When I ask myself why I cannot shut my eyes and close my ears to others' problems, I come to know that that is my very character, that of an Aquarius, who tends to care for others. If I were deeply moved and saddened as a bachelor in the eighties, seeing the sufferings of God-fearing relatives and friends around me suffer and in grief, and questioned if God was indeed compassionate, loving, and kind as we were told and read and heard, Lord Siva coming in a dream asked to shelf my questions to a later date, made me take a break for my own good, saving me from turning cuckoo. Fourteen years later, in 2002, Agathiyar, in revealing my Karma or past deeds in my Nadi reading, made me understand why they had to suffer. When many came before Tavayogi in 2005 and poured out their grievances, he too told them that their sufferings were because of Vinai or past deeds. He did not spell out individual solutions or remedies, but instead told them that the solution lay with the Siddhas and asked that they worship them. We read further, from Velayutham Karthigeyan Aiya's blog, "Siththan Arul", which carried the Nadi revelations of many revealed through the famed Nadi reader of Chennai, the late Hanumathdasan over some forty years, that the Siddhas approached Lord Brahma and appealed and pleaded that he should show some mercy on his subjects. It is said that since then, the Siddhas have begun to document each individual's birth and journey, including their past, present, and future, as well as the remedies in the Nadi.
Fine. Now that they have come to worship the Siddhas and sought to understand the reasons for their dilemma, and carried out the given remedies to end their sufferings, why do they still suffer?
After Agathiyar came as a bronze statue into my home in 2010, he told me that all those who stood at my door were sent by him and asked that I let them in. Indeed, many who came to know that he was here as the statue rang my doorbell and asked to see him. When Agathiyar told me that he would momentarily come within me while my soul enters his statue, I was puzzled. But soon he began to come just as told and helped them by performing miracles. As my wife and I were uneasy with it, he stopped sending them over, respecting our wishes. But one fine day, as I stood before his statue, he asked me where I would go if he were to shut his ears? I knew then that he wanted me to listen. When we backed off on our earlier stand, he began to send many over again.
I have come to accept that the Siddhas are indeed compassionate, loving, and kind, and come forward to help all those in misery, often in miraculous ways. While many returned in joy, I am deeply saddened that there seems to be no end to suffering for some devotees of the Siddhas, though.
If the initial obstacles are supposedly due to our past Karma, we are told that the movement of the planets too play a role in placing obstacles and derailing the benefits and rewards of our efforts. They tend to stall the goodies at times and rain bullets at other moments. So in these trying moments, one might ask, why the need to worship?
If everything was fated, charted, and destined, and we receive what we deserve, both good and bad, and are bound to live it out, why the need to worship?
This brings us back to a moment in the past when a devotee asked why the need to praise the Siddhas? Agathiyar, in asking me to carry out Siddha Puja on Full Moon nights, declared the benefits in doing so in my Nadi reading in 2009. A translation to my ability is given as follows.
These reasons aside, the core purpose of worship is to bring us to the state of a Siddha. It is only he who has been there who can truly describe and show us what he has seen, felt, and realized. The Siddhas, being perfected beings, bring us to that state, their state of being.
We are so consumed by our sorrows and seek out the Siddhas for solutions to our daily problems that are of our own making that we fail to understand that the Siddhas are here not to deliver us from our petty troubles but to deliver us from this cycle of birth. We need to move on to the realm of the Siddhas and continue our work in delivering others on the face of this earth. Agathiyar, in having me take notes, a day before the Guru Purnima of 2024, dictated to me the following, spelling out the journey towards attaining their state, that of Agathiyan. He asks the questions and answers them too. The translation is as follows.