I finally did it after numerous attempts to sit and try meditation. I could actually go within for one solid hour at 4 a.m. this morning. It was truly blissful. It was my very first taste of meditation. Though it is only a fraction of what others could do, it was an achievement for me. The sense of having a body that ached and pained over the past few weeks vanished. The pranic body came to the forefront. The breath took the reign. I was then a witness, a watcher.
Looking back at history the emperors amazed more land and wealth by conquering other nations, hence expanding their hold on soil and people. It is no different in the spiritual path too. What starts with a humble dwelling or shed expands into a massive building in wanting to house devotees. What starts with feeding a few expands to a few hundred. When it is all about expanding and growing all around us, Tavayogi and Agathiyar taught us to shed our hold and let go of even all that he initiated us to do. We come stark naked and we leave naked. But midway we begin to accumulate many a thing. It is of course necessary to have a roof above us and a vehicle to move around, but what Agathiyar teaches us is to be prepared to let go voluntarily when the call comes.
We think that times are bad and are saddened that wars a fought and lives perish. But was there a time back in history when men did not go against each other? It is not that we are condoning wars but so many battles have been fought beginning with the mythical Kurukshetra war to this present day. History seems to repeat itself. It makes you think that if this could all be but a prolonged and extended dream. Is this Maya then? Is all this an illusion? The world only exists at least to us if only we are alive, right? Close our eyes and shut our ears the world around us disappears momentarily. But beyond this body and senses, there is a tenant or dweller we are told who was, is, and exists forever. We are asked to know it, him or her. Then we have arrived. This existence or sense of existence as Acharya Gurudasan put it is what was there, is here, and shall continue to exist. This existence took many forms in creation for its play. It then began to get attached to its role and believed it was the form and name it came by. It then finds it rather difficult to shed this identification with these. It suffers, and it enjoys through this identification. In dropping first all our hold on things material and as we move to drop even this identification with this gross body and label given to it, it returns to the state of existence. Now I understand why Tavayogi in having me drop my hold on him even before it could grow and Agathiyar in bringing me to shed my hold on all things after I had carried them out and gained the accompanying experiences and learned from them, asked that I drop even my love and attachment toward him. It is only when we step out of this identification of separateness that the merger takes place. We become one as Agathiyar says.