Swami Mitranand, in an interview, says that coming to Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati as a lad in his twenties, he stood in awe and admired the Swamiji. Then he realized that the Swamiji admired his masters, Swami Sivananda and Swami Tapovan Maharaj, and Adi Shankara. Tavayogi, forseeing the attachment and fondness that had sprouted in me, nipped it in the bud. He told me not to adore him but the Light or Jothi within him and everyone else that he recognizes as Agathiyar. He installed a fiber statue of Agathiyar, some 6 feet tall, moving away from the midget form that Agathiyar is always shown, portrayed, and installed elsewhere, in his old Kallar ashram, and later another similar statue in the new premises, some 2 kilometers away. When Agathiyar and later Lord Muruga asked me to build a temple for them, which initially excited me died down over time as I began to realize the truth. Today, Agathiyar appears to me as the Prapanjam. How can I depict her and restrain her within 4 walls? I guess this is why Lord Muruga told me that I shall show him "differently". Ramalinga Adigal, before his departure, is said to have brought out the oil lamp that he was worshiping in his room in the small hamlet Siddhi Valagam in Methukuppam and asked that henceforth those who had gathered and followed him worship this flame. The many depictions of the Hindu Gods and Goddesses and deities, I believe, are visions shown to the religious and spiritual masters before us that have come to be worship till now. As I am an artist, I have yet to draw Agathiyar, telling him that if I were to do so now, it would only be a replica of something I had seen existing currently as paintings, pictures, or statues. I asked that he come before me so that I can draw him as he shows himself to me. Coming through a devotee, he has promised that day shall come when he will present himself and Lobama shall be by him, not in a dream or a vision but right before our eyes, mine and my wife's. I await that day.
My daughter has picked up where I left off in art, and with the many YouTube videos to guide her, she does some pretty well drawings and paintings. Here is a painting of Agathiyar as the bronze statue in our home.
As he says that he is the Prapanjam, and besides telling me to drop his form and name, Agathiyar is now telling me to forget even him, asking me how else shall we be one. He has brought me to Advaita from Dvaita. The proponent of Advaita is Adi Shankaracharya. Reading "Sankara Digvijaya" by Madhava Vidyaranya, published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, we read the last moments of Adi Shankaracharya.
There came a concourse of Rishis and Devas with Brahma at their head, to lead this incarnate of Siva back to his pristine state in Sivaloka in the heaven of Kailasa. The assemblage of luminous chariots filled the heavenly paths. The celestials rained a heavy shower of mandara flowers over the region and sang the glory of Lord Siva, who had taken the form of a Sannyasin. "Thou hast accomplished the mission for which thou didst manifest in the world. Do come now into our midst in thy heavenly abode," addressed the Devas. Indra and his retinue now raised their voice in a chorus of hymns and began to rain flowers, while the great sannyasin, mounting the back of the divine bull Nandi, transformed himself into his real form as the Lord Siva with matted locks and the crescent moon. He attained his divine abode.
We just learned that Shankara was Lord Siva. Then how is it that he has an encounter with Lord Siva, who comes as an outcast while in Varanasi, much earlier in his life?
The party came across a hunter approaching them with his pack of four dogs. They thereupon ordered him to move away to some distance and give them way. But the hunter raised an issue. He asked: You are always going around preaching that the Vedas teach the nondual brahman to be the only reality and that he is immutable and unpolutable. If this is so, how has this sense of difference overtaken you? You asked me to move aside and make way for you. To whom were your words addressed, oh learned sir? To the body which comes from the same source and performs the same functions in the case of both a brahmana and an outcast? Or to the Atman, the witnessing consciousness, which too is the same in all, unaffected by anything that is of the body? When the truth is that the one universal and unblemishable spirit is shining alike in all bodies.
As Adi Shankara pronounced that the hunter was indeed Siva, the hunter disappeared from sight, and in his place appeared Lord Siva. He rejoices singing,
"The Sastra is of no use unless it is accompanied by the teacher's grace, grace is useless unless it generates awakening, and awakening is purposeless unless it gives the knowledge of the supreme truth."
The ultimate state, though difficult to come by, is "I am Siva, who has come for an experience. Those whom I meet are me too. I am fragmented and walking this earth in all these forms and names. I am in all."
Below are some of his songs rendered and sung beautifully.