THE SOUL STORY

P.Karthigayan says that the soul is the bridge between the body and the spirit. If the body is the vehicle, then the soul can be considered as the executor and the spirit akin to the commander - in - charge. It comes with several well-defined and established desires to be experienced in the physical realm. These desires arise at the soul level before it sees daylight through the physical and mental faculties that it takes on to establish, work out and experience these desires. Along the way, it takes on added desires prompted by the senses and its surroundings, often losing its sense of direction and forgetting the course it is supposed to take. It becomes deviated from its original course. Then there are other's desires shoved on us. The soul takes on all the impressions in life.

The Siddhas through the Nadi come to remind us of our objectives in taking birth and in life. They come to take the rein and lead us, taking control of the situation, often saving us from plunging further into the abyss of darkness. Agathiyar always tells us that he only sees our souls. In the event, we stand before him for guidance, he scans through us and communicates with our soul. He respects each soul and its decisions. Even if we desire a thing or a solution, he engages with our soul and only agrees to bless our undertaking, after seeking to know the desire of the soul within. 

It is only when we act separate from our souls that we lend ourselves into trouble. The senses veil the soul. We hardly connect to our souls. We do not know exactly what our soul desires or other souls for the matter. We establish what we want in life without having even an inkling of what our soul seeks. We are firmly attached to our senses and fall a victim to its ploy. Thomas Moore in his book "Care of the Soul", HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, says, "It's easy for consciousness to become lodged in the material world and to forget spirituality" so the soul then becomes neglected, for the physical body takes precedence and importance. The ego taints the soul and drives it away from its objectives. In doing charity too do we not see a slight empowering of the ego that we are the doer? If one were to realize that even the money that he earns comes from the benignness of the Lord, then the philanthropist would just give and keep giving without thinking that the aid was from him.

In "The Soul of Man", Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, Swami Ramakrishnananda, describes the journey of the soul, from being an ordinary person to become a caring person and later turning divine in nature.

Thus the man of charity gives up all his philanthropists works as he detects his blind ego behind all his actions, he dives deeper and deeper within himself in search of the lord of infinite love, and never stops till he realizes him in the region of his heart.

The only time the ego leaves us is when we are asleep and arises upon awakening to the daily routine of activities. The ego in the first three centers leads man towards fulfilling his aspirations in the material world. Swami Ramakrishnananda enlightens us explaining that the ego that resides in the three lower centers or chakras as man, when brought to be seated in its true seat in one's heart chamber, realizes itself as the soul and makes room for God to come within and share the seat. Coming into the heart chakra he opens up to the needs of others and the call of the divine that takes an equal seat with him in his heart's chambers. Overcoming the senses, the ego that maketh the man now realizes itself to be the soul.

Swami Ramakrishnananda explains further that all of man's previous energies which he used to dissipate before in vain search after pleasure gather themselves up in the third center or Manipura and man is gradually lifted up towards the region of the heart. He quotes from the Katha Upanishad 6.16, "Thus we learn from our ancient sages one hundred and one canals have emanated from the heart. One of them has gone beyond the cerebrum piercing through it. When a man goes up by that he comes immortal. Other canals going in various directions cause repeated births and deaths." This mystery can be reflected in simple terms as does Lord Krishna speak in the Gita 7.3, "One man out of thousands struggles to attain salvation, and out of many such great men who struggle to be saved, one knows my true nature."

Swami Ramakrishnananda writes further that in the heart alone the unmanifested being of infinite power manifests himself as soul and ego.

In the recess of the heart are both soul and God for so the Vedas declare. (Brahma sutras 1.2.3.)

Tavayogi very aptly wrote the following when I asked him to autograph his book "Andamum Pindamum". "Aandavan Uraigindra Edam Thangal Ullam, Athuve Payanathin Thodakkamum, Mudivum" when translated meant, "Erai lives in your heart, from where the journey starts and ends too."

Ramana is quoted in https://hridaya-yoga.com/hridaya-yoga-articles/what-is-hridaya-the-spiritual-heart/.

According to Ramana Maharshi, the great Advaita master, “The godly atom of the Self is to be found in the right chamber of the heart, about one finger-width’s distance from the body’s midline. Here lies the Heart, the dynamic Spiritual Heart. It is called hridaya, is located on the right side of the chest, and is clearly visible to the inner eye of an adept on the Spiritual Path. Through meditation you can learn to find the Self in the cave of this Heart. What is essential in any sadhana (spiritual practice) is to try to bring back the running mind and fix it on one thing only. Why then should it not be brought back and fixed in Self-attention (to this feeling of ‘I’)? That alone is Self-enquiry (atma vichara). That is all that is to be done!”

