I am a very critical person, critical of all things. Knowing my nature I was led to two wonderful gurus who have since left their physical body. I am now under the direct care of Agathiyar, for I chose not to seek another mortal as my guru after their demise. I sat at their feet and studied under them. They did not go into lengthy discourses or carry out classes that enlightened us immediately. Neither did they enlighten me with the touch or their glance - initially. Nor did they give talisman or magic portions to expediate the process. They took me by my hand and started me on a practical way rather than dish out hours of lecture and pass lecture notes. I learned from example. I saw how humble Supramania Swami was. I saw how humble Tavayogi was. I saw how humble Agathiyar was. They were down to earth in nature, and easily accessible. Although they are no more in the physical form their presence is deeply felt.
A guru can disappoint you. Yes, be prepared for it. Even if God was to take an Avatar he will carry some flaws. For the flaws are required to take human birth. Man equates the divine even then as another and judges him similarly. So did my gurus disappoint me? Yes on occasions. I begged to differ in the handling and approach to matters on hand. I thought I would have handled the situation differently. But today I have come to learn that what we see, analyze and understand is quite different from how they see and understand things. We only can see this much. We cannot even see whats beyond the corner without the road safety convex mirrors. We cannot even see the traffic several kilometers ahead of us without the GPS navigation software apps like Waze to tell/ show us. We cannot see beyond the mountain without drones that bring us these amazing images of the new frontiers beyond our sight and knowledge. We cannot see the nature and culture of others without physically taking a plane ride across the seas to these countries. We cannot fathom the skies and the frontiers beyond the atmosphere without the artificial intelligence employed in space crafts, space stations, and space telescopes like the Hubble. We are all so limited in our vision. But the saints travel without physically vacating their place. They travel through time zones, into the past and future without the aid of gadgets or equipment. And so when they make known the reasons for either their non-interference or their acceptance, I wish I could go into hiding for having made wrong judgments on others.
Today I understand that it is not easy being a guru or a mentor. You are being watched and followed. Many shall come to you seeking all kinds of advice. People shall come to you with their problems: financial, health, domestic, career, etc seeking instant remedy and a solution, a magic formula. Many come just to drop their baggage of discontentment, anger, worries, fear, etc and leave. Some come to question, debate and argue. Others come full and vomit all that they have learned from the books, gurus and other resources. Few come to just sit and listen. A handful comes without any expectations, never making their presence known. The divine too comes and leaves without anyone noticing.
I for one did not go in search of a spiritual guru. I was quite complacent to do some reading and putting into practice what I read. I was a bachelor and had just taken on a new job my first. I was only twenty then I had all the time on my hands. So I took up devotion and prayers learning from books, to occupy my time after office hours. I read a lot munching hungrily into the pages of these books looking for something that I could not put my finger on. What was I looking for? I guess I just wanted to equip myself with knowledge, mostly depending on the books that I bought. Although the basics of the computer systems were already in use in the early 1900's, the PC and the internet were only discovered and were not available to the masses than in 1980. Networking and the Web were in its infant stage and had yet to take the world by storm then. The website https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/networking-the-web/ takes us back to the history of this wonderful discovery that grabs and holds the attention even of toddlers these days.
Like the Volkswagen Beetle and modern freeway systems, the Telex messaging network comes out of the early period of Germany’s Third Reich. Telex starts as a way to distribute military messages, but soon becomes a world-wide network of both official and commercial text messaging.. Telex uses teleprinters, which date back to the 1910s for use in telegraphy.
Belgian Paul Otlet has a modest goal: collect, organize, and share all the world’s knowledge. Otlet had co-created a massive “search engine” starting in the early 1900s. His Mundaneum now combines enhanced card catalogs with sixteen million entries, photos, documents, microfilm, and more. He is working on integrating telegraphy and multiple media, from sound recordings to television.
In the 1930s British writer H.G. Wells and American scientist Vannevar Bush are advancing similar goals—Wells with his “World Brain” writings and Bush with the Memex, a sort of microfilm-based Web browser. These approaches to organizing information differ. But all share key features of today’s Web, including automated cross-references – which we call hyperlinks.
In the 1950s several visionaries including Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart independently suggest computerizing the concept of cross-references, creating the clickable link we use on the Web. Nelson calls it a “hyperlink,” and the computerized text “hypertext.” Along with graphics pioneer Andries van Dam they develop many core computing functions such as word processing, online collaboration, and hypertext links.
Designed to detect Russian nuclear bombers, the IBM-built SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) pioneers many technologies including a special-purpose form of networking. There are 23 computer centers across North America, communicating with radar stations, counter-attack aircraft, and each other — all in real-time, as potentially threatening events are happening.
