If I had traveled, what I guess must have been an out-of-body experience in my sleep as a kid, recurring over several days, towering close to the ceiling in my family home where I grew up in the sixties, watching myself, my father, and brother sleeping in our room from above and watching my mother and sisters in the adjacent room, before swinging from side to side and plunging down, reentering my body back then, traveling on my maiden pilgrimage to India as a tourist later in 2003, and again accompanied with Tavayogi in 2005 who brought me to retrace his path journeying to Siddha sites, abodes, and caves, the final lap unknowingly began in going within and traveling the Chakras beginning 2007. Life is all about traveling initially and coming one whole round back to lying on our backs and on our deathbeds. But the Siddhas somehow found the means to overcome death, taking on Samadhi, where the soul in us, the JeevAtma merges with the ParamAtma not upon leaving the gross body but while still in it, alive and witness to this divine marriage of Siva and Sakti, the merging with and in the Jothi or Light. If I had very much wanted to witness this merger take place before my eyes through Tavayogi, he very humbly told me it was too late for him to achieve as he was in his late sixties and that he had to come back again. But Dhanvantri who came later in 2018, told me that he had merged in the Light. Agathiyar later told us that as Tavayogi was looking into the Siddhas' matters in their realm, Agathiyar had to come personally and guide us. Later when Jnana Jothiamma came along and Agathiyar personally took her under his wings and tutored her on the path and the means, I wanted her to achieve this. As she was in her sixties too her body gave up on her and could not take on the magnitude and extent of the drastic transformation that took place. She told me that she would yet have to take another birth, a princely one in Europe as foretold by Agathiyar. Lord Muruga who wanted to reveal the secrets to his youth after Agathiyar who was then a commoner like us took care of the former's needs as he roamed the face of the earth as Supramaniar, told the latter that as he was in his sixties, it was not possible and that they shall meet in the next birth. Now Agathiyar wants me to be living proof that Siddhahood is possible in this age and at my age as I step into my 66th year. Most recently, he came to us through a devotee and asked if he should make me a guru but immediately retracted his suggestion saying, "No, No, I shall make you a Siddha instead." What else would one want? Thus he asked that I do nothing and that the energies in me shall do their work.
15 September 1959, that is the day I was born in the early morning hours of 3.53am at least that is what I was told and the hospital records show. But Agathiyar threw in a surprise later in 2002 when I went for my Nadi reading for the very first time. He revealed my horoscope based on my thumbprint and came up with a different set of planetary positions at birth. Now which was true and what was I to follow? Going back to Dr. Krishnan, a medical astrologer and Siddha physician and friend, who spoke to me about Agathiyar and the Siddhas and their Nadi for the very first time in 1996, he worked back, from the planetary positions that Agathiyar gave at the time of my birth. I should have been born after sunrise at 9.25am. He asked me to ditch his assessment, readings, findings, and predictions based on 3.53am and follow the Siddhas. I was to find out from Lord Muruga in a Nadi reading very much later in 2018 that he had rewritten my fate.
The puzzle as to why this famed astrologer's predictions that worked well with others never materialized for me was cleared. Agathiyar also confirmed the doctor's possible reason for the stars not working in favor of my destiny. I had screwed up in my former birth and earned the wrath and curse of many back then. These took shape as Karma that stood in the way of me gaining the benefits in material life and also my spiritual practices as in taking up Yoga learning from the books and the hours of worship that when into it.
Several months after my birth, I was said to be purging badly. As my parents had lost two children due to this they rushed me to my neighbor this time around rather than the hospital. Our Chinese neighbor used to go into a trance and heal people. And so was I saved that day with the promise undertaken by my parents that they shall give me in adoption to the Gods. So I came under their watchful eyes beginning that day.
1977, as I entered college, reading a book that I cannot remember its name and author, changed me dramatically. I learned to so "NO" to others. I was previously the timid and shy boy who would agree to everything said by others and follow.
