THE DREAMLAND

Are you ready for a shocking statement made by Agathiyar in passing, just as Tavayogi does? Agathiyar told us in describing Gnanam that Puja too was Maya. Previously, he told us the visitations, too, were a play of Maya. Previously, in 2005, Tavayogi spoke on Maya in passing, telling me I was living in it when he visited my home for the very first time. Lord Muruga came post-pandemic and asked me to watch out for Maya, which was playing a game. 

Anita Moorjani, in her book, "What If This Is Heaven", Hay House, 2016, says that "Nothing can change these destructive patterns until we break open the myths and reveal the lies that have been informing our thoughts and beliefs." 

Having us come to read his Nadi, come to worship him, and walk his path, teaching us the rituals; having us take up Yogam, and now bringing us to the threshold of Gnanam, he destroyed all that we held dear and precious. Just like Saint Nakkiran in his Vinayagar Agaval begged to see the day of reckoning, where the truth is made known, that this body is but a fortress of brick and dust; just as Poet Bharathi asks if this was all a dream, these days it just seems so. I see only fleeting moments, moments rolling by. The Siddhas are dismantling this dream house that we have built from mud and water, and bringing it down, brick by brick, all that we held to religiously, the thoughts, the opinions, the beliefs, etc. From ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Just as the Buddhist monks painstakingly create beautiful Mandalas for hours only to worship and later destroy them, this very home in which we worship him, and this very body that becomes an abode for him, too, perishes to dust. Lord Muruga, coming during the height of the divine play or Lila, warned us of the game by Lord Siva, Agathiyar, and Indran, and to tread carefully. It was all to be a test, just as they had tested me previously numerous times. Eventually, we are left naked and empty, at times confused and lost.

So what is their game? They turn our attention to the next phase and journey that awaits us in another subtle realm. Yogi Ramsuratkumar, on his deathbed, consoles his followers that he could do a better job in the subtle realm. Agathiyar tells us that Tavayogi was now doing Agathiyar's work in his realm, while Agathiyar comes down to guide us. Now I can understand why Agathiyar told the family of a famous Nadi reader in Chennai not to carry out any last rite rituals, as according to Agathiyar, he was meditating in Pothigai after he left his mortal body behind. Agathiyar, in helping me rid my fear of death, told me it was another journey. I guess life goes on, but in a different form, medium, and space and arena. All the souls we once knew will be ushering us back, just as Tavayogi, in bringing me to the abodes of the Siddhas in the jungles, used to point out and say that the Siddhas are ushering and welcoming us home by showering flower petals. He should know, for he had spent half his life in the jungles. The woods, forest, and jungles, too, must have resonated to a different tune for the 69-year-old Tavayogi, for it drove him to take big steps and walk ahead as if he was possessed, never turning back to see if I was keeping up. 

In William J. Peters book, "At Heaven's Door" by Simon & Schuster, 2022, we come across Michelle saying that she did not understand that her infant son Ben, who had died, was growing up in spirit. She says when Ben comes to her now, he is a 24-year-old. If I had read the story of the Nayanmar Sundarar, who brought back to life a child many years later, after he was swallowed by a crocodile, Tavayogi, in our travels together, showed me the said river and temple as we passed through the town of Avinashi. The child walked out of the crocodile's mouth alive as a slightly older kid! How could this be possible when we would generally figure that once eaten, he would have been digested? Agathiyar, too, in consoling my daughter who was worried that others were feeding her child meat, told her to let it be, for he shall change it. Guru Raghavendra is said to have changed the meat that a Nawab brought before him with the intention of humiliating him into flower petals. How is that possible? Ain't all this a dream then? Only in dreams do the laws that function in this world that we know of, do not hold water. Have we begun to believe this dreamland to be real and concrete? 

This journey of mine that began with my very first Nadi reading in 2002 and taking up the call to come to the worship of the Siddhas, was fast-forwarded with the coming of my gurus in physical form, who, through Kriya, helped me reach out to the Siddhas. They then had us carry out practices that, if we are not alert enough, might chain us for life. They later move us to loosen our hold on all things material and sound and move up the ladder into the higher vibrational realms. They had us tap into their energies and, through Yoga helped me reach within, tapping into the very creative energy in all of us. The Siddhas have made me shed seeing form and image, beginning with themselves and now with others. Today, I see myself and others as light, energy, and vibration, in various degrees of intensity, as expounded by many masters before us. 