By the early 1960s many people can share a single computer, using terminals (often repurposed teleprinters) to log in over phone lines. These timesharing computers are like central hubs with spokes radiating to individual users. Although the computers generally can't connect to each other, these are the first common multi-user systems, with dozens of people online at the same time. As a result, timesharing pioneers many features of later networks, from file sharing to e-mail and chat. Typical 1960s users are a mix of business people, bank employees, students and researchers, and military personnel.
Online transaction processing makes its debut in IBM´s SABRE reservation system, set up for American Airlines.
Switched on in late October 1969, the ARPAnet is the first large-scale, general-purpose computer network to connect different kinds of computers together.
Until the late 1970s the momentum in computing has been all about togetherness – users first sharing computers, then linking over networks and soon networks of networks. But the rise of the personal computer from the mid 1970s makes something once unthinkable an everyday reality: a standalone computer for just one person. While the new machines can be connected to networks and to each other, a lot of users both at home and work don't bother. They run their own programs off of floppy disks. The “personal computer revolution” begins to push back against the centralized control of network system administrators, a trend that won't fully reverse until the 2000s and the emergence of “the cloud.”
In 1980 Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN physics laboratory creates Enquire, a networked hypertext system used for project management but with far greater ambitions. It seeks to categorize hyperlinks in a way that can be read by computers as well as people. Berners-Lee will go on to invent the World Wide Web, partly based on Enquire.I used to discuss what I read on religion and spiritualism with several elderly colleagues and friends. I had so many questions then. I had so many dreams about Gods and Goddess. People would appear in the dreams, whom I came to know later, were saints. It was so regular that I would go to bed with a pen or pencil and a notepad. I would immediately jot down the dream upon waking up. No one could explain these dreams. I frequented the temples daily besides worshiping at dawn and dusk.
Then I began to question myself when I saw things that disappointed me. The very Gods and Goddesses who were worshipped did not protect but instead harmed their devotees as in the case of my friends and their family members. Then men chosen to serve and carry out their duties at the temples and places of worship disappointed me with their attitude, bickering, and infighting. These drove me away from the temples and I began to engage in home puja more intently. But the confusion I had with regards to the happenings around me never went away. I was angry with people and the divine for I could not get answers. I became more confused day by day. That is when Lord Siva came in my dream and told me to lay off for a while. I did what I was told. I stopped all form of worship both at home and in the temples. I stopped reading. Coincidently or was it, it so happened that I was removed from the existing circle of friends and the community in this seaside town of Lumut and transferred to the megacity of Kuala Lumpur.
I went into hibernation as I did not have the avenue and space to conduct worship and prayers in privacy, sharing a room with a colleague in downtown Kuala Lumpur. 14 years went by as I took to and alternated between my work and my new family. Today when I reflect upon these times I realize and come to an understanding that it was a period where I had to discharge or shed off the skin, as they say, all the reading and bookish knowledge that I had picked up over the years. The vessel was being emptied.
When I was ready to be filled by the divine with his direct knowledge he came in a mysterious manner. It was a Saturday afternoon in 2001. My nephew who knocked on my door came with a mantra to deliver. As he called me over to my altar he asked that I sit opposite him. His body quivered as if something or someone had entered him. He asks to repeat a mantra. He asked me to get a rosary to help keep count. I started doing what I was told without question. He asked that I do not question its source. He told me it was in preparation to meet my guru soon.
After a few days, he came back with a painting of Lord Dhakshanamurthy to be kept and worshiped at my altar.
The first time I received the Vasudeva Mantra in the confines of my prayer room where the divine itself came into my home to deliver me and to deliver his mantra through my nephew, I was told not to question what was to take place. I did as asked. Many years on my nephew reveals what took place that evening and how he was instructed to be a tool to deliver the message and initiation into the Vasudeva mantra by agents of Agathiyar himself.
When I went for my very first Nadi reading the following year in 2002, I set in awe speechless listening to Agathiyar reveal about things that I did not know about myself. I did not interrupt asking questions or clearing my doubts. I did not infer nor try to comprehend and understand. Neither did I doubt a word being said. I received all that I was told without a second thought. When I met my first guru Supramania Swami as foretold, he revealed about things that Agathiyar had spoken of in the Nadi, although I had not breath a word about it to him. I sat shedding tears profusely during the whole time of that remarkable and memorable 5 hours in his presence.
