When Agathiyar arranges for me to get the necessary herbal preparations to counter the bodily and internal changes that are to take place further within me, it reminded me of the days when he came to the assistance of Jnana Jothiamma back then beginning from 2011 when she first visited Kallar Ashram and met Tavayogi after reading my earlier websites. Initiating her personally Agathiyar took her hand on several pilgrimages and eventually had her locked up, staying in solitude in a house in a high-rise apartment in Chennai, though he had Siddhas drop by and knock on her door delivering herbal preparations to consume as he worked on her body too. Agathiyar does work in mysterious ways. It brings fond memories of my almost daily conversations with her through Skype. Jnana Jothiamma and I came to learn later that a pure diet and body are a prerequisite to the much-desired transformation that the Siddhas look forward to in seekers. Annie Besant in her talks on "The Laws of the Higher Life", the Theosophical Publishing House, 1903, writes,
"You must begin to purify the body before you attempt to practice any yoga worthy of the name. For real yoga is as dangerous to an impure and undisciplined body as a match to a cask of gunpowder."
"Here we see a consciousness that shapes bodies according to its needs, gradually refining them and bringing them under the control of the higher."
"The brain has to be changed, refined, improved, its connecting links fashioned and manufactured for the purposes of the expression of the higher consciousness."
"Here, in the jungle, they meditated making the brain tense and refined by the concentration of the mind, and restraint of lower faculties, fixed in rapt attention on the higher, with the consciousness working from above playing on the physical brain and tuning it to respond safely to the higher vibrations. Then it strove to draw the lower upwards (as Tavayogi says of our efforts that are only till the first two initial stages, Muladhara and Svadisthana) until it answered no longer to the stimuli of the outer world. This is a state of yoga - complete withdrawal of the consciousness from the Indriyas."
"Now making the mind steady, holding quiet the powers of the mind, the mind ceases to vibrate, and it becomes still - able to answer the vibrations coming from above."
She writes in "Avatara-s", The Theosophical Publishing House, 2002,
"... inasmuch as the body is an instrument we have to use, a certain treatment of the body is necessary so that we may turn our footsteps in the direction of the Path. The body alone will never take us to the heights we aspire to, yet to neglect it will make it impossible for us to attempt those heights at all. ... The body needs to be refined, to be improved, to be moulded into such a form and made of such constituents as may best fit it to be the instrument on the physical plane for man's highest purposes."
"... the purification of the dense body then, consists in a process of deliberate selection of the particles permitted to compose it; the man will take into it the way of food the purest constituents he can obtain, rejecting the impure and the gross."
For those intending to do so, she allays the fear and regret at having sent in gross impure food, telling us that,
"... by natural change the particles built into it in the days of his careless living will gradually pass away, at least within seven years - although the process may be considerably hastened."
Agathiyar in consoling Jnana Jothiamma and asking her to bear the pain and suffering told her that the cleansing had to be expedited and that her meat intake of the past sixty years that went on to compose her body had to be expelled out. She had to go through a grueling cleansing process where for instance she vomited 32 times in a day. He also told her that one had to shed seven layers of skin too. One wonders if this is the reason the Saints went into hiding, some as many as twelve years before reappearing in society, having undergone a massive transformation. It is said that their bodies would undergo severe changes and would be hideous to look at during this period of transformation, thus to avoid being ridiculed by society they stayed away. She told me that I would not possibly endure the process.
I sense that it is my turn to take on the challenges in store. I had approached Tavayogi during his first visit in 2005 asking to see him become "Light" just like Ramalinga Adigal and the Siddhas before him. But he very humbly told me that he had missed the boat as his age then was 69. But interestingly Siddha Dhanvanthri came to us and revealed that Tavayogi had attained the state of Light. Agathiyar later told us that he was doing his job in their realm and as such Agathiyar had to personally come to guide us these days. Lord Muruga too had to postpone sharing the art of attaining "Jothi" with Agathiyar though he was not known back then by the name, in return for the latter's courtesy, kindness, and help in providing food and shelter to the Lord who was known back then as Supramaniar so that he could carry on his austerities, Tapas and Tavam without any hindrance, just because Agathiyar was above sixty in age. He promised to come back for him in another birth and delivered as promised. Agathiyar too became Jothi like Supramaniar. Since Tavayogi told me he had missed the boat, I had my hopes on Jnana Jothiamma when she went through the bodily transformations. But Agathiyar in later years after her demise told me that as her body could not cope with the drastic changes her soul desired to give up. Will I withstand the test, now since the ball is in my court?
This is how the Siddhas work mysteriously in this realm of ours that has but only a thin veil separating both worlds. I can vouch for this as I had stepped into a portal in Palani during my very first visit in 2003 though I did not know it then. Only when I revisited Palani again in 2005, did I realize that I had walked into a portal back then. This was further confirmed on my last visit to Palani in 2016.
The Siddhas surely work in mysterious ways. All that is required of us is to believe and have faith in them.