Source: TW
This goes well with the Saiddhāntika conception of Ātmā (Self/Soul) & its inseparable Cicchakti (which is the Ātmā’s individuality). Every Ātmā, when divested of all non-innate, insentient characteristics (form, name, māyā which supplies it with the stream of bodies/faculties through births, karmic baggage, etc), is a unique sentient, whose fundamental nature cannot be further simplified.
I was also trying to formulate, yesterday night, the “categorical”/“univeraal” Śivatvam as an analog of the One before I decided to write this morning:
- Every sentient is a Śiva (a Cidghana, a unique unit of consciousness) and therefore has an inseparable Cicchakti (individuality), which is but its Śivatvam/Śiva-ness.
- Imagine a set consisting of every Śiva. One may therefore speak of a universal Śivatvam, for discussion’s sake.
- In the Siddhānta, universals are denied—there is no universal separate from the individuals which partake in it.
- “The One/Śivatvam neither is”— Śivatvam as universal does not exist, separate from individual instances of Śivatvam.
- “Nor is Śivatvam one”— Śivatvam cannot partake in itself to become a unique entity as only a Śiva can partake in Śivatvam.
- Therefore, Śivatvam is an infinite class of members, one for each sentient.