1980 saw me stand on my own feet as I took up my first job which I devoted to in dedication through some 36 years before retiring at the age of 56 in 2016. I had so much time on hand as a bachelor that I indulged in home puja, praising the Gods and Goddesses of the Hindu pantheon at dawn and dusk in the privacy of my bachelor house. Soon what I saw differed from what I read and was told. If God was supposed to be all loving and compassionate, it was not so in reality. I saw many around me suffer before me, often the reason given that it was God's doing and who was punishing them. I could not accept the fact that God would punish us. I would have gone cuckoo figuring out the truth of the matter until Lord Siva came in a dream and asked that I drop all the questions till a later time.
That later time came in 2002 when I went for the Nadi reading and Agathiyar in speaking about Karma and pointing out mine made me understand that it was the work of Karma of each individual and that they were responsible for all that comes their way. The Gods only were facilitators and supervised the planets which coming together shall bring on the respective effects in our lives.
1989 was the year I got married and had a life partner followed by two wonderful daughters, the first in the same year and the second some nine years later in 1998. Agathiyar later told me that the latter was the reason both me and my wife took birth again, as she had wished for it in her last birth. 1998 was also the year I began to revisit the path of Bakti which was kept on hold for some 14 years. I and my wife who was carrying her in her womb would visit the newly inaugurated Murugan temple in our vicinity each night. Later Agathiyar revealed that she was the reason I came to the Siddha path.
2001 was the year the doors to self-exile that were shut were reopened fully and I stepped out into a new world of mysticism. My nephew surprised me by bringing me a message from his Paramaguru Gopal Pillai, that came vis a trance as I sat before him. It was the Vasudeva mantra, that I learned later, that breaks all the knots in us and sets us off on a mystical journey.
The following year 2002 I stood before a Nadi reader, reading and revealing Agathiyar words written supposedly thousands of years ago on palm leaves which are carefully transcribed and copies made as the previous leaves deteriorate with time. It was my very first Kaanda Nadi reading where I was surprised to know someone else besides me knew everything about me and knew even further the things I could not remember having done in my past birth and who knew my future that I could not possibly know. I saw the Nadi revelations and the Siddhas words as the Gospel and followed every word in it.
As promised during the transmission of the Vasudeva mantra that came through my nephew, which I learned later was from Agathiyar, it paved the way for me to meet my guru. I came to my very first guru Supramania Swami of Tiruvannamalai on the last leg of my pilgrimage to India in 2003 to carry out the remedies given in the Nadi. The 5 hours I spent with him was a life-changing moment in my life for I had my very first experience of God coming as a guru, something that I had read in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography back then in 1994. He who was an astrologer too foresaw my future and narrated even the things that Agathiyar spoke in my Nadi, without me sharing the Nadi readings with him and without calling for the details of my visit to India, or charting my horoscope. These were divine revelations that came to him as he sat on his deer skin and spoke about my past, present, and future. He took me as his sole student. Before he saw the Jothi and left his gross physical body in 2007, he already gifted me all the merits of the years of austerities or Tavam or Tapas that he did as I revealed my selfish intent in helping him with his dream of building a temple. Just as Agathiyar saw the light and became it after he had selflessly provided food, lodging, and assistance to Lord Supramaniar in a previous birth, I too told him that this drove me to help him. Without a second thought, he passed on his merits telling me that one has to leave it all behind. I believe this skyrocketed me to where I am today.
If I had gone looking for Supramania Swami earlier in 2003, 2005 was the year I was sent to Tavayogi Thangarsan Adigal who was in Malaysia to officiate an Agathiyar Peedham. My journey on the path that began after I took up the calling by Agathiyar in my Nadi reading in 2002, flourished under the guidance of Tavayogi. He broke me. He showed me to Agathiyar rather than have me worship and depend on him. He molded me. He had me drop my hold on a nine-gem and jewel studded ring, the mercury bead or Rasamani that I wore on me, the Rudraksha bead even before the thought came to my mind, and rosary and other amulets and all other accessories that one comes by in walking the spiritual path. He made me who I am today. He gave me what Agathiyar would later reveal as the biggest treasure. A set of Yoga practices that began to transform me both externally and internally in the years to come, without my knowledge of its mysterious working in me.
If the other centers in the name of Agathiyar carried on with the backing of senior devotees, Agathiyar sent youths in their late twenties and thirties to AVM in 2013 to learn the Siddha worship or puja. Soon he had us do charity too. My humble family home took on the name Agathiyar Vanam Malaysia (AVM) which came to be the talk of the town where we conducted regular puja and charity programs.
