As today is Chitra Pournami, a day of celebration for Lord Murugan, as it is with Thaipusam many devotees go into trances and dance their way to meet the Lord. How do we explain these?
After 5 years Agathiyar has left AVM to make his rounds to his devotee's homes. The last time he did that was in 2016 accompanied by Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal and Mataji Sarojini Ammaiyar who visited Malaysia. He visited some 10 homes where puja was conducted and both Tavayogi and Mataji spoke. After Tavayogi's visit, Agathiyar then directed me that he was not to be moved.
He did make his rounds upon arrival on our shores in 2010 too visiting some 3 homes then.
Meanwhile, after bringing down the shutters on our puja and charity programs in September of 2019 which surprisingly came before the outbreak of the Covid Virus later in December; after the lockdowns that followed in March of 2020, and after a period of some 2 years when a majority of us have been vaccinated, Agathiyar has chosen to leave for the homes of his devotees. This move was initiated by Balamurugan who invited Agathiyar over to his home. Balamurugan was also instrumental in bringing the Jeeva Nadi to Malaysia too. The Jeeva Nadi has never left the Kallar Ashram grounds prior to this. Seekers would have to head towards Kallar Ashram either on Wednesdays or Saturdays to have a reading. But when Balamurugan called up Mataji to inform her of his visit to the ashram and have a reading, she informed him that both Tavayogi and she will be coming down to Malaysia. Balamurugan enquired if they would bring along the Nadi. Mataji cited the above saying that the Nadi had never left the ashram grounds but added that they would seek permission from Agathiyar. Permission was granted and we all had an opportunity to have read the Jeeva Nadi thanks to Balamurugan.
Mahindran has followed suit intending to conduct a puja in his home on 1st May followed by Rajah on 15th May. I guess many will come to know and will invite Agathiyar too. Before leaving today for Balamurugan's house Agathiyar strictly told me and my wife not to involve ourselves but to let the host make the purchases, prepare and conduct the puja entirely. Let the host conduct the puja in its entirety he said and nothing shall be considered wrong. He shall come to conduct it further he told my wife and me.
This reminded me of Lord Murugan in the Jeeva Nadi reading in 2018 telling me to step aside and allow him access to play his lila. I did as told and the ever playfull Lord came and created chaos felling devotees down like tree stumps, with the tremendous expanse and surges of energies that day. Today Agathiyar in having me step aside again, took the realm and monitored the whole puja with assistance from one of several manifestations of Aiya, whom we presume was Maduraiveeran. Lord Murugan took time off amidst his busy schedule too today as the day coincided with the Full Moon of the Tamil month of Chithirai, Chitra Pournami, a day auspicious to him to be with us and bless us too.
Maduraiveeran Aiya had a message or two for us too. He reminded us that the lamp we light at our home altars and in other pujas is to be worshipped. Hence we are not to light anything from it further. For instance, we have seen people light camphor and joss stick from it. This has to stop. Aiya told us the significance of the flame too. They shall watch us through this flame. I remember Supramania Swami telling me to light the flame and that he shall watch me through it. Imagine he was in Tiruvannamalai, India and I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In another instance, Aiya who came into a cousin of my friend while having a drinking session asked my friend to "deliver' him to a particular temple some distance away. He kept pointing to the flame lit in the temple asking him to hasten his pace of driving. Upon arriving he asks him to light the camphor and left his nephew's body immediately.
Another thing he pointed out to us was that once the flames from the homam or yagam or fire pit die down we are not to rekindle it. It is a sign that our offerings into the flames have been received well. We need not sustain the flame further. They decide on the closure.
I remember clearly how I used to stand before the Chinese Gods at the home of a Chinese medium who would then go into a trance and write Chinese characters on a strip of yellow rice paper, burn it and have me drink its ash that was dropped into a glass of water, a simple treatment for all my ailments till the age of 13. Then later as a teen, I watched people go into a trance and either Aiya, Amma, or other deities speak through them at home sacrifices and temple celebrations. Even as I chose to keep my distance then, I never knew that I would get close to these phenomena later. My brother used to go into a trance and speak the Chinese language. What surprised us was that he had no prior knowledge of it. Then I came to witness even gurus who had gone into samadhi or passed on come through their followers and say a word or two. Thus my nephew's paramaguru Gopal Pillai had him deliver a message to me that henceforth lead me to my guru Agathiyar in 2002, Supramania Swami the following year, and Tavayogi a couple of years later. I came to know only some years later that the message given to me in 2001 was from Agathiyar himself. Gopal Pillai was a conduit in the immense network of gurus. The following year I read the Nadi for the very first time and Agathiyar took me in. In 2003 Supramania Swami of Tiruvannamalai took me as his disciple and Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal of Kallar Ashram took me under his wings in 2005.
We were blessed to have Yogi Ramsuratkumar too come and say a few words besides Tavayogi through devotees too. We noted that this phenomenon came to be once the Nadi readings stopped as the readers were not accessible during the pandemic.
Agathiyar upon arriving in Malaysia in the form of a bronze statue let me on a secret. He told me he shall walk the earth and be present that day on the 3rd January 2010 to bless all those gathered for his fest or Vizha. How was that to be? He said that his soul shall reside in my body while mine shall be in his statue or murthy momentarily.
The evil Sambanthan plots to have Arunagiri's body that the latter stashed away in the towers of the temple of Arunachaleswar at Tiruvannamalai for save keeping so that his soul could return to it after he returned with the magical flower or Parijata Malar that cures the King's eyesight. Sambanthan has his followers bring Arunagiri's body to him where he buries it so that Arunagiri cannot possibly