Life I believe was simple in the past going by the documentation in writing and existing video footage. Since when did it become complicated? Man hunted only when hungry just as the animals in the wild did. Then he started to farm and breed animals for food. Today with refrigeration we slaughter livestock and stock them into these refrigerators for later consumption. Man has forgotten to live for the day. He seeks security and permanence. When these are taken away from him his whole world collapses. He begins to ask why me? Why not another? I was surprised to watch a documentary where a child who had to stay away from school rushed back upon hearing that the school had caught fire and all her friends and teachers had perished. She cried out asking God, "Why did you spare me?" How many of us would respond similarly in the face of tragedy?
If we tend to complicate matters on one hand, on the other hand, we try to understand everything. When I ask someone to chant a mantra, the recipient would ask immediately "How many times or how long?" What does it matter? What is in numbers? When Agathiyar asked to chant his name 100,000 times upon his arrival as a statue at AVM we only managed 45,000. He accepted it. Even before we start we want to know why we need to chant and what would be the benefits. I had a lady drop by at AVM during our annual puja with her family for the first time taking up an invitation from an AVM family member. She asks me what did I gain from worshipping the Siddhas? A psychologist cornered me at a temple puja after trying to meet me personally several times. He suggested if I could be hallucinating after reading this blog, as I have mentioned that Agathiyar spoke. I told him I would not be a party to his investigation of this phenomenon and instead told him to carry out all that I began with? Was he willing to sit and repeat Agathiyar's name? Was he willing to perform rituals? I knew that instant that he did not come to the temple to worship and pay his respect to Agathiyar but to meet me and prove his hypothesis that I had hallucinations and what I wrote was a hoax.
We want answers to everything. Only when these answers satisfy us do we set out to do what is given. This happens often with seekers and devotees who are told to carry out certain very basic and simple things for their betterment or to remove obstacles and troubles. We do not understand that it is never possible to compute the intelligence out there that has a hold of all things relative to our lives. Live would be much simple if we listen and follow. Live is in cherishing the simplest things.
Sriinath Raghavan wrote a beautiful piece on Fb,
There are many who ask to be initiated into various occult so called "higher" Sadhanas. As a preliminary exercise, I usually ask them to take up a round of Rāma Nāma Japa at least a crore of time, just to test their receptivity and spiritual maturity.
With this one suggestion I get a lot of mixed reactions, as many feel I have offended their spiritual sensibilities, by asking them to take up a very "basic" Sadhana. Some openly feel this Sadhana is best suited only for children or for the old and the infirm.
Alas! What they don't understand is that, this is the fundamental of all Sadhanas, be it Tantric or otherwise, for even the greatest Yogi, Mahadev Himself is an ardent votary of it. Those who understand and have experienced the Name of Rāmā knows that it contains both the powers of Shiva and Shakti. When invoked it creates a heat so powerful that all the Karmic gunk present in us, gets burned in an jiffy, setting us up to receive the unprecedented flow of divine grace.
There is no other Mantra which creates a "Taranga" of bliss, once the name is deeply embedded into our Consciousness. Remember this loud and clear, the most simplest has the greatest potential and power to reform even the most complex of minds.
Indeed we expect difficult tasks to be thrown at us in order to attain the state of the gurus and that of the divine energy. Osho too says the same. He speaks about meditation.
"Meditation is simple. Because it is simple, it looks difficult. Your mind is accustomed to dealing with difficult problems. And it has completely forgotten how to respond to simple things in life. The more simple a thing is the more difficult it looks to the mind. Because the mind is very efficient in solving difficult things. It has been trained to tackle difficult things. It does not know how to tackle the simple. Meditation is simple. Your mind is complex."
Osho adds that it is through Vipassana that Buddha became enlightened. Agathiyar in my Nadi giving me the techniques to sit in meditation told me that both Buddha and Lord Vinayagar were exponents in pranayama. Could the long trunk that Lord Vinayagar is depicted with have a hidden message?
In speaking about the simpleness of Vipasana meditation Osho echoes what Agathiyar and Ramalinga Adigal told us - to observe the breath. Yes initially they had us practice Nadi Suddhi and alternate breathing, asanas, fixing our gaze on certain points in the head, these days they have asked us to stop putting effort in regulating the breath or pranayama and instead just observe the breath as it moves through on its own without our assistance as previously.
"Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of India's most ancient techniques of meditation." (Source: https://www.dhamma.org/)
Agathiyar has brought us to see things as they are.
I followed what was told. I kept to Lord Shiva's words in a dream I had where he told me to keep all my questions to a later date. Things I read and saw, in reality, did not match nor tally. It began to eat me up. A relative was knocked down and died minutes after she had stepped out of the temple praying. A wife of a devotee who served the Goddess Ma was a zombie for months. She was carrying a child in her womb. The divine owned up to it telling them that it was her doing! How do you digest these? On the verged of being swallowed by the questions, I had then and confused figuring if God was truly compassionate why did he make others suffer, Shiva decides to relieve me of my agony asking me to take a break. This was followed by a 14-year break in all my previous activities.
Penny Wittbrodt who was angry with God too questioned the creator why he allowed her children to go through heart-breaking moments as a result of their father leaving them when they were just babies. "You say that you are this loving God... and you want the best for your children. I have seen what you allowed my children to go through. What kind of God allows that?", she asks. God replies that she had completely misunderstood her and goes on to run a scene from her future before her where her grandson was older by some 4 years. Her son says to her "Mum, I am going to be the dad to him that I deserved." After Penny came back into her body and a couple of years later he son says the same thing!
Moving forward I started on the second half of my journey. after the long break that Shiva gave me to cool off. During this time I never looked back and tried to understand. I just let things be and carried on with my family and career. I never questioned my nephew who came by my home on a brief visit to pass me the Vasudeva mantra and later a painting of Lord Dhakshanamurthi that started me back on track.
The following year I carried out the remedies given in the Nadi reading by Agathiyar without question, any hesitation, or doubt. When I landed at the feet of my first guru Supramania Swami of Supramania Swami without knowing that he was to be my guru, I listened without asking questions. Although he was an astrologer too, he went on to reveal my future without asking for my birth details, charting my horoscope, seeing my palms, or asking about me. All that Deva my chauffeur told him was that I was from Malaysia and wanted my daughter's horoscope written. Rather than work on my request he began to speak about me. Only later did he chart my daughter's horoscope asking his son for paper and pen and the past almanacs.
When I met Tavayogi in Malaysia and frequented the peedham that had brought him over, I never asked him questions either. Traveling on his heels to his ashram in Kallar and taking on an adventure to the Siddha abodes, I never asked him any question. I followed his instructions to me that were rare in coming.
I made my life simple. I believed that if it was meant for me then nothing can stop it from coming to me. Agathiyar surprised me recently when he said the same, since it is meant for you, why fret over it he asked. When I was in pain for some three years, he brushed it off lightly. I now know he saved us a lot of anxiety and worry. This is how he teaches us to make life simple.