The Atma or soul is basically vibration, we are told. The intensity of this vibration varies from person to person. Man or Manithan, in working towards dropping his "I" moves to become Punithan, a state that Ramalinga Adigal mentions in his songs that he attained, and that which Agathiyar recently told me I have reached, too. Man then progressively makes his way up to higher states of being. In doing so, his Atma's state of vibration intensifies. It is said that the whole village could sense the arrival of Gautama Buddha from a distance as the Buddha emitted such a halo and aura of energy over a vast distance. Such was the intensity of his Atma. When the Siddhas came down to be present with us during the Homam at AVM in 2016, only Mataji Sarojini Ammaiyar sensed an intense vibration akin to the ground shaking underneath her seat. She shared this with us, not knowing what it was, asking if others felt it too. Agathiyar confirmed a couple of days later in a  Jeeva Nadi reading for a devotee read by Tavayogi that the Siddhas did arrive in our home that day. That vibration was shown to and felt only by Mataji. When a devotee asked Agathiyar what his true form was, he questioned her back, asking what she felt during Puja and while doing charity. She told him it was a great sense of bliss and a tremendous feeling or Unarvu within. Agathiyar acknowledged the blissful feeling or Unarvu, the vibration that they felt in chanting his name, and the vibration that everyone receiving from them was emitting, as himself.

Space resonates. The whole of nature resonates in wonder and beauty and sings a song and a tune. The breeze blowing gently as in a Bansuri flute; the rustle of the leaves as in tapping a Kanjira; the flowing waters trying to keep up with the Tala or rhythmic cycle; even when it rains, it is the sound of music, with the thunderclaps in the distance adding drum beats to the melodious music of the rain. 

Temples and places of worship are spaces with a certain resonating vibration. I heard the walls of Agathiyar's sanctum at Agasthiyampalli resonate as I chanted the Pranavam AUM. I felt the walls of Dhakshanamurthy's shrine at the top of the small flight of stairs at the Big temple in Tanjore resonate as I sat in the tight space before him, chanting the Pranavam AUM. I felt similar vibrations that overcame me, fell me to the floor, and had me crying in ecstasy at both the Dhakshanamurthy shrine in the corridors of the Madurai Meenakshi temple and again at his sannadhi at the Ekambareswarar temple. This happened beyond my control in all the temples and caves I went to, eventually. The beat of drums, musical notes, and Kavadi Chindhu songs can bring those who are susceptible to the drum beats and vibrations to dance spontaneously, while in others, its vibrations could open up heaven and bring deities down to vocalize and bless those gathered.  Underlying all these are vibrations, unseen but felt by some.

In the documentary series "Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds - Part 1 - Akasha," we are told that,

The ancient Vedic teachers taught Nada Brahma, the universe is vibration. The word Nada means sound or vibration. The vibratory field is at the root of all true spiritual experiences and scientific investigations. It is the same field of energy that saints, Buddhas, yogis, mystics, priests, shamans, and seers have observed by looking within themselves. It has been called Akasha, the Primordial Om, .. and a thousand other names throughout history...... In the ancient traditions of the East, it has been understood for thousands of years that all is vibration....You never see anything in its totality because it is made up of layer upon layer of vibration and it is constantly changing, exchanging information with Akasha.... everything is connected to the one vibratory source.

So why come along and put us through this game, starting practices that we become addicted to and tend to hold on to for life, only to come along later in life and have us lose our hold on them? A man seeking spiritual elevation and emancipation would first have to begin to work on dissolving his past Karma, which is an attachment, unknown to us until the Siddhas reveal it to us. He then has to build positive merits and virtues to free himself from the grip of the gross and slowly bring his vibration to a state of purity, subtleness, and fineness. 

Annie Besant, in her talks on "The Laws of the Higher Life", Theosophical Publishing House, 1903, draws two distinct divisions of people and their brains. 