Sages like Ramana Maharshi affirm that the awareness of the Supreme Infinite cannot be localized at a certain place in the body and that in the state of divine expansion, of diving into the divine ocean of Consciousness, we can no longer speak of a head, arms, body, and other areas. However, Ramana says that in the moment of returning to the consciousness of the physical body, when we regain awareness of our physical body, a memory endures of that state and it appears to be connected to the area of the physical heart, in the middle of the chest, slightly to the right. That Divine Infinity can easily be found again by centering in the region of the heart.

When we withdraw the senses (pratyahara) and center ourselves in the chest area, looking for the deepest aspects of our being, we start to search “the interior” to the detriment of “the exterior.” In this way, we pass from the usual “conquering” attitude of the mind to a receptive, contemplative disposition. It is a kind of surrender, which implies lucidity, discernment, vigilance.

“God is born in the Heart and the Heart is born in God,” as the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said. This vision leads us to understand that there is nothing to be searched in the interior or exterior. God is already there. In Christian spirituality, and for the Fathers of the Desert, the Heart is not simply a physical organ, but is the spiritual center of the human’s being, his deepest and truest self, or the inner shrine, to be entered only through the sacrifice of individuality, in which the mystery of the union between the divine and the human is consummated. “The intellect of the Heart” does not function by formulating abstract concepts and does not reach conclusion through deductive reason. It understands Divine Truth by means of immediate experience or intuition. In the domain of the Heart, most of us are somewhat or entirely illiterate. The Heart knows through surrender, trust, and joy. Coming back to the Heart, all the vain noise of the world is quieted….The Heart is a sanctuary of silence. There, in the most sacred intimacy and solitude of the “cave of the Heart”, the moods of individuality fade away and the consciousness of unity is revealed. There, the world and man are one. So, in a paradoxical way, the solitude and intimacy of the Heart reveals the essential Unity of all existence.

Swami Ramakrishnananda writes, "For what is God? God is bliss." He quotes Sri Ramakrishna.

As long as man remains outside the lotus of his heart he has to wander in search of pleasure in vain, but once he goes inside it and tastes the nectar of divine communion all his wanderings cease once for all. 

Realizing God in the heart he is in a state of bliss. "What indescribable bliss comes to him when his soul is in direct communion with God!", he asks. He moves to the next chakra.

He finds his true father, true mother, a true friend and true lover in him, and can never turn his eyes away from him. He has found out his true home at last. His mind cannot think of anything else at that time. His mouth cannot talk anything else than of his beloved. He has gone up to the fifth center, the Visuddha chakra, or the center of absolute purity (that of singleness or oneness with the divine, occupied by the oneness or idea of God and talks about only him and nothing else, where God remains eternally bound to him).

Swami Ramakrishnananda explains that when once he goes to this center he has no inclination to come down but only go further up to the sixth chakra Ajna chakra where he sees God directly before him. He is said to be fully merged in love with his divine, that only two factors can bring them apart now - if his previous karma drags him down or unless he has previously determined to come down.

Only when we take several knockings after falling for the lure of this world we turn our sight to the divine seeking solace and solution. "Just as the mind digests ideas and produces intelligence, the soul feeds on life and digests it, creating wisdom and character out of the fodder of experience," Moore adds. "The soul needs an intense full-bodied spiritual life as much as and in the same way that the body needs food." This is what Agathiyar, Ma and Aiya have been repeatedly telling us too.

As Moore writes further, "Renaissance Neoplatonist said that the outer world serves as a means of deep spirituality and that the transformation of ordinary experience into the stuff of soul is all-important", the soul comes to learn and grow from its experiences. The spirit of God is in all things and we learn to pick up the essence of these individual spirits in his creation. Having collected sufficient experience for it to grow, the soul then it shifts into a silent mode contemplating on all that it had absorbed and begins to digest them while in solitude. Having done with the absorption, it takes on a new perspective of the world and returns to address the world and its issues from a different angle, and to educate others on true living, sharing the wisdom gained from its period of hibernation and silent contemplation. They become gurus in the eyes of others. This is applicable to those who come to a realization of the impermanence of life. For those who fail to accept aging and death, they are confronted with the slow and life-changing disabilities that old age brings on. As Moore says "Growing old is one of the ways the soul nudges itself into attention to the spiritual aspect of life", the soul reminds them then that life is to come to an end. "If one does not move one's soul life further during one's physical life it is a great pity", writes Dr. Zhi Gang Sha in his book "The Power of Soul", Atria Paperback, NY, 2009. 

"In one life you may learn many lessons and you will gain some wisdom from them. In hundreds of lifetimes, you will learn many lessons but you will gain much more wisdom. Your soul will gain more and more intelligence. A soul has intelligence in all its lifetimes. A soul has wisdom and knowledge in all its lifetimes. Your soul is the greatest resource for your intelligence. To realize this is the first step. To receive soul intelligence, wisdom and knowledge to transform your life is the second step. To develop your soul intelligence, wisdom and knowledge further is the third step."

