When someone who frequented our home puja asked why we should praise the Siddhas, I asked him why not? If those in politics heap praise on their political leaders, fans heap praise on their favorite stars and musicians, and if followers heap praise on their religious and spiritual leaders, and if in heaping praises we adopt their thoughts and ideologies and raise ours to equal their heights and achievements and, as Tavayogi says in heaping praises to God we become God. Unlike others Tavayogi diverted us to praise God instead of him. He always saw himself only as a tool and not a path or a ride to hitch on. He never portrayed himself as God but instead remained his subject and humble servant, tool, and medium to get the message of the Siddhas across. Agathiyar and Lobhama told us that Supramania Swami, Tavayogi, and all the upagurus and practices given were tools. Coming to us they showed themselves as Shivan and Sakthi which gave rise to the entire Prapanjam. Tavayogi substantiates this statement by quoting Supramaniar Gnanam 32 where it is revealed that at the beginning there was Sivan. From it emerged a sound. The vibration that resulted was Sakti.
Annie Besant in her talks on "The Laws of the Higher Life", the Theosophical Publishing House, 1903, explains the transformation of the gross body to that of a subtler nature, a return to the source.
"The self gathers around it upadhi upon upadhi, vehicle after vehicle, gradually shaping its own instruments. Here we see a consciousness that shapes bodies according to their needs, gradually refining them and bringing them under the control of the higher. The brain has to be changed, refined and improved, and its connecting links fashioned and manufactured for the purposes of the expression of the higher consciousness. Here, in the jungle, they meditated making the brain tense and refined by the concentration of the mind, and restraint of lower faculties, fixed in rapt attention on the higher, with the consciousness working from above playing on the physical brain and tuning it to respond safely to the higher vibrations. Then it strove to draw the lower upwards (as Tavayogi says of our efforts that are only till the first two initial stages, Muladhara and Svadisthana) until it answered no longer to the stimuli of the outer world. This is a state of yoga - complete withdrawal of the consciousness from the Indriyas. Now making the mind steady, holding quiet the powers of the mind, the mind ceases to vibrate, and it becomes still - able to answer the vibrations coming from above.
She wrote in "Avatara-s", The Theosophical Publishing House, 2002, that,
"... inasmuch as the body is an instrument we have to use, a certain treatment of the body is necessary so that we may turn our footsteps in the direction of the Path. The body alone will never take us to the heights we aspire to, yet to neglect it will make it impossible for us to attempt those heights at all. ... The body needs to be refined, to be improved, to be molded into such a form and made of such constituents as may best fit it to be the instrument on the physical plane for man's highest purposes."
She writes further, ".. in deciding to purify his body, he will begin at once to select the materials from which the new body is to be built," Hence the question of diet will present itself. He will start "excluding food that will build into his body particles which are impure and polluting."
As for the choice of diet, she aptly puts it when she suggests we show who is master, saying, "You do not intend your life's purpose to be thwarted by the mere instrument that is yours to use. Make the change and as you get rid of the particles that crave these impurities; you will feel your body altering its habits and revolting against the very smell of the things that it used to enjoy." She says, "The more we refine the body the more acute the physical senses become."
"... the purification of the dense body then, consists in a process of deliberate selection of the particles permitted to compose it; the man will take into it the way of food the purest constituents he can obtain, rejecting the impure and the gross.... by natural change the particles built into it in the days of his careless living will gradually pass away, at least within seven years - although the process may be considerably hastened."
She cautions us if we want to engage in yoga with an impure diet and body, "You must begin to purify the body before you attempt to practice any yoga worthy of the name. For real yoga is as dangerous to an impure and undisciplined body as a match to a cask of gunpowder."
Annie Besant in "Avatara-s", The Theosophical Publishing House, 2002, wrote,
"How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? How would you choose good if you knew not evil? How would you recognize the light if there were no darkness? How would you move if there were no resistance? The forces that are dark, the forces of the rakshasas, of the asuras, of all that seems to be working against Isvara, these are the forces that call out the inner strength of the self in man, by struggling with which the forces of Atma within the man are developed and without which he would remain in Pralaya forevermore. Isvara must draw out men's forces by pulling against their strength making them struggle in order to attain and so vivifying into outer manifestation the life that otherwise would remain enfolded in itself."
She says that "if everything around us was smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic and indifferent." Just as Tavayogi tells us that we will never come to a realization if we do not receive blows from the whip, she too says that "it is the whip of pain, of the suffering, of disappointment that drives us onward and brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwise would remain undeveloped."
"In this universe, there is no evil; all is good that comes to us from Isvara but it sometimes comes in the guise of evil that by opposing it we may draw out our strength. Then we begin to understand that these forces are necessary and that they are within the plan of Isvara. There is only one will in the universe the will of Isvara and all must conform themselves to that will, all are conditioned by that will, and all must move according to that will."
There is order in nature writes Annie Besant in her book "The Laws of the Higher Life". What is seen as a natural disaster had its making going back in time before it actually shows itself openly. For instance, she writes, ".. there is nothing more disorderly in the outburst of a volcano than there is in the slow growth of the sea-bottom, until at last, after tens of thousands of years, that bottom becomes a range of mountains... The one was thought orderly, the other cataclysmic."
She says that the law of nature unlike the laws of man that keep changing and varies from country and state to state, is a statement: "If such and such conditions are present, such and such results will happen. If the conditions change the results will change with them." This is the law of Prapanjam.
Knowing this truth she says "You can work with absolute certainty of results." These laws apply if and when we are ignorant of them. But "those same laws become our servants, our helpers, and our uplifters when knowledge has replaced ignorance." Just as the Siddhas have gained this divine knowledge or Gnanam, and rather than take control or imprison, rape or plunder nature, worked in tandem with them, Annie writes the same, "Know the law, obey it, work with it, and it lifts you up with its infinite strength and carries you to the goal that you desired to reach. ... the Law becomes a savior when known and understood... be ignorant of them, and your efforts will be frustrated and all your endeavors will be as though they had not been." True to the word Agathiyar revealed that as a result of the karma that stood in my way, all my noble endeavors did not bear fruit.
Just as Lao Tzu asked to go with the flow, Annie asks us to work with them and not against them in another book of hers titled "Karma". She says "All forces in nature can be used in proportion as they are understood." She adds that, "All accident is the result of ignorance, and is due to the working of laws whose presence was unknown or overlooked... Nature can never betray us. We are betrayed by our own blindness."
If we think out of ignorance that this physical body was ours to use as we wish to fulfill our wishes and desires and to enjoy the pleasures of life, contrary to this common belief, Annie reminds us that "the gross body serves the consciousness for its work on the physical plane." Bharathi too realized that when he did God's work things fell into place as opposed to frustration that resulted in chasing his dreams. Now I understand why Agathiyar in remaining aloof and indifferent to some of my askings, is making me stronger. In asking me to tolerate them he is making me stronger.
Man in evolving spiritually moves up the ladder of evolution. Annie Besant writes of this state, in "The Laws of the Higher Life".
"..loftier and sublimer region where the inner law takes the place of of the law of outer obligation, where instead of duty, which means the payment of a debt, there is sacrifice, which is the outpouring of life, where everything is done gladly, everything is done willingly, in perfect self-surrender, .. where he works because the divine outwelling finds its channel in his life, and needs no outer compulsion because of the perfection of the inner law." She says that after this stage he grows further, becoming a channel of the divine outpouring.