I guess people are comfortable keeping their distance and seeing Agathiyar and the Siddhas, Gods and Goddesses, and the other deities in the statues and pictures. They are terrified when they come up close and are too close for comfort. They choose not to believe that it is all happening. When I was a kid, in the 60s and a teen in the 70s, until the age of 13, my parents would consult a Chinese medium who was a neighbor for all my illnesses. He would go into a state of trance chanting and beating his shirtless back with the blunt side of a sword and write Chinese characters on a yellow strip of rice paper in red ink and burn it over a glass of water. He would ask me to drink the water that now contains the ashes. I would be cured. As we knew him only too well we were never terrified of him though he was of a large build and his back would carry red marks after beating himself since he was fairskin. The first time I visited a government hospital was when a dog bit me.
Later moving house, I kept my distance whenever a neighbor went into a trance state where deities came within him and spoke. I was terrified. What I feared most was the manner they spoke and the tools they took in their hands. I was afraid that I would be beaten up. Later as I grew up I feared that they would pry into our lives and expose us for our bad deeds and doings. I would watch from my childhood home which was just some distance away from the neighbor's house. But once the deities left we would partake in the sacrifice, usually a goat, offered to these deities in the name of sacrifice.
When I started working in the 80s I had another close encounter this time with Ma Kali who came through someone in my colleague's home. I was terrified. The moment she placed her palm on my head I fainted. All I could remember was the heat that her palm generated.
During those years, the deities would come through my brother too. What surprised us was that he would speak the Chinese language to the visiting Chinese devotees, during these moments of trance. Here then I was not too terrified as it was my brother who was the channel.
When my family joined me in worshipping the Siddhas beginning in 2005 after Tavayogi's arrival, and after Agathiyar's arrival in the form of the bronze statue later in 2010, Agathiyar began bringing strangers to our home and have me and my wife hear them out. He would come within to advise or heal them. Again I was terrified. We begged that it stop. Agathiyar listened. But later he made me realize that he had to see them and save those souls too. He comforted me that there would be no harm to me and my family and that he was merely using me as a tool and my home as a venue. When I consented, he brought them over again. Once he asked me to whom I shall turn too if he decided to shut his ears and close the door on me? I realized my mistake and we gave in to his divine play.
When Agathiyar had some youths come over to my home to witness and participate in the Pornami puja beginning in 2013, these divine energies came through several of these youths. Lord Murugan in a Nadi reading in 2018, asked me to give way and stand aside and watch his lila. The moment we did as told, all heaven broke loose and the divine energies came down in torrents toppling some devotees. Later he came through the Jeeva Nadi and simultaneously through a youth to heal my back with peacock feathers. He had us sing the Arutperunjothi mantra over a glass of water and asked that I drink it reminding me of the elderly Chinese medium who was our neighbor in the past.
In 2016, Agathiyar relayed the news to a devotee through their Jeeva Nadi reading read by Tavayogi that the Siddhas arrived to witness and sit among us during the oblation or Homam carried out at AVM in the presence of Tavayogi and Mataji. He said only Mataji sensed it. Indeed Mataji had been asking if anyone felt the ground shake during the ritual.
It is still happening. We have seen these and many more "energetic moments" during the divine lilas that the Siddhas and deities carried out in our midst. Much has been shared in this blog.
I learned a lesson in all these. It was not to negate nor avoid but to accept that it was all part of creation. Everything and everyone has a use and purpose in this world of ours. It is all about advancing and evolving together though each in his own time and pace, and in his own time space. I have accepted it all.