Having come this far, I am wondering now whether it is because of my efforts or if the Gods airlifted me here. If I think it was all my effort, that would be egotistical. I would then expect that due credit be given for all my achievements thus far, and desire to be praised too.
If I think otherwise, that the Gods had a hand in everything, my ego is then killed instantaneously. I have then surrendered every happening to God. I begin to praise them instead. Balamurugan's question many years back as to why we should praise the Siddhas is answered.
I shall list all that took place in my life that, looking back now, was none of my doing. I, incidentally, being a Kumbam or Aquarius, the 11th sign in the zodiac, too, was only a vessel for him to work his magic.
Just as a water pot carries water, I have shared much to quench the thirst of those who choose to read. These I share with readers, for Agathiyar has given me so many experiences in life, and lessons that came to be learned from these experiences. Only in sharing them can I repay his kindness, compassion, and love for me. But if simple folks generally rely on or accept the experiences of those who lived generations before them, the learned prefer facts, figures, numbers, and test results. But how do we explain to both parties matters that are beyond our senses, that only a similar experience can help us understand them, and unless they walk the path too? And so I told off a psychologist who asked if I was hallucinating when he caught up with me at a temple event after reading the conversations with Agathiyar that I shared on this blog, telling him to do all I did to arrive there and find out for himself. Indeed, only experience is the true teaching that leaves a mark behind. It might at times be a wound, a scar, or joy and bliss.
It was the Gods at play, creating the situations and circumstances or preparing the board carefully for the game that was to ensue. They then moved the chess pieces. Nothing in my life was my doing, though it might seem that I made the move or moved things. If at all others do convince me, what I did was minute, and hardly worth speaking about when compared to his moves and doing.
I can only go back as far as my memory brings me. The rest is what I was told.
- After the friendly neighborhood Chinese Gods saved me as a child, who was having diarrhea and purging, asking my parents to give me in adoption to him, God has kept me well since then. As an appreciation and act of gratitude, I would visit Chinese temples and offer my prayers of thanks.
- I attended Thevaram classes, with my Ceylonese childhood friends taking up singing the songs of the Nayanmars and listening to their stories shared by an elderly Ceylonese master.
- I frequented the Buddhist Vihara next door; besides savoring the free food, I attended Sunday classes where we heard stories from Gautama Buddha's life and joined in the chantings.
- I took up a correspondence course where lessons were sent to my home by snail mail from a church in Singapore. I would spend time at the chapel in my missionary school too.
- In college, I traveled by bus with a Pakistani Muslim gardener, who shared many stories from his holy book and the life of his prophet.
- It was at the college library that I came across a book that taught me to say "No"; that changed my life. Sadly, I cannot remember its title.
- Having the need to carry out an internship, I saw myself walking into the Public Works Department in my hometown and later walking into the numerous project sites that came under the Government Agency. Once, as I stepped onto a very shallow boat at the stroke of midnight after making several purchases on the mainland to head back to the small island where we had a project going, I missed my step and fell into the waters at the jetty. The bags of groceries kept me afloat till my construction mates gave me a hand and hauled me up into the boat. I was later told that I had narrowly escaped a disaster in the waters as predicted in my astrological reading. I was saved again.
- My very first job, and only job for the next 36 years, was chosen by him and landed on my lap.
- I was frequenting both the temples and carried out puja to the deities at my home altar both at dawn and dusk at my home altar in the eighties.
- Learning from the books, I practiced Yoga and carried out the Pranayama practices some two hours before sunrise diligently.
- But seeing those around me suffer, at times at the hands of God himself, I could not stomach the injustice. I was overly concerned about them that Lord Siva had to intervene, coming through a dream in 1988, asking me to keep my questions to another moment. Today I understand why I was overly concerned by all that happened to them. Reading the spate of astrological predictions both in Tamil and English, currently made viral since the planet Jupiter's or Guru's recent transit, I learned that being a Kumban and Aquarius, that was my very character or, as Mahindren said, my specification. Agathiyar too, in my very first Nadi reading that was to come in 2002, mentioned this concern of mine for people, community, society, and all.
