We often lament that we have become dumb as a result of our overdependence on the smartphone and the internet. But we are in for a surprise as we are told that we had surrendered/shifted that capability to store information to a certain extent to external storage in the past too. It came in the form of libraries.
"When our genes could not store all the information necessary for our survival we slowly invented brains. But then the time came we needed to know more than could conveniently be stored in brains. So we learned to stockpile enormous quantities of information outside our bodies. We are the only species on the planet as far as we know who has invented .. memory. The warehouse of that memory is called a library."
Just as we use the external hard disk and cloud to store these days, besides procuring all the information online, the library was a warehouse of memories that served to enrich us with knowledge. Carl Sagan adds that libraries in ancient Egypt bore the following words on their walls, "Nourishment for the Soul." How true. So it seems that it's nothing new that we have been shedding a certain portion of our potential to hold and store information over time.
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
(Carl Sagan, Excerpt from the 11th episode of his legendary 1980s Cosmos series, titled “The Persistence of Memory”)
As Carl Sagan says, in reading a book we walk within the insides and "Walk Thru" the mind of the person who wrote it, during those moments of engagement with the words in a book, we are walking in the shoes of the author.
Similarly, we are told that the Siddhas had documented and stored every native's story in the form of inscriptions on treated palm leaves or the Nadi or Olai Suvadi, thousands of centuries ago. I was one of the lucky ones to come across my Nadi written and preserved carefully by the guardians of these Nadis. Hence I treasure these readings that are unique to the Indian subcontinent. It amazes us that the Siddhas had written and kept the record of strangers from across the seas too and made it available at precisely the right moment. I was allowed access to its contents for a nominal fee. But what was revealed was many times more valuable than the small token that was asked for. The Nadis are a visual and visible representation of the subtle writings kept in a library too. This library is known as the Akashic records. These records besides holding information about people, retain the sciences and discoveries, rituals and agamas, Puranas and the scriptures, medicine and alchemy, and many more.
Vaidyar Arivananthan shared several pages of a Nadi. He told me that he had read through them and discovered many secrets of the Siddhas. I peered into them but could not make anything out of it. One certainly needs the grace of the Siddhas to hold, read, and understand these sacred writings.
Tavayogi came looking for a place called Agathiyar Vanam after completing his travels throughout India and on his last leg of being a mendicant spent some eight years in Sathuragiri hills. He made his way to Kallar. As Carl Sagan says before the advent of paper and print, writings were chiseled onto the stone, scratched onto wax, bark, or leather, or painted on bamboo or silk, Tavayogi was shown an inscription chiseled into granite, கல்வெட்டு that read Agathiyar Vanam. He set up his kudil or shed here made of a thatched roof with the cooperation of the village headman. This soon became the Agathiyar Gnana Peedham. Later in 2016, he moved to the present site some 2 kilometers away.
But to read, visualize, and understand; be it a book, the spoken word, or the Nadi, needs some degree of intelligence. Our experiences, our learning, our thoughts, and opinions then come to the fore to interpret the written or spoken language. We might end up understanding it quite differently from another who has read the same book. We might end up understanding a subject quite differently from another who sits together with us listening on. The only way to discern and understand correctly is to shut our minds and live out the experiences of the author or speaker. Only when we empty ourselves of our previous readings, experiences, learning, and knowledge, can we truly absorb what is written within the pages of a new book or what is heard for the first time. Hence the reason we are told to come empty before a guru too. One comes in search of a guru to learn his way since his way of life has pretty much impressed the seeker. The seeker should then lay down his baggage of thoughts, learning, and knowledge before submitting to listen out to the guru. Only then shall the words of the guru create magic in him, given ample space and allowance to reach within him and bringing a true understanding.
The highest teaching is of course that in silence. Sri Muruganar, one of Bhagavan’s closest devotees, relates the following story that he feard from Bhagawan Ramana.
When the four aged Sanakadi rishis first saw the sixteen-year-old Sri Dakshinamurti sitting under the banyan tree, they were at once attracted by him, understanding him to be the real Sadguru. They approached him, did three pradakshinas around him, prostrated before him, sat at his feet and began to ask very shrewd and pertinent questions about the nature of Reality and the means of attaining it. Because of the great compassion and fatherly love (vātsalya) which he felt for his aged disciples, the young Sri Dakshinamurti was overjoyed to see their earnestness, wisdom and maturity, and hence he gave apt replies to each of their questions. As he answered each consecutive question, further doubts rose in their minds and still they asked further questions. Thus they continued to question Sri Dakshinamurti, for one whole year, and he continued to clear their doubts through his compassionate answers. Finally, however, Sri Dakshinamurti understood that if he gave more answers to their questions more doubts would rise in their minds and hence there would never be an end to their ignorance (ajnana). Therefore, suppressing even the feeling of compassion and fatherly love which was welling up within him, he merged himself into the supreme silence. Because of their great maturity (which had been ripened to perfection through their year-long association with the Sadguru), as soon as Sri Dakshinamurti thus merged himself, they too were automatically merged within, into silence, the state of Self.
True to Sri Muruganar's understanding of Bhagavan Ramana as none other than Sri Dakshinamurti himself, Bhagawan was an exemplary guru who chose to teach in silence too. T.K. Sundaresa Iyer, an ardent devotee who first met Bhagavan in 1908, relates in his moving reminiscences the following.
It was a Sivaratri Day. The evening worships at the Mother’s shrine were over. The devotees had their dinner with Sri Bhagavan, who was now on His seat, the devotees at His feet sitting around Him. At 8 p.m. one of the sadhus stood up, did pranam (offered obeisance), and with folded hands prayed: “Today is the Sivaratri Day; we should be highly blessed by Sri Bhagavan expounding to us the meaning of the Hymn to Dakshinamurti (stotra).”
Says Bhagavan: “Yes, sit down.”
The Sadhu sat, and all eagerly looked at Sri Bhagavan and Sri Bhagavan looked at them. Sri Bhagavan sat and sat in His usual pose, no, poise. No words, no movement, and all was stillness! He sat still, and all sat still, waiting. The clock went on striking, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one, two and three. Sri Bhagavan sat and they sat. Stillness, calmness, motionlessness – not conscious of the body, of space or time. Thus eight hours were passed in Peace, in Silence, in Being, as It is.
At the stroke of 4 a.m. Sri Bhagavan quietly said: “And now have you known the essence of the Dakshinamurti Hymn.” All the devotees stood and made pranam to the holy Form of the Guru in the ecstasy of their Being. Thus was the Divine Reality taught through the speech of Silence by Bhagavan Sri Ramana - Dakshinamurthy.