Never did we anticipate that Agathiyar would deal a blow to it all at the height of these activities. Many years on in the wake of the pandemic in 2019 he would have me close this loose association of seekers and devotees and have them go their way giving them the tools and the means and the ways and the methods and the practice to carry it out in the safety of their home as the virus lurked outside our homes. Soon he had me reach out to my Self not before having me engage fully in the activities of the spiritual world that everyone else conducts too but sadly is caught in and remains in. Agathiyar had me wind up the group and AVM shut its doors. Those who were governed by their Ego were the worst hit and could not take the blow. They never came back.
The years during the pandemic were spent in isolation and carrying out certain practices given by Agathiyar who began to come through other devotees in the absence of the Nadi readers who packed their bags and left for India. In the years post-pandemic, Agathiyar educated me further by creating insane, absurd, and unbelievable scenarios and staged numerous plays or divine Lila, from which I could experience and learn the good, bad, and ugly of life.
Agathiyar told me the practice that Tavayogi gave me and several others in 2007 was a treasure house or Pokisam and a potent tool that activated the Muladhara without my knowing until after Agathiyar came to reveal in 2012 the reason I was having lower back pain for some 2 1/2 years. He told me to lay down the tool. When he asked me to go within giving me certain practices to adopt and follow beginning in September of 2019 and had me sleep in his prayer room the latent power that was the Kundalini aroused. Although the signs were there I could not correlate them with the awakening until Agathiyar came to describe them and confirm her movement. It sprang into action having me collapse thrice and wriggling in pain that surprisingly was blissful too. Later in 2022, he told me to pick up the practices that Tavayogi gave and that Agathiyar asked to put on hold. Just as he had the knot released and released me from the agony and pain in my lower back finally in 2012, Agathiyar this time gave a tug some two fingers below the navel and belly button that made me nauseous and numb all over. A swirling as in a whirlpool was sensed in the region of the belly. The next day I bore witness to what I presume was my own death as I watched my body go lifeless below the neck. I could narrate all that I was experiencing to my wife though. The next few days saw the rapid manner in which this energy traveled to what I presume were the other energy centers before it came to rest in the Sahasrara. But surprisingly none of these Chakras were lined up in a straight line as often depicted in diagrams, figures, and books. They were much way above and below and to the sides of the main axis that follows the spine. The energy seemed to briefly drop in on these centers before finding its resting place in the crown of the head. The swirling sensation akin to a whirlpool soon transformed into that which was alike the blooming or opening of numerous petals. I came to understand from him that as he saw these energies had begun to stagnate at the Manipuraka, he broke the banks of the pond and released Shakti to travel to her beloved Siva who came down to meet her at the palace of the 1000 petals in the crown of the head. He keeps reminding me not to sabotage his efforts in bringing me to where I am today by my actions for it would be a wasted effort if this energy were to fall back to its lower regions.
What is it that we have come to learn from life? First, they take us through all that creation has to offer, having us engage with it fully, taking in its pleasures and also sorrows. We are told not to shut out, nor control the pleasures that Maya has created for our existence but asked to savor them for their full intensity though told never to get stuck or addicted to them for life. All these shall be seen as clothing or dressing and one has to be ready to drop them and move on or rather move within later in life. Finally, they bring us to realize it is all but a dream and Maya or an illusion before bringing us to the pure awareness of our existence or being in those sacred moments of silence. Though the external world is mysterious in many ways, the true mystery lies within, not in the organs and other gross and physical stuff, but in a timeless space whose precise location cannot possibly be pointed out. All that can be given as aids to reach this place are directions and directives, practices, and methods. One watching out for these signboards soon arrives at this spot. Internal experiences would help him identify and locate it. He shall know that he has arrived at his destiny. The Self knows it all. It knows that it has arrived home. It resides in the bliss that is its very nature. As one chapter comes to an end another begins. Today Agathiyar gave new life to AVM with Mahindren and his wife steering the group of kids bringing them to learn Siddha puja, Yoga, and Sangeetham for starters. The legacy lives on.