"The coarser vibrations of the lower world and those adapted to it are one. The others are those who are in the front of evolution and of a subtler nature..."

She explains further that, 

"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 we see a consciousness that shapes bodies according to its needs, gradually refining them and bringing them under the control of the higher."

Annie Besant 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. 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, whence the Siddhas shall come to give a hand) 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, 

"... in as much 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."

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."

If Annie Besant wrote that one has to prepare both the brain and body well ahead before engaging in Yoga, Agathiyar, Patanjali, Kagabunjandar, and Bhrigu guided me through the Aasi Nadi readings beginning in 2005, on diets to prepare my body to receive Tavayogi's Yogic practice in 2007. Tavayogi set the ball rolling by giving me what Agathiyar calls a treasure in the form of certain Yogic Asanas and Pranayama techniques. Even before I received them, Agathiyar mysteriously passed on a Vasudeva mantra in 2001, which I came to learn later was supposed to break and clear the existing knots within the body. It was only after I was confronted by the energies that arose beginning in 2007, as a result of these practices, some three years later, in 2010, that I was made aware of the extent and potential of these practices and diets. Agathiyar came to purge my body of toxins accumulated over the years, over the next few years. In 2022, he had given me a taste of how the body would lie dead upon a pyre or in a coffin. He gave me insights into the workings of the Kundalini, which, according to Patanjali, was activated way back in 2007. My Kundalini awakening came to pass lightly, unlike what is written about it, since I was blessed to come under the wings, shadow, and care of the Siddhas from day one. They gifted me the practice and saw through its results and the flowering. 

Just as Agathiyar told my daughter that he would change whatever meat her daughter was fed, Agathiyar told Jnana Jothiamma that it would be tough and long, though not impossible to bring the change within her, as she had consumed meat for all those years. I was spared as I had been a vegetarian for some 28 years now. Just as we are emptied of the past diet, we are emptied of our past and present, and are being prepared to become vessels to contain that which the divine has to offer us. 

I have come to realize that existence is all about creating spaces and containing the life forces that are inherent all around, and defining the undefinable with languages and words. Beginning with civilized man building a home for himself and later places of worship and learning, etc., it is all about protecting himself from nature's forces in the first case, to creating spaces to pull in and contain nature's forces in the second, and dispersing his knowledge to the masses in the last case. The human body, too, serves a similar purpose. The Siddha path that is pointed out by a guru brings us to explore these forces in nature. Otherwise, we would be mere existences living in the world of Siva, keeping faithful to Sariyai. Soon, we explore the rituals in Kriyai that bring down these energies into our homes, and we stand witness to explosive moments and encounters with them. In exploring Yogam, these energies are now experienced within our bodies. While one can be shown and brought to Sariyai and Bakti by one's parents, shown and brought to perform Kriya by one's guru, Yogam is a disciplined practice that has to be undertaken by oneself after learning face-to-face with one's guru. Gnanam shall then surface when he awakens the sleeping and dormant creative energy that resides in him after bringing on his creation and existence. Henceforth, the guru helps him break all the bunds and bring down the walls for this energy to travel further. This energy will clear the part and remove blockages and consume the poisons, bringing the flowering to take place at the Sahasrara. Finally, in bringing oneself to sit quietly, these energies are transformed even further from the gross to the astral and finally the subtle. It is in stillness that God speaks. It is the stillness that is the ultimate goal. Anything else and everything else that relies on a medium, be it a sacred text, a holy priest, a saintly guru, is but an illusion or Maya expounding to us. Seek the truth within each of us, for our soul or Atma, shall not lie to us. Gnanam or divine revelations dawn from within. We will come to know what we are not. In dropping all this, what remains is Sivam. Dropping all the sheath, he comes to realize he is Sivam. Maya and all its creations dissolve right before our eyes, that instant of realization. This is what Agathiyar mentions that after knowing him, one has to know the Atma and Sivam. Know that they are all One. We come to understand and realize that we are one and that we are the one. Everything settles down as we rest in peace. We can exist amid the turmoil. Unperturbed, we stand watch as the guardian and witness. We become Jeevan Muktas until the final calling comes to leave the gross behind and merge in the subtle.