A friend and devotee who was hooked on Nadi readings shared his frustrations when the Nadi reader kept postponing appointments, and opted to go public rather than do individual readings. My friend was so devoted to Agathiyar that he needed his daily dose of assurance from these readings. Frequenting these public readings, he picked up all the remedies given by Agathiyar, only to see himself spend more money on these, but with no results. When I told him to drop reading the Nadi, he realized his flaw and weakness and told me something that made sense and applies to all matters, that we are being overdosed. Indeed, as we look around us, there is an overdose of information, news, advice, practice, talk, preaching, etc. Our mind is stuffed with things that are not our concern.
We need to wean away from all that is irrelevant in our lives. We need to shed and drop all that we have come to carry with us along the way. We need to clear our home and abode, both the home and the mind.
I guess this is what Lord Siva did in coming to me in a dream in 1988, asking me to hold my questions to a later date, after all the reading and talk about God being compassionate and loving went contrary to what I saw as a bachelor, and witnessed happening in my circle of family and friends. He had me shed and drop all the learnings for the next 14 years. He had me drop the pain and suffering of seeing others go through it. After 14 years, and coming to read the Nadi, I came to know about Karma and how it affects us all. Agathiyar, in revealing about Karma, explained the reasons for pain and sorrow, which I had carried too, in watching them in pain and suffering back then, before the dream. If the dream brought a halt to it, back then, I regained my peace after the Nadi reading, having come to know the reason.
On meeting Tavayogi, Tavayogi had me drop my outward show of respect to him, stopping me from falling at his feet, and instead showed me to a pair of sandals symbolizing the Holy Feet of Agathiyar at the Peedham, where I met him for the very first time.
Tavayogi had me drop my admiration and attraction towards him even before they could grow into a monster and have me begin to worship him instead of Agathiyar, when he accepted my invitation and stepped into my home for the very first time. Instead of admiration and respect for him, he asked that I show it to Agathiyar.
After coming to read the Nadi and take up the call to worship the Siddhas, armed with a list of names of the Siddhas and Agathiyar's painting, getting initiated officially by Tavayogi, taking up rituals that Tavayogi gave me, picking up Yoga officially from Tavayogi, receiving youths to my home to take up Puja too, bringing these Puja into their homes, and the temples too, and begin charity, Agathiyar brought the shutters down. The time had arrived for me to travel solo. He had me live in solitude in the confines of my family home, and go within, just before the pandemic came on, which forced everyone to follow suit.
With the onset of the pandemic, the Nadi readers returned to India, thereby bringing a halt to the Nadi readings. He broke my attachment to looking towards the Nadi and looking forward to further readings for continuous guidance. He brought a halt to the feedings and the group puja too, which, according to my wife, was making us "high" and getting us addicted.
It was then each man for himself. It was a solo journey now.
Post pandemic, Agathiyar taught Yoga to those who came by. Deciding to leave my home, he asked that I bring his bronze statue into the home of another devotee. Although he had since then returned home, he taught me to let go of my attachment to him. Finally, he told me to even let go of him, asking for how else can we become one. He told me that the time had arrived to know my Atma and Sivam.
It is all about dropping and letting go, so that peace can come within us, envelop, and embrace us. Now, only after arriving there, I have come to realize how my father could spend his life living in peace and acceptance back then. In his prime, as he was from the Chettiar clan, wanting to scout and expand his family business of money lending, back then, he left his hometown of Kilasevalpatti in Sivaganga and went to Burma. After a short stint there, he traveled to Ceylon, and later saw himself come to Singapore, and finally settled in Malaya. When a string of bullets fired from a passing Japanese war plane missed him by inches, just as the saint from his clan, Pattinathar, shed all his wealth and took on the robe of a mendicant, the seed was planted in him that day. He began to let go, giving away his cash and properties, becoming a philanthropist. Having settled all the dues here, he left silently for India and spent years in an ashram with a guru. Many years later, the guru called him up and told him to return home, telling him that he had to settle his responsibilities. Though my father never went back, coming to think about it now, he lived the rest of his life in solitude with only us around him. Though his death appeared to be sudden to us, we soon came to figure that he knew it was coming. He asked that my mother iron his shirt and dhoti, and asked for a cup of coffee, things that he usually did himself. When my mother came back with the coffee, he was already seated on the floor in the Padmasana pose in a corner of my brother's house, and not in his usual chair beside the main entrance. When my mother placed her hand on his shoulder, he toppled over onto her lap. Calling for an ambulance, they pronounced him dead. It saddens me that I never got to know the name of his guru.
If my parents left behind their life savings of deeds and merits, my gurus left behind their life savings and treasures too. If Supramania Swami passed on his life's savings in the form of merits gained from his 40 years of Tavam, Tavayogi passed on his life savings, what Agathiyar tells me are treasures in the form of practices and rituals that I took up and adopted and made a part of my life. I guess I am well and fine and have made some headway on this journey, although only taken a few baby steps, because of their contributions. I am deeply grateful to my ancestors and their guardian angels, and my gurus and their lineage, too.