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Tattva 11 — Limitation / Necessity (Niyati)
The fifth cloak: boundless freedom narrowed to confinement, causation, and 'it has to be this way.'
Niyati, as a cloak, is the contraction of the divine's boundless freedom and pervasiveness into restriction and law. Where Śiva is everywhere and bound by nothing, the individual self is confined to a place, hemmed in by cause and effect, and subject to the 'this must be so' of necessity and fate. This is the seed of feeling bound by circumstance — infinite freedom narrowed to 'it has to be this way.'
Key passages(1)
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