- I left all that I did as a bachelor behind, including the Puja, temple visits, and Yoga I picked up from the books, and left for the city in 1988 as I was transferred out of the coastal town where I had begun my career in 1980.
- I married in 1989 and raised a family in the city. My wife was chosen by him. My children and later my son-in-law and grandchildren were given by him too. This home was gifted by him too. Career, family, and property were all seen to by him.
- Then, when a colleague, Mr Segaran, resigned from his job at the office and left for Paramahansa Yogananda's Ranchi Ashram in India in 1994, he passed me Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi"; it amazed me to know that a man too can become Godly. If all those while I only knew the deities, that was when I came to know about gurus too.
- Beginning in 1996, I frequented Dr Krishnan, who was introduced by a senior colleague at the office, Mr Sethu.
- Dr Krishnan was an astrologer and Siddha physician whom I saw for my horoscope readings. The subject of curses was first brought up when I asked Dr.Krishnan if there was a reason whatever predicted in the charts was not happening. He cited curses as the reason. Asking him to look into my chart to find out, he told me that he could not look into the horoscope to determine them; only the Siddhas could reveal them in the Nadi readings. That is how I came to know about the Siddhas and the Nadi. But as I knew no Nadi reader then, I left it alone.
- The calling came late in life for me, only in 2001, as I was then already 43 years old. Agathiyar came mysteriously and had me recite the Vasudeva Mantra, breaking my self-imposed exile, or rather, after I had stepped away from all forms of worship, reading, and discussion for some 14 years, taking heed of the advice from Lord Siva coming in a dream to shelve all the questions and doubts I had for another day. Even before he came into my life through the Nadi reading in 2002, Agathiyar came in "disguise," having Gopal Pillai, who had gone into Samadhi, come through a devotee of his and pass on a message for me to my nephew, who was a devotee of him too, and have him come over to my home to deliver it at 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon on the 6th of October 2001. I learned only later from my nephew that the message and mantra were from Agathiyar. Although there was no explanation given for the whole mysterious happening that afternoon, I soon received answers when I happened to come across this Vasudeva mantra being mentioned in books and on the net. It was only when I researched the Vasudeva mantra that was given by Agathiyar that I came to know about the Granthis. I was blessed to have been gifted with the Vasudeva mantra that brings balance to the Vishnu Granthi. After receiving the Vasudeva mantra and diligently chanting it, the call to read the Nadi, something that Dr. Krishnan told me about in the nineties, came the following year.
Agathiyar besides revealing my past, in the Nadi spoke about my future too.
The guru will come by in the least expected manner. This knowledge will come by way of the Nadi of the guru and Agathiyar. Reciting the names of the Siddhas shall do much good. Clarity and the answers to mysteries are all within me. Carry on these practices and come before me again when you attain the age of 45.
இவருக்கு உண்டாகும் படி படியே.
சூட்சமமும் தெளிவுகளும் என்னில் உண்டு
தான் இருக்க பயிற்சிகளும் செய்து தானே
தவறாது நாற்பானை தன்னில் இருக்க
சற்றே உரைத்திடுவோம் ஆசி முற்றே.
And so did Tavayogi and Agathiyar groom me by giving me only those practices they did. Agathiyar, in giving me rituals and yoga practices, said that he was only giving me the tried and tested techniques that the Siddhas did. Tavayogi, who led the life of a mendicant after turning fifty, brought me to the places in the jungles and caves where he stayed back then while roaming the length and breadth of India. He asked that I begin a Homam in my home in Malaysia while he started a much bigger Yagam on his ashram grounds after the 2004 Tsunami to appease the wrath of Mother Earth. Coming in 2007, he gave me and a handful of others Yoga techniques, Pranayama, and Asana, by showing them to us and having us follow. In 2010, Tavayogi requested that we follow in his footsteps in conducting a Yagam too. The year 2010 was also special for another reason. A replica of Agathiyar at Agasthiyampalli was commissioned and beautifully crafted by Varadaraj of the Bronze Creative (BC) in Swamimalai, India. The statue was ordered through the internet in February of 2009. Varadaraj of BC made a visit to Agasthiyampalli, Vedaranyam, to photograph the granite statue of Agathiyar and subsequently started working on the wax mold. The statue was cast and completed in early December and was flown to Malaysia in time for the Jayanthi on 3rd January 2010.
