It is 1.30am. I woke up to go to the loo. Getting back to bed, I could not sleep again. As I sat on my bed I took up my phone to draft what came to my mind or rather the knowledge that showered as raindrops. It is a wonder.
Everything including us is changing before our very eyes. It is just that some changes are pretty obvious and are seen while others are not that obvious. Though time-lapse cameras these days capture the magic, we do not see the flower bloom petal by petal until the next moment we walk up to it and see it in full bloom. It is a wonder.
Water that springs from the earth, flows on the surface of the earth, forming water bodies, evaporates into steam and vapor and is lifted in the air to become clouds and showers as raindrops or pours down to the earth in torrents, to flow again and seep back into the earth, to restart its journey again. It is a wonder. It was real for that moment to our vision, our touch, and taste. The next instant it is no more its true self. Where did it go? It is a wonder.
Swami Vishnudevananda writes on how his perception of the holy river Ganges and outlook on life changed instantaneously by the mere gaze of Swami Sivananda, looking towards him while standing on its bank performing Arathi to Mother Ganga, in ‘MY YEARS WITH THE MASTER’ at http://www.sivanandaonline.org.
Before leaving (the Ashram), I went down the Ganga where it was the custom of the Ashram to do Aarati (waving of lights) every evening. All the devotees and inmates of the Ashram assembled by the banks of the Ganga to watch Master (Swami Sivananda) perform this evening worship. I was sceptical. I was of a scientific temperament and knew that a river is only water, H2O-imagine worshipping H20!! But as I stood there and watched Master waving the lights, I saw the river become a mass of flowing lights. At that instant the river assumed a divine flow, a manifestation of the Grace of the Lord. Master turned and looked at me and in my mind I heard his message, “God pervades everything; this too is His Special Form.” This entirely changed my outlook on life.
Similarly, a cell fusing with another, multiplies to form a mass tagged as an embryo that becomes a fetus and a child who grows to become a kid, a teen, a young adult, an adult in his prime, and ages gracefully, and decays, breaking down into the very elements that came together in the past. Where is the aged in the young? Where is the youth that once ran around in the old? Where is the oil in the seed? Where is the ghee in the milk?
One transforms into another, losing and shedding its identity, form, and name to take on another and losing that too to become something else. It goes on and on. Is this world Maya, an illusion too? Is this world then for real? Are we then real? Is this body too unreal then? We and everything else are made of Tattvas or the building blocks as in the infrastructure in our homes, the lighting, plumbing, and air-conditioning, and all the movable items that we bring in later. If these Tattvas are not for real too, so how can we and all else be. How can something changing continuously be real?
If the world does not exist then we do not too. If we do not exist then the world does not too. If this world and the body are unreal how can the stories, events, and experiences be real? No wonder Agathiyar exposes it all as unreal in his Agathiyar Gnanam and Agathiyar 12000. This might be the reason he does not want us to go snooping around to know his origin for we would most likely get disappointed and frustrated. So is it with the sensitive topic of diet and meat intake. Nithilan Dhandapani shares the meanings of Bhogar's songs that could be seen as controversial by many.
What then is real? What then does Agathiyar's statement mean that he was in the Prapanjam and that the Prapanjam was in him? What then does his statement mean that he was in us and we in him too? What is real then is the soul matter. It was, is, and shall be forever. Time and space cannot contain it. Now I understand why Tavayogi said that the soul cannot be caged. I was a soul that assembled a dwelling from the elements of my parents, grew within my mother's womb, and entered this world, crawling, walking, running, and eventually returning to the elements. So why am I so egoistic and holding on to all things impermanent including this body? Should not I stay as a witness, the watcher? Indeed I am, I was and I shall be forever the watcher.
Writing this post upon awakening, it is not me but the watcher keying in these words to bring an understanding to me and others. Indeed each post educates me too. I am learning too. I am only a tool in the hands of the watcher. It is both a self-study and a study of the self. Just as the flower blooms, the self opens up to reveal the knowledge that it holds. Just as Agathiyar in his recent memo said the 1000-petaled Chakra Sahasrara opens up, it taps into the Prapanjam, the storehouse of knowledge, that turns into ambrosia and drips within bringing joy and bliss in knowing the Self and all of creation. It rejoices in being able to differentiate the truth from the false. In dropping the latter what then remains is the truth. We stand as the truth. Now I understand why Agathiyar told us to carefully sieve through all the happenings and sieve out Maya to arrive at the truth.
What is real is only these passing moments in time and space that man has desperately tried to peg. Though these fleeting moments are lost in time-space, the Siddhas have the means to search and connect these moments on the timeline with our present lives. They collect, assemble, and release these stock photos and old vintage footage as a short movie for our preview and review once when we go for a Nadi reading and again when the soul is liberated from being held captive by this body, our likes and dislikes, our ego, and habits. Those who miss these two moments, they get to view it as a full-length movie shown before them at the moment of death and are allowed to work towards amending and changing the course of their lives in another birth.
Everything and every knowledge is buried deep within us. Now I understand why the saints did nothing after realizing the truth. Now I understand why Agathiyar has me do nothing too. Like Bhogar's songs that could flare up controversies, Nithilan Dhandapani reads from the radical and earth-breaking songs of Sivavakiyar and brings their inner meanings to us.