We need to create a space in our homes to usher and delight in the company of the Gods and Goddesses. We need to set aside an area, if space permits a separate room would be ideal, for our nithya or daily puja. With the continuous conduct of puja soon we begin to create a space in us to allow the Guru and God to occupy. This becomes the cave or kugai in our hearts where Lord Murugan or Kugan comes to reside. He shall then bring on Gnanam from within us.
Poet and saint Nakirar in his "Vinayagar Thiruagaval" seeks the grace of Lord Ganapathy asking to create the avenue and a special moment to be with the Guru, a moment of sitting in silence with the Guru, merging in thought with him, asking that even the thought of the guru as being separate be dropped, and become identified with the Guru, to be one with the Guru. Nakkirar's prayer became my prayer too since that day. It has become the prayer of many who frequented AVM too. Now their children sing the song too.
மோனா ஞான முழுதும் அளித்துசிற்பரிப் பூரண சிவத்தைக் காண
நற்சிவ நிட்கள நாட்டமுந் தந்து
குருவுஞ் சீடனுங் கூடிக் கலந்து
இருவரும் ஒரு தனியிடந் தனிற் சேர்ந்து
தானந்தமாகித் தற்பர வெளியில்
ஆனந்த போத அறிவைக் கலந்து
ஈசனிைணயடியிருத்தி
மனத்தே நீயே நானாய்
நானே நீயாய்க்
காயா புரியைக் கனவெனவுணா்ந்து
எல்லாமுன் செயலென்ேற உணர
நல்லா உன்னருள் நாட்டந் தருவாய்
காரண குருவே கற்பகத் களிேற
வாரணமுகத்து வள்ளலே போற்றி
Seeing our eagerness to reach him, soon the divine creates a space at the top of the head where the effulgence or Arutperunjothi comes down and meets the Kundalini Sakti that once started creation in us and settled down in a deep slumber within the folds of the flower petals in the Muladhara. When we surrender to the will of God he drives the force in us for this merger to take place. The Sakti awakens with the help of the guru now and makes its way to meet its spouse in this sacred reunion in this sacred space. When Sakti meets Shiva the dance of joy reverberates in this space. This is the dance of Shiva Sakti. The first step then is to let God into our homes and later within.
Swami Kripananda author of the "Sacred Power (Kundalini)", and "The Guru's Sandals" in writing the introduction for Swami Muktananda's "Kundalini - The Secret of Life", a Siddha Yoga Publication, published by the SYDA foundation, writes,
"This knowledge (of the kundalini) was so well hidden, in fact, that when Swami Muktananda received kundalini awakening from his own master Bhagawan Nityananda and began experiencing its effects he had no idea what was happening to him. He wrote his first great work the spiritual autobiography "Play of Consciousness" to prevent his own students from running into the same confusion and to help them understand the process unfolding within them.
As Swami Kripananda says, indeed the experience catapults us into a new world. After Ramalinga Adigal came and hugged all of us during Navarathri, as Swami Kripananda wrote, incredibly powerful waves of love began to surge inside me for the next two days to the extent I did not know what to do with this immense and intense unbelievably powerful wave moving through me.
Swami Kripananda writes further that "whether Shaktipat (a process by which the guru awakens kundalini) comes to us dramatically like a sonic boom or very quietly and subtly as it does to many people the awakened kundalini totally transforms our outlook and our experience of ourselves." I guess I fall into the latter.
As Swami Kripananda quotes "an aphorism of the kundalini tradition, a guru should be enlightened, he should pierce all the inner blocks and he should transmit and control the shakti spiritual energy, I am blessed to have Agathiyar and Ramalinga Adigal who gave me this gift, constantly monitor us, and drop in often to relate what was taking place within hence enlightening us.
I had a father of my daughter's schoolmate tell me that a stranger swami from abroad who was visiting touched him in his abdomen and he felt a swirling sensation within on their very first visit at a public park. Sadly no relationship or correspondence between them ever took place. It was a case of hit and run. The receiver of this energy soon fell into a state of mess both on the outside and inside, having added more woes by seeing numerous other established gurus and taking on more initiations. His gurus were not around when he needed them most. When he stepped into my home, Agathiyar despatched Ramalinga Adigal's song the Arutpa which he listened to. It heightened his state momentarily before Agathiyar and deity Aiya subdued the energy in him and cleared the blockages within him.
Swami Kripananda gives us a reminder "that it is not enough for the guru to awaken kundalini. The guru also controls and regulates the process helping to remove all the blocks and obstacles in the disciple's path until the disciple attains the ultimate realization of the self. Being one with the inner energy the guru can accomplish this on a subtle level from within."
When I too felt the need to have Tavayogi around to share my inner experiences and get clarification and remove some fears, Lord Muruga, Agathiyar, Ramalinga Adigal, and Dhanvantri came to relieve my sadness telling me that Tavayogi was still with me in the state of Jothi and that they too were looking over me and guiding me further. They kept their word.
The guru brings on the grace of his guru, the Paramaguru, and the entire lineage of gurus before him. Swami Kripananda writes "because he has merged his individual awareness into the divine the guru can serve as a pure vessel through which its pure energy flows. It is this transmission of divine energy which awakens and guides the kundalini." We learn that it is not the guru in physical form that matters but the Guru Principle, as Swami Kripananda says of the principle of grace which had been clothed in a guru's physical form for years and which can be embodied in another.
If Agathiyar prepared my body by giving us several Yogic techniques and Siddha medicines to consume, the Kundalini Sakti once awakened is said to purify it further. When I asked Agathiyar what I should do, thinking that there were further Yoga practices to carry out, he told me there was nothing for me to do. "It shall work in you" he replied.
So how does the power work in us? Swami Kripananda writes, bit by bit as it moves through the subtle system, blocks are removed, addictions fall away, and one's life is set in order. Ultimately the experience of the self becomes constant.