What are stories but a moment in (his)tory. Similarly, what are images but snapshots from a timeline? We have captured, retained, and repeated these stories, often with drastic changes. Similarly, we have taken these images and have been worshipping them to this day. Norman Rockwell's graphic depiction of these misinterpretations through an illustration that appeared in "Reader's Digest" many years ago is a classic example of how much things have differed from the original. The message got changed along the way when it came in a circle and returned to the original source.
Much that we know has come by way of mouth, carried from generation to generation. Parts and bits of the stories might have been lost in translation or modified and manipulated, leaving us to either believe, doubt them, or totally reject them. I have had close, prominent people in several instances make a mistake in conveying a story that had me in the picture, too. One was uttered verbally in a gathering, and the other came out in print. But I chose not to correct them. I wonder now how much of what we hear and read is true? Is this the reason Agathiyar says that we have not truly understood our Puranas or Godly stories?
If the mode of transmission was by way of mouth those days, and as it is through the net and social media in present times, we have to verify what we download or share is true and not false. Now, with certain quarters misusing AI, we cannot differentiate between them.
Agathiyar, like many historians, has mentioned that much of history has been manipulated for personal gains by certain quarters or individuals. He has access to countless unsolved and untold mysteries, but chooses to remain silent. I guess it is the will of Kala (Time) and the might of Maya (Illusion) that cover up many stories. Reading his Agathiyar Gnanam disturbed me as to the authenticity of texts that we considered sacred. He even paints pictures of fraud gurus. Chitramuthu Adigal, too, I understand, has touched on false gurus and teachings.
We often come across cases of the very fence eating into the crops, where people in authority, who are supposed to care and protect us, tend to carry out atrocities. We often come across even the spiritual gurus engaging in sexual misconduct. We are to blame. We are the reason for falling victim to such situations at times. With some care and thought, we could avoid tragedies. But as it is said that it was all a divine will, that is the will of the individual soul too; things happen as they do, for us to experience and learn.
A true Gnani would have walked a similar path, but eventually, upon realizing that the divine is all-pervasive and around and in all of its creation and even beyond, would let go of all his hold, not only on property and assets, position and authority, but even his previous beliefs and practices. Just as we slowly chip the granite to reveal the image of God within it, that is the evolution of the soul, or rather, the unveiling of the true self.
The only way to gain authentic knowledge, then, is to have first-hand experience. Or the gurus have to walk out of their Samadhis and come to verify the truth of their teachings and the authenticity of their works. All else is an interpretation of an individual.
It is time we respected not only others but ourselves and being first. Is this the reason Agathiyar asked that I walk tall and with pride that we are all his children? Walk the path and walk tall to arrive at your story that your soul is waiting to tell. Yes, we tend to make a date and sit around talking about ourselves and listening to others' stories, but we fail to listen to our soul within that is waiting eagerly to share its story. Please do find some time to be with yourself and begin to listen to your soul speak.
When asked, in the "Next Level Soul Podcast" of Neale Donald Walsch, author of "Conversations with God", how God came to him, he answered, "A voiceless voice".
And I described it actually, in in the books, as a voiceless voice, like the sound of your own thoughts, ....That thought doesn't come to me with a sound of a male voice or a female voice or an older man's voice. I don't hear my own thoughts .... So the sound of my thoughts does not have any particular verbal characteristic or vocal characteristic....Actually, I describe it as a voiceless voice, much like the sound of one's own thoughts. That's how I experienced it. You know, I asked a question, and bingo, an answer came to me in a voiceless voice, but it was clear enough that I could take dictation and write down what I was hearing. And so I did. I did exactly that. I wrote down what I was hearing in my mind, Beautifully said.
Just as Surendran, who dropped by my home some days back, asked how I saw Agathiyar now, after traveling some 23 years with him, Neale too was asked the same: "Now, how, how has your understanding of God changed since that first book, or has it changed since that first book?"
It hasn't changed since the first book, but it changed dramatically from what I from the way I experienced God before the first book, but since the first book, which changed my experience of God. Dramatically, nothing has really changed. And of course, after the first book, there were eight other books, so there are 3000 pages of dialog in all and honestly, those pages simply advanced the dialog and advanced my understanding of who and what God is, who and what we are and why we're here on the planet.
But Neale was so humble to admit that,
But in my understanding, you know, and I could be wrong. I why. I'll make this very clear in every interview I do, I could be wrong about all of that. It's simply my own understanding, just as the pope declares his understanding. ....But in my case, I could be wrong about all of it, it's just simply my understanding of what I was told.