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Srimathe Ramanujaya Namaha

As I was thinking about this concept for a while, by God's grace, I
got a mail from one of the scholars(Shri Vijay from Triplicane, my 
humble pranams to you, Swami!) amongst our group members who pointed 
out a mistake that I had done in my earlier post. I thank him for his 
kindness in pointing out my mistake in a nice fashion. And this 
question triggered more of my thought process and as I was thinking 
about this more, I ended up getting the lord's grace to get a 
different perspective on this subject and I ended with this post. I 
do not have any references to Acharya Granthams, as this perspective 
is what the lord showed me in my mind. If anything is wrong in this 
post, it is solely due to my ignorance, but if there is anything 
right at all, the credits go to the lord and that great scholar.


I request that this post be evaluated by learned scholars and I 
request them to correct my mistakes. This post does not have any 
authenticity as it does not qualify as a perspective of the 
purvacharyas and hence is not for all.

Nirhetuka and Sahetuka krupai: The perspectives

Nirhetukam is the krupai of the Lord that requires no specific reason 
to be attributed to granting anything(including moksham) to the 
Jeevatma. 
Sahetukam is the krupai of the Lord that gives some specific 
reason(some effort put in by the jeevatma) to justify granting 
anything(including moksham) to the Jeevatma.


Now, the perspective from which these concepts needs to be understood 
are:

Sahetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) - A jeevatma 
does "something" that "according" to the lord is a reason for 
granting say "moksham". Even if the lord wants to grant moksham to 
someone of his choice, he does not want to force it and hence 
attributes the granting of moksham to some effort that was put in by 
the jeevatma.
Nirhetukam(from the perspective of the Jeevatma) - The Jeevatma has 
realized its swaroopam and has starting thinking Him all the time and 
does everything as a kainkaryam to Him. This Jeevatma, having 
realized its incapability to do anything, attributes the moksham it 
is going to attain/has attained, to the Nirhetuka krupai of the Lord. 
This Jeevatma cannot digest the fact that "it" did something. To this 
Jeevatma, it did nothing to qualify for the moksham, and it is only 
due to the Nirhetuka krupai of the lord that it attained the moksham.


[While this is so, in my earlier post, I had made a mistake of not 
clearly explaining what I meant as "adopting bhakthi". Adopting 
bhakthi may be due to two reasons: a) Because the jeevatma has 
realized its swaroopam and makes performing bhakthi as a swabhavam 
with no intent of grabbing lord's grace - an unconditional act
(Bhakthi is not an upayam, because the lord is the upayam and the 
upeyam). b) Performing bhakthi to attain moksham(upayam) i.e 
a conditional act. Azhwars and great souls fall in category (a) while 
others fall in (b). This difference in mindset makes the major 
difference between prapannas and others. A prapannan(a) attributes 
everything to the lord's Nirhetuka krupai and hence to him, the Lord 
was the means(Upayam) and the end(Upeyam) too. For others(b), the 
bhakthi is the Upayam(Sahetukam) and the Lord is the Upeyam. It is 
such stupid statement that I have made to have projected Azhwars as 
those who adopted bhakthi as the Upayam and I humbly request EVERYONE 
to forgive me for the same. - Thanks to Shri Viji from Triplicane]

So, in this eternal harmony[as per Prapatti philosophy], the lord 
keeps attributing the moksham to the effort put in by the jeevatma, 
while the jeeva keeps attributing the moksham that it attained, to 
the lord's nirhetuka krupa. The former is Sahetukam, while the latter 
is Nirhetukam.

Now let us try to switch the perspectives and see how it looks like:
Nirhetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) - If the lord thinks 
that HE gave moksham only because of HIS swathanthryam and not 
because the jeeva wanted the same, then it is compared to a husband 
who forces his love on his wife. It is considered to be a wrong act. 
The lord will not think that way, and we should not even imagine "HE" 
attributing this moksham to HIS own swathantharyam. (This is 
an "izhivu" for the lord if we say HE thinks so)

Sahetukam(from the perspective of the Jeevatma) - If the jeevatma 
thinks that he got the moksham only because of his own efforts and 
not because of the Lord, then this feeling causes damage to the 
lord's Nirhetuka Krupa. Except prappanas, those who use the other 
margams including bhakthi margam as a "Upayam" to attain moksham 
would feel that it is Sahetuka krupai of the lord that granted the 
moksham i.e the jeeva thinks that the lord gave moksham only because 
it did bhakthi etc. (This is an "izhivu" for the jeevatma as well as 
the lord and is compared to a wife who thinks that the 
husband makes love to her only because she attracted him).

To summarize:
Sahetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) & Nirhetukam(from the 
perspective of the Jeevatma) - Upayam[Means], (credits to his 
Nirhetuka Krupai) is the lord and Upeyam[End Result] is the lord too -
Prapatti and Prapanna philosophy.


Nirhetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) & Sahetukam(from the 
perspective of the Jeevatma) - Upayam[Means], is the Karma, Gnyana, 
Bhakthi, Sankhya etc(credits to his Sahetuka Krupai) and the Upeyam
[End Result] is the lord - Other Karma, Gnyana, Bhakthi, Sankhya 
margams.

For Prapannas -

So, Nirhetukam has to be understood and considered only from the 
Jeevatma perspective and thus this justifies all the act of the Lord 
including granting of mokshams to Azhwars, Acharyas and Ajamilan. 
I.E, according to the jeevas, i.e us, the lord sees no difference 
amongst the Azhwars, Acharyas for that matter any living being and 
pours his unconditional grace. 

This justifies the perspective of Azhwars who say that they did not 
do anything to attain the lord and it is all due to HIS krupai that 
they have attained this level.While, this is so, Sahetukam has to be 
understood and considered only from the perspective of the Paramatma. 
He does not use HIS swathanthryam to award any moksham. He wants US 
to change our mind and turn towards HIM and hence, HE calls it 
Sahetukam and gives dumb reasons to justify granting of moksham 
even to people like Ajamilan.

I apologize for all my mistakes and misunderstandings.

Yatheendra Pravanam Vandhe RAMYA Jamataram Munim

Adiyen Ramanuja DAsan,
Lakshmi Narasimhan






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