When Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal was in Malaysia, he did mention to me that he did not like to be confined to a room and continued that he was a free spirit, "Yennai Yaarum Kattu Padutta Mudiyaathu".
I was taken back initially with his statement. Did I sense an ego there, I asked myself. Was he being arrogant, I thought. Does that mean that he does not listen to anyone? It took me 9 years to understand what he meant back then. I realized that that should be my stand too presently. It is not being egoistic nor arrogance, but asserting that the Lord is behind you all the time, in all your endeavors. It is indeed a beautiful feeling realizing that the Lord is our savior, teacher, parent, and friend too.
I realized that I have to build my faith on the Lord to that extent where the Lord moves in me. Initially we believe that it is we who move things. We are an ordinary person. As we progress spiritually, we surrender to the Lord believing then that it is he who moves us. We are then a devotee. Finally the stage has to come where the Lord moves in us. He then is a Gnani and an instrument of God.
Ram Dass in his blog at http://www.ramdass.org/thik-hai/ has posted an excerpt from BY HIS GRACE by Dada Mukerjee as follows.
It has also been told that Deoria Baba said that if persons had not been trying to keep Maharajji in the ashram and sitting around him to create a barrier or enclosure, he might have stayed longer here. Two things are very interesting: that he wanted to go away and that he has never reconciled to this kind of life of the ashram. He was essentially a tramp, a free spirit. There is no record of how many years he was wandering here and there, just bits of stories that we have got of how he was seen in so many places. It was only in the latter part of his life that all these ashrams were created. Even then he would not be in the ashram all the time. He would go out to many places—to Chitrakut, Amarkantak, Jagganath.
Similarly the only reason Tavayogi started the ashram was because Agathiyar instructed him. Tavayogi wanted to go into samadhi but Agathiyar held him back. Agathiyar asked him to establish the Gnana Peedham at Kallar for Agathiyar's devotees; place the Aaru Aathaara Peedham in it and have devotees worship it; have his granite statue made and placed at Mulasthaanam in the hills of Kallar, where devotees now hike up through the jungle and undergrowth to have Agathiyar's Darshan; and instructed Tavayogi to conduct the ritual of lighting the sacrificial fire or Yagam where devotees are able to participate.
Currently Agathiyar has placed the Jeeva Nadi in Tavayogi's hands, through which Agathiyar speaks to his devotees.
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| Art by Saravanan Palanisamy |