After years of tutelage under Agathiyar, I told him that I could not accept him if he was God and guru to only a select few. God has to take every single being into his arms and similarly, the Guru has to take every single being under his wings. Otherwise, it would be another God and Guru affiliated with a path, abode, or temple at the end of the path and a faith professed and passed on to those who reach the particular God or Guru abiding in the temple.
He showed me to Prapanjam. The Prapanjam takes every single being within its arms and envelops it with warmth from the sun, and the coolness of the moon, provides the life-sustaining Prana that hitches a ride with the breath we take in, in the waters that flow and provides for our daily needs, provides the ground for us to stand and lie down and the food that has us grow. He stood aside leaving his form and figure, name, tag, and label, and showed himself as the Prapanjam that is God to all. Earth, water, fire, air, and ether belong to no particular faith. Similarly, crops, water, heat, breath, blood, and space belong to no particular faith. If Prapanjam was God, who are we then? He shows us that we are the breath that is of the Prapanjam.
Even as we are divided through the blood groups, we stand united through the breath. Even if man chooses to divide himself through race and color, creed, faith, and belief, he stands united through the breath. Man who initially was one with nature became divided. He now has to reach out to nature to realize his oneness with it. If faith and belief divide man Yoga unites. When many shy from following rituals and worship of other faiths, they come together in Yoga. Yoga is the tool that unites man irrespective of where he is and what faith he professes.
Acharya Gurudasan in writing a piece for Siddha Heartbeat at https://agathiyarvanam.blogspot.com/2015/12/kriya-yoga-lessons.html says,
"Essentially, all the different forms of yoga available must, by definition, help one to come out of delusion to realize the divinity within. When this mistaken identity with the mind-body personality ends, one will realize that along with that ends all suffering and the person remains in a truly blissful state of joy. This clearly shows that Yoga is much more than mere stretching exercises done in a hot room with tight clothes. Its purpose is to ultimately drive the practitioner towards the ultimate goal of Self-Realization (i.e. to shake off the limited identity of body-mind consciousness and merge with the infinite, all-blissful cosmic consciousness)."
"Yoga had one single motive: to eliminate ego-consciousness and to allow divine consciousness to descend. It leads us to the same Truth and meets at the point of Gnana where the seeker loses his ego-self and identifies with the universal Brahman."
Acharya Gurudasan writes of Swami Vivekananda,
"Although he could have easily renounced and become a hermit, he chose to carry his Master’s message to every corner of the world. He dedicated his entire life to this purpose. And nothing signifies this better than his statement “I shall take 1000 rebirths to help a single man educated/enlightened.” This clearly shows that his own enlightenment was secondary to him." This is Karma Yoga.
Writing of Bhaktas or devotees, "It can be noted that most Bhaktas may not even have the desire to get enlightened and all they need is to be one with their object of devotion. At the pinnacle, they no longer have a sense of themselves, and their mind becomes completely absorbed in the divine, leading them to experience complete bliss and realize that their deity and their ‘Self’ are one and the same." This is Bhakti Yoga.
In Raja Yoga, "The sadhaka attempts to eliminate ego-consciousness by directly controlling that entity which gives rise to it – The Mind. The sadhaka performs several activities such as Pranayama, Asana, meditation, etc. and directly studies the nature of the mind, its roots, the 5 senses and their impact on the mind, and how to stop their activity consciously (the cessation of the fluctuations arising within the sub-conscious). Hence, all the practices of Raja Yoga are aimed at the goal of disciplining the mind, quietening it, and completely stopping its activities consciously to be absorbed completely in the Self. Such a state is called Samadhi which is the goal of Raja Yoga. In Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the sadhaka is in a state of complete cognitive absorption where he has totally lost the sense of personal ‘I’ and the body and is completely merged with the superconscious. This is the highest level of Samadhi where the sadhaka transcends the time-space dimension and identifies completely with the para-brahman or the universal self or the super consciousness."
Bhagawan Ramana says “Control of mind by the control of breath is Yoga, control of breath by the control of the mind is Gnana.”
If the former needs a concerted effort on our part and years of practice, the latter which comes through the grace of the divine subdues the breath effortlessly. By surrendering to the divine first, the divine takes control and hold of our minds. By submitting to its energies, the breath settles easily. I guess this is what Agathiyar meant in asking me to let go, telling me that henceforth the energies shall do their work. But it only came after we initiated the efforts following their teaching and practice. Today the breath settles on its own, what seemed like a tussle with it earlier on.
Acharya Gurudasan writes, "When the mind is focused upon its own source, it gets absorbed and what remains is pure existence, pure awareness. That is when one becomes aware of being aware and the difference between the object known, the act of knowing, and the knower ceases to exist. The practitioner remains as Sat-chit-ananda, in a state of pure bliss transcending subject-object relationship. In other words, the practitioner remains as the Universal self or Para-brahman."
When Agathiyar trashed the others for not taking up the Yoga practices given, I received the splash/splashes/spills/splatter/spatter too. Initially upset, later I consoled myself that he was only scolding himself. I could move on.
Acharya Gurudasn writes, "Sri Ramana Maharshi says, the path a person takes to realize the self may vary according to his maturity and fitness of mind, but one has to come to Atma-Vichara as the final step."
He writes on Babaji’s Kriya Yoga, as "a special form of Raja Yoga. It also includes aspects of other forms of yoga such as devotion as in bhakti, discipline of action as in Karma Yoga, and focus on being with the Self/pure awareness as in Gnana. It is a scientific art of perfect God -Truth union and self-realization. In the late 19th century, Mahavatar Babaji revived it as a synthesis of Patanjali`s yoga sutras and the practice of Kundalini yoga by the yoga Siddhars."