The Siddhas were pretty much practical in doing things besides taking to discourse and teachings that were few and apart. When the Siddhas and deities began to come through devotees, they hijacked our rituals, the Homam and Abisegam, and we learned from them further and followed, bringing change to our existing ways. This is how, coming into our lives, they had us watch, learn, and follow, practically doing what a Siddha does. Similarly, coming through the Nadi, he had my nephew, who left doing the practice that Tavayogi gave, to learn it again from me. He sent youths in their early thirties to watch and participate in my home puja too. He had me bring his statue into their homes too and have their family light the Homam and do Abhisegam. He had us bring him to the Tanneermalai Murugan Temple in Taiping, fulfilling the wish of Chitramuthu Adigal for us to conduct a Siddha Puja in the place he had sat and meditated before returning to India and going into Samadhi.
So I am saddened when strangers whom he said he would send knock on my door claiming that they or their parents were on the Siddha path, only to find out that they only read books on the Siddhas, or some only continue with the initiation mantra or the singing of the praise of the Siddhas for over thirty years, not moving away from Bhakti to Yogam as Tavayogi wished and pushed us to do. Many in coming to the Siddhas have sadly replaced temple worship with Siddha worship and never moved on to other frontiers and phases of the journey. Others hold podcasts and travel to places and abodes of Siddhas and post them on their YouTube channels, but I wonder how many, after the interviews or visits, take up the path or worship. They move on to another person to interview or another place to visit, to look for more content. Going by the messages I receive from readers telling me that they saw results and solutions in coming to the Siddhas, I am happy that besides reading the blog, they followed what the Siddhas did and saw results.
When Agathiyar revealed to me about the Body or Udal, Breath or Uyir, and Soul or Atma, through a memo that he had Mahindren take down, he cleared the confusion that prevailed in my mind and brought light to the matter of literally transforming gross matter into vibrations. See https://agathiyarvanam.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-unfolding-of-life.html
I then understood that "I" am a soul or (Jeev)Atma that came to live in a body that "I" built for myself, for a purpose, taking the raw ingredients from my parents in a certain way and proportion, to live in a world that the larger "I" built. Then "I" was made to forget everything, including my purpose in the divine game. The "I" went into hiding. Later, the "Me" that took shape developed an Ego that began possessing everything, including people, land, and property, etc. Then one fine day, when the Ego is subdued and trashed by worldly happenings, the "Me" turned towards seeking solace and peace. Thinking it is out there in something and someone, that something either teaches him or her, and that someone soon guides him or her within to now look at his Self or (Jeev)Atma ("I"). The "I" now reemerges after recounting the past moments with the larger "I". It comes out of exile when the calling comes and brings him or her to complete the journey and the purpose it came for.
Agathiyar at the Tamil Sangam had charted out man's purpose in coming here, giving mankind the 5 tenets.
- He says that man has to first and foremost understand his purpose in taking birth.
- With his purpose known, then, he should come to thank the divine creator or energy that brought forth his birth (through consultation with the lunar forefathers and their angelic hierarchies that co-exist with us down here).
- He asks that we then thank all the caretakers both seen and unseen, in the present and the past.
- There arises then an obligation on our part to "dutifully aid and help the ongoing evolution of all co-existing human beings."
- The final task is to extend this aid and help towards "the ongoing evolution of all co-existing beings and entities, existing upon the lower levels of the evolutionary ladder, dutifully supporting the manifested matrix or prapanjam."
(Summarized from Vashisht Vaid's post on his blog https://holysageagathiyar.com/ )