My friend continues,
Yesterday, Amma revealed that She had to search for a suitable womb for souls to get embodied. That is the way of the Masters. They are with us from time immemorial,and, once having accepted us, their care for us extends beyond the many embodiments.
In mentioning the way of the masters, we become aware that the divine looks for a suitable womb for a soul to be born. This explains why a devotee continuously lost "her bundle of joy to be" each time she conceived. The couple was told by Agathiyar that the past conceivements were a result of kaamam or lust. Since they have come to his fold, he asked them to bring divine thoughts within in those moments of intimacy and wait patiently for the miracle of life to unfold. The couple now has a beautiful baby girl, their first child. Hence it answers the delay too.
As Neale wrote, "Each element of life down to the tiniest sub-molecular particle is a part of the mind of God, the thought has a pull over elements bringing it into alignment", this reminds us of the many stories told of how couples meditated on the divine to issue them a prodigy or divine child. The divine would then give them an option and asked to consider if they were prepared to accept a short-lived divine child or a normal child that lives long. Agathiyar tells us that our children and grandchildren are gifted and divine souls who shall begin to teach others beginning with us.
When my wife was carrying our second child, the consecration of a new Murugan temple, the Sri Bala Supramaniyar temple, began followed by further rituals for the next 48 days. We frequented the temple each night as it was a short distance away from our home. When a priest opened the floor to questions one day after the puja, I chose the opportunity to ask him when does the Atma or soul begin to reside in the womb? He took delight in answering the question and told us 3 months after conception. Later I read somewhere it was mentioned as at 7 months. Paramahansa Yogananda refutes the notion that the soul enters the body at birth, saying that "If it were not already there the body would not have developed from the original tiny cells."
Paramahansa Yogananda wrote in "Man's Greatest Adventure", published by Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, Kolkata, 1970, giving us a detailed account of the miracle of birth.
The adventure begins with the struggle the soul goes through to enter a womb at the time of conception. In the astral world there are millions of souls struggling to return to earth, to enter the mated sperm and ovum cells at the time of conception. At the time of conception there is a flash in the ether and one soul enters as the sperm and ovum cells unite.
He says we had to compete with other souls in fighting to get into the womb. Once inside there the soul regrets as it realizes that it is once again caught in the web of birth and pleads to return where it tends to struggle inside the womb, asking to be let out. Inside the womb it has occasional memories of the past coming in. Paramahansa Yogananda says, "The child's will to move is a memory coming from the soul's past. So he stirs restlessly in the mother's womb until he tires and goes to sleep. When the will becomes very strong the baby is born. Though "The baby's first cry is an effort to activate the lungs and start the breath of life", it is also true that it cries for being born again. "His prenatal resistance to birth ends with his first breath when Maya comes over him" he explains. He adds that "The soul's memory of the past is always there. He feels once more attracted to the physical."
My friend shared the message he received from Krishnaveni Amma in his meditation.
Today evening, She said that the horoscope has its limitations because birth is to charted from the time of entry of the soul, into the "body". There is a great secret to the duration of time, as 7 days to a week, 30 days to a month, and 12 months to a year. Maybe you should write about the concept of Time in your posts. Food for thought.
Do we actually know our self? Have we actually seen ourselves in totality? Can we possibly see within the body with the naked eyes? Everything we know about us comes from another source. Otherwise, how would we know how we look like? We can only see all our body parts except for our faces and our backs. If it was not for the mirror that shows our image and the reflection of our face in still waters, we would not even know how we look like. We need the aid of medical equipment to look within the body too. Although man is said to have the capacity to become God, we are so limited when confined to the body and its senses.
Just like adorning a shirt for the day, we have come to adorn another body in this birth to fit into and play the role given. Just like we discard the shirt and adorn another the next day, we discard the old, worn out, and tired body for another in the next birth. What lives on is the soul, the witness that is a part of the divine consciousness. Neale Donald Walsch in his "Conversation with God" is told that "The soul that is the source of the energy of the essential essence is indeed God in us." God tells us further, "That the soul is the expression of the being that is God or God being manifested" and that "The soul is the local expression of God's desire which is to experience itself."
There are so many unanswered questions regarding the Atma. The only way it seems now is to engage directly with our souls and find out. Hence the reason for Agathiyar to repeatedly ask us to go within, and to look within for all answers. The external search has stopped for us he said. Sariyai, Kriyai has been covered, bringing on the grace of the divine. In Yoga, we are asked to bring the divine energy within. Tavayogi had explained that with the consciousness coming within us, the need and dependency on the breath lessens and finally stops. That is samadhi. I only realized that Tavayogi had spoken about this during his address to us one evening while he and Mataji were in Malaysia in 2016 when I went back to his speeches and posted them in a post several days back at https://agathiyarvanam.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-siddhas-society-1.html. How did we miss that then? Asking Mahin and Suren who were there too, they too are equally stunned and do not remember him speaking on it. Maybe it was meant to be. I suppose even if we had attentively listened to his discourse then it would not have registered in us as we had not come to practice going within then. I suppose a veil was drawn to obscure us at that moment. Recently Ramalinga Adigal drew the curtain aside and helped us tap into the consciousness and asked that we continue doing it.
When we gathered together to bring the statue of Agathiyar around the temple in circumambulation it was an easy task - for a beginning at least. Soon the four carriers, Shanga, Bala, Dyalen, and Sugu could not handle the weight of Father as he came within the statue responding to our call and invitation in the form of a song titled அகத்தியர் வருகை. Then I was told that in a temple in India, when the deity is brought out to bless the devotees what starts with only 4 people carrying him, adds on, and finally, we find more people having to join in to carry the deity around. He gains weight. Once they bring the deity back, the weight is released and eventually, the original 4 place him back at his spot. Amazing right? It is very obvious that the divine comes to our calling.
Supramania Swami once in asking me to do tavam, told me that he shall progress further if I began and continued to engage in tavam. I asked myself how could my tavam raise his status and standing? Recently Ramalinga Adigal said Tavayogi had attained the state of Jothi or light aided by the strength of our tapas. Similarly, Agathiyar reminded family members and encouraged them to take up vegetarianism to aid in the progress of fellow members who are thriving to succeed spiritually. It would pave the path for him to attain his goal without hindrance. In return, we are told that if one succeeds in his spiritual venture 21 generations of past and future shall have their karma written off. One man's merit collected from his tapas shall clean the slate of the ancestral lineage of its karma. It seems now that we need each other to not only sail through life but to even attempt to scale the heights in attaining a divine state as long as we live in a society.
An individual could appease his personal and individual karma through remedies and individual prayer. We are currently victims of collective karma. Only collective prayer could possibly address collective karma. Hence, the need has arisen to come together in a single and specific thought or sangalpam. As coming together physically might not be possible during these times of the pandemic, collective thought shall break through the barriers laid on our path and bring success in all our noble endeavors. As every conscious thought registered in the cosmic consciousness gains momentum and strength and power by the grace of the divine beings and comes back to us to heal us and the world, shall we all come together tomorrow Sunday 13.12.2020 at 12 noon Malaysian Standard time to sit silently and place our requests before Lord Siva. This is in line with Agathiyar's directive that we come together in asking and to move Lord Siva who is known to grant boons irrespective of our spiritual status, to shower his grace and kindness in removing entirely this pandemic that has shown its ugly face. Agathiyar said he too shall try his best in convincing Siva. Maybe the divine hand can go back in time and make some adjustments and bring a positive outcome.