These were told to us too recently. Lord Muruga asks that we open the heart and let him in. Agathiyar told to abstain from the institutions, groups, and its related activities and dwell within, telling me it was enough. Agathiyar helps us connect with our souls. He brings the soul's wants and desires to the forefront expecting us to listen to the soul talk to us. Each soul has come to play its part in his divine lila. The divine never messes in its life and its decisions nor in the execution of its actions. There is a piece of very intelligent machinery in place that executes this divine play or lila. R.Venu Gopalan writes in his "The Hidden Mystery of Kundalini", Heath Harmony, 2001,

After completing the cycle of all the eighty four lakh yonies the soul takes rest in the purest heart of the Lord himself. To keep the soul from accumulating the burden of piousness and sin, Lord himself decides on the concept of repaying back all that is taken and all that is to be given so that when the soul rejoins with him it is pure.

For those few who have a calling or desire to break asunder the veil of illusion, they are inclined towards a life of worthwhile living, making attempts to break the Maya that envelopes the soul. P. Thirugnanasambandhan in his "The Concept of Bhakti" published by the University of Madras, 1971, leads us into an understanding of the soul and its evolvement or rather detachment from all previous actions and the thought of being the doer.

The soul inspired by the highest goal of communion with God passes gradually from one stage of spiritual enlightenment to another. Starting from the first rung of the ladder, as the servant of God, the soul practices Carya, consisting in external duties such as cleaning and lighting God's temples, adorning the images of God with garlands, praising God and attending to the needs of devotees. For these deeds the soul is rewarded with Saloka or dwelling in the region of God.

From being a servant, the soul in the Kriya stage becomes a son of God, and renders more intimate service than before, such as invoking God's presence, serving him with love and praise and other acts of service like Sivapuja, besides attending to the burning of incense, collecting flowers etc. the reward for service of this type is Samipya or dwelling near God.

In the next stage of Yoga, the Sakha Marga the soul becomes the friend of God and thus is nearer God. Withdrawing its senses from the material objects, it concentrates on the contemplation of Siva. This is rewarded by Sarupya, which is to have the same form as Siva but not the essence.

The soul has to progress further in the Jnana Marga to reach the final goal of Sayujya from where there is no return. Sayujya is a state of union of God and soul, a mysterious union of either, so that God and soul exist with their respective attributes, the former as the source of bliss and the latter as the recipient of the same. 

When it is time for him to depart, the soul that has gathered all these memories leaves its body, its memories now shelved as Akashic records. The spirit seeks out its parent house or source from whence it came. 

When I told Tavayogi of my desire to see Agathiyar and Ramalinga Adigal in the early days of my tutorship to him, he told me that they shall easily appear but asked me if that was what I wanted implying that there is more to asks for. Recently out of gratitude for Agathiyar I told him that I desire to come back again and again to serve him. He put a similar question to me, "Is that what you want ?" that made me reflect in silence. He implies that there is more to this journey. This reminds me of the story of the three seekers who made it to the walls of the kingdom of God. The first seeker grabs the ladder perched against the wall and climbs it hurriedly in eagerness and anticipation of what he would see beyond the walls. Once on top of the ledge of the wall, his face lights up and he plunges over the side of the wall into the inner courtyard, without even looking back at the congregation that had by now gathered behind him. The next seeker climbs the ladder and reaches the top. He exclaims in joy and shouts out to the others what he sees over the wall. He too takes the plunge. The third seeker goes up the ladder, perches on the top, tells the rest about what he saw, disappears beyond the wall only to return to the folks he left behind with the news and his experience while in the kingdom of God.

Swami Ramakrishnananda retells this story as told by Sri Ramakrishna. Four friends determined to search for the land of bliss came across a very high wall, that checked their onward course. Nevertheless, they were determined to scale it. They secured some iron spikes that they drove fast onto the sides of the wall, one above the other, forming a ladder. The first to climb the wall was determined to come down the ladder after seeing what was beyond the walls. But on arriving at the top he went into a state of ecstasy and jumped over the wall. The second and third men shared the same fate too. The last man to climb saw the land of bliss, something that he had toiled for in all his many past births, although he had a great desire to jump in too joining his friends, he remembered suddenly the hopeless plight of many others searching for this holy land. He resisted the temptation to jump over the wall but instead returned to carry the good news of his discovery of the land of bliss to the rests of the yearning souls. He continued to work for the spiritual well being of humanity, even working for the handful few ungrateful souls who inflicted misery upon them. Which seeker would we want to be?

These days Agathiyar tells us often that it is all his play. Accept and move on, he says. Go with the flow as Lao Tzu says. Just be the watcher and not the participant unless directed by the divine to intervene, something Agathiyar is telling me to do too these days.