Search:
Bhakti List Archives

Regarding Nitya sUris

From the Bhakti List Archives

Venkatesh Elayavalli • February 5, 1998 


Sri A. Govindacarya, in his translation of Artha Panchakam of Sri Pillai Lokacaraya,
explains the Nityas as follows:

----start quote----
The Nityas, or Ever Free, are those angelic spiritual beings, or blessed souls, who have
never known conditioned existance. in ither words, who are never involved in the
wheel of wordly careers (samsAra); beings who are ever in conformity with the will of
Bhagavan ; beings who are endowed with the previlage, or possess the estate, by virtue
of which they are able to perform the function of supreme advisors in all his scheemes
of the Kosmos - beings with the powers, by delegation, to make and unmake wordly
system; beings who remain at the side of God, His constant comarads and surrogates
in all His doings, accompanying Him in His various incarnations or avatAras; [beings
who, in the phraseology of other theologies, are known as "Thrones", "Powers",
"Estates", "Principalities", "Hierarchies", "Archangels" and so forth]: the constant
servents of God, as free from system of samsAra (i.e. varieties of material existence),
but as intereseted in it as God Himself, and bearing such significant epithets as
VisvaksEna (the High Lord of Hosts) , Ananta Garuda, etc.

---end quote---

The interesting part in the above definition is the statement "as interested in SamsAra as
God Himself" which seems to point out that one need not strive to get free from SamsAra.
One could be free fromSamsAra but still get involved in it at free will.(I may be wrong
on this observation).

The above translation is part of SvasvarUpa or the five classification of the Soul. In
addition to Nityas, the other classifications are Mukta, Baddha, kEvala and Mumukshu.

The Tamil text of Artha Panachakam in on line at:

http://www.geocities.com/~elayavalli/sva.htm

adiyEn
Venkatesh Elayavilli