When I was told to carry our remedies I set off happily doing it, not questioning or doubting even for a moment the authenticity of the words in the Nadi. I accepted that I was to blame and I had to fully take responsibility for my past actions and not ask for crooked ways to escape from the "punishment" waiting to be meted out to me. I had to untangle the knot that I had spun or the mess I had made. Agathiyar was not only showing me the mess that had got myself into but very gracefully was pointing to the means to clean it up. The Nadi revelation reminded me to clean up my act or face the consequences again and again. I would never come out of it stepping into bigger and more fulfilling things if I were to spend all my life and future births coming back just to clean the mess I made in the previous and earlier births. Agathiyar stood as a beacon at sea and a lighthouse on the cliff. He was there when danger sprang; he was there to guide this ship from danger. From being an Aircraft Marshall, who issues and guides through visual signals, a plane to take off the aircraft carrier, from the tarmac of the runway or helipad, he soon came to take control of the steering itself, piloting us while we laid back and watched, taking in the sights and sounds. He is steering us through the calm waters of the canals and waterways of Paris and Kerala. He is taking us for a ride, not in the negative sense.
Today he showed me a glimpse of the light. I used to see a dim light in the dark space before me as I close my eyes to sit in silence trying to concentrate, contemplate and meditate. It wasn't something to cry about. It would go away fading away within several minutes. But today at 3am it came on its own accord brighter exactly like the flame that appears once we light an oil lamp. No bigger in intensity or brightness, just a plain flame that arises from burning a wick in an earthen oil lamp. There was no agal, just the flame wavering in mid-air. It was there for several minutes and faded away. The irony is that I did not even try to see or envision it. As I am fond of cleaning, both the home and my gadgets, I was formatting my notebook and smartphone for the umpteen time. I had just shut down my notebook after staying awake for Windows to reset my OS. As I drew the blanket up and lay my head on the pillow, the flame shone on its own accord in my forehead.
Now I understand why our saints and elders always asked us to light a lamp.
- When Ramalinga Adigal stepped into his room at Sidhi Valagam for the very last time he had brought the lamp he had worshiped outside and told his followers to worship the flame, regarding it as the divine itself;
- When the divine recently came on through a devotee asking us to worship the flame that always was kept burning at ATM, he had us bring it to the center stage and contemplate on it as the divine;
- When Supramaniam Swami asked me to light a lamp when I returned to Malaysia telling me that he would come and go through the flame and observe us;
- When a cousin of my colleague picked up an uninvited guest while he went to ease himself during a booze session, the deity asked to head for a temple giving the directions too and merged with the light, leaving the cousin to recover;
- When Tavayogi told me Agathiyar comes as light, I did not know how it would be, whether as a spotlight shining, a car headlight beaming, or as the sun shining in our face.
I realize today it was not much of our effort but the magic touch of the masters or should I say the glance and grace of the masters that did wonders and brought wonders. Supramania Swami who told me he saw the light also said that we should try to prolong it. When I engaged in doing the asanas and pranayama exercises that Tavayogi taught me I experienced the prana expand within on the verge of bursting this body apart as in an expanding balloon. When I sit for worship I come out of it with a sense of calm, peace and bliss. There were many a time I wished that I could share it with others with just a touch. Today we hold hands and sit around the flame in prayers and we channel the cosmic energy within and pass it on to those who are less receptive giving them an opportunity to touch the state of Bliss too.
Today I understand pretty well why Rengaraja Desigar did not bless me when I asked of him in private on my very first visit to Ongarakudil. He told me then that "Coming here is itself a blessing." We are so hooked up on everything physical that we want a physical darshan of Erai, we want a guru to touch and initiate us, we want them to say out openly or announce in words that they bless us. Today I understand that being in a place, being in the presence of a guru in itself is the greatest blessing. It happens subtly, at times even without our knowledge, even without seeking, desiring or asking for it.
Going by the questions I take from others either face to face or the comments left on my blog or video uploads on YouTube, people what to know the benefit of a mantra or a technique before even deciding to follow or adopting it. Sadly they are so result-orientated. I never asked to know the results when I received a teecha or initiation or techniques.
Once we open our doors to the divine he works miracles in our lives. This blog is all about the mysterious and mystical workings of the Siddhas. On many occasions, they come through others. They create miracles. They speak at times. And they do appear to some too. Taking the hands and holding the feet of these gurus is the best option. And so Tavayogi showed me to Agathiyan. I cannot possibly judge him. Our laws do not apply to him. We cannot possibly know the final days and the end of a guru in the physical form. But we surely know where Agathiyar stands. As is mentioned in https://breathmeditation.org/the-hindu-tradition-of-breath-meditation
One of the most renowned yogis of twentieth century India was Paramhansa Nityananda. Some of his teachings were recorded, compiled and made into a book called The Chidakasha Gita. The following are his words on breath.
“It is the breath that man brings here at birth and it is the breath that man takes with him when he leaves this world.”He is in our every breath, moving us and moving in us. Let us take hold of him. Let us take hold of the breath.