I was a movie goer in the seventies, reading up everything about movies then. The theaters and also the movie magazines were accessible then. In the eighties my interest switched to know more about our culture and traditions and religion. I was a bachelor then having taken up my new job. I had much time on my hands and indulged in home and temple worship, reading and discussion with colleagues. In the nineties everything was quiet on the home front as I was asked to backoff by Lord Siva who came in a dream in 1988. I guess it was a period of clearing the house so that the divine could fill me up with new knowledge that was to come my way. At the start of the millennium changes in my life and perspective and understanding began to take place. I stepped on the path of the Siddhas after a calling in the Nadi. The rest is history or rather (my)story that has been penned in these pages.
If my parents showed me to see God in the temples and statues and the paintings at the altar in our family home, moving out of my home to take up my new job, I continued worship of these deities in my bachelor home. Then there came a long break of some 14 years to wind down before picking up the chanting of a mantra that was given to me in 2001 to prepare me to meet my gurus Agathiyar through the Nadi reading in 2002, Supramania Swami of Tiruvannamalai on my maiden trip to India the following year and Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal of Kallar Ashram who arrived in Malaysia in 2005. From engaging in Sariyai and Kriyai with the family and on my own respectively, I was now prepared to officially step into Kriyai, Yogam and Gnanam with the coming of these gurus. If Agathiyar read the blueprint of my life, Supramania Swami showed me Guru Bakti or devotion to the Gurus by his exemplary life. Tavayogi showed the practical means to achieve union with the divine through Bakti and Yogam. Agathiyar and Ramalinga Adigal showed the means to attain union with the divine through Gnanam. Today I stand at the threshold of the Lord's temple awaiting Vaalai to introduce me to her spouse or counterpart VaSi or Siva in reverse. If Vaalai has been given a form and name and worshipped externally I was guided to worship her internally as the breath. In this world of Maya or illusion where everything we see, hear, taste, touch, and feel is a delayed response to the stimuli, as by the time our senses decode something and we understand, react, hear, taste, feel it, something else has taken place. Our senses are desperately trying to keep up with these stimuli. Indeed, we are living in the past though we do not realize it. The only present moment is when we engage with our breath. This is what keeps us alive. Breath is life. If there is no breath, there is no life. It is just a piece of meat. Hence as Lord Muruga said breath carries everything from thoughts, experiences, to Gnanam, the breath is the means and the end.
ஞானம் என்பது உமது சுவாசம். உனது அனுபவங்கள் பதிவதும் உனது சுவாசம். எண்ணங்களைத் தூண்டுவதும் உனது சுவாசம். ஆதியில் சுவாசம் இறுதியும் சுவாசம்.
We are all connected through the breath. Someone else shall inhale the air I breath out and vice versa. When it leaves it merges in the surroundings. Just as God breathe life into us, we blow our breath into another to save his life. Agathiyar told a devotee who went into coma that he gave his breath to save him. Tavayogi who introduced Agathiyar as God to the public, told me during an initiation at his Kallar ashram that the breath was God. Tavayogi very aptly wrote the following when I asked him to autograph his book "Andamum Pindamum" when translated meant, "God lives in your heart, from where the journey starts and ends too." Hence it makes sense that we are asked to worship the breath Vaalai.
Ramalinga Adigal song details this amazing journey. I believe he has started me on this internal journey to a sacred place that Ramalinga Adigal calls Aani Pon Ambalam.