Regarding Nitya sUris

[Guest guest]

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