration anxiety and girls develop penis envy towards all males. The girl’s envy is rooted in the biologic fact that, without a penis, she cannot sexually possess mother, as the infantile id demands, resultantly, the girl redirects her desire for sexual union upon father. She thus psychosexually progresses to heterosexual femininity (which culminates in bearing a child) derived from earlier, infantile desires; her child replaces the absent penis. Moreover, after the phallic stage, the girl’s psychosexual development includes transferring her primary erogenous zone from the infantile clitoris to the adult vagina. Freud thus considered a girl’s Oedipal conflict to be more emotionally intense than that of a boy, resulting, potentially, in a woman of submissive, less confident personality. In both sexes, defense mechanisms provide transitory resolutions of the conflict between the drives of the Id and the drives of the Ego. The first defense mechanism is repression, the blocking of memories, emotional impulses, and ideas from the conscious mind; yet it does not resolve the Id–Ego conflict. The second defense mechanism is identification, by which the child incorporates, to his or her ego, the personality characteristics of the same-sex parent; in so adapting, the boy diminishes his castration anxiety, because likeness to father protects him from father’s wrath as a rival for mother; by so adapting, the girl facilitates identifying with mother, who understands that, in being females, neither of them possesses a penis, and thus are not antagonists.

 

  Formation of the Shri Yantra:The creation of the Shri Yantra is described in the Yogini Hridaya (Heart of the Yogini Tantra), which still does not exist in an English translation, as far as we are aware. This is said to be the second part of the Vamakeshvara Tantra.

"From the fivefold Shakti comes creation and from the fourfold Fire dissolution. The sexual union of five Shaktis and four Fires causes the chakra to evolve. O Sinless One! I speak to you of the origin of the chakra.

"When she, the ultimate Shakti, of her own will (svecchaya) assumed the form of the universe, then the creation of the chakra revealed itself as a pulsating essence. From the void-like vowels with the visarga (:) emerged the bindu, quivering and fully conscious. From this pulsating stream of supreme light emanated the ocean of the cosmos, the very self of the three mothers.

"The baindava of the chakra has a triple form, dharma, adharma and atma, and matri, meya and prama. The chakra of nine yonis is the great mass of consciousness bliss and is the ninefold chakra and the nine divisions of the mantra.

"The baindava is placed on a dense flowery mass and is the Chitkala. Similarly, the ambika form of eight lines is the circle of the vowels. The nine triangles quiver forth the effulgent form of 10 lines. The Shakti, together with her surrounding nine blossomed forth the 10 trikonas. The second quivering form of 10 lines has Krodhisha as first of the 10. These four chakras, of the nature of light, create the 14-fold form, the essence of perception." -- Yogini Hridaya, I 6-16.

At the very heart of the bindu or centre of the Shri Yantra is that which caused it to emanate. This is Kamakala, consisting of the three bindus or potentials. One is red, one is white, and one is mixed. The red bindu is ova, the white bindu semen, and the mixed bindu the union of Shiva-Shakti, the individual as potential Shri Cakra.

Father and Mother are represented in Shri Vidya by two limbs or aspects of Lalita known as Varahi and Kurukulla. The semen of Varahi, the father-form, gives four alchemical dhatus to the child. The ova of Kurukulla, the mother-form, gives five dhatns to the child. Consciousness enters via orgasm. The three bindus, collectively known as Kamakala (digit of sexual desire), are the root potential of sun, moon and fire. It is like sun and moon coming together in an eclipse, or the seed from which the plant human being grows.

Varahi's four alchemical dhatus are known as the four fires. Kurukulla's alchemical dhatus are known as the five saktis. The combination of these five saktis (downward pointing triangles) and four fires (upward pointing triangles), forms the complex figure in the centre of Shri Cakra.

Varahi's four fires are the 12 (3 x 4) sun Kalas, 12 sidereal constellations. Kurukulla's five triangles are the 15 (5 x 3) Kalas of the moon, 15 lunar days. The complete individual grows within nine months to be born as a Shri Yantra or plant. The flowering of this plant is shown by the 24 petals of the yantra. The above all gives rise to the familiar shape of the Shri Yantra. The yantra is usually arranged in one of two forms. In the Bhuprastara, it is two dimensional and laid flat, usually facing the east, but sometimes the north, depending on the practice. The Meruprastara has the yantra in a pyramidal form. Unless the yantra be decorated with the appropriate bija and other mantras, it is worthless. It is also dead unless it is installed with life and the individual doing the puja is initiated into one of the lines (parampara).

Affectionately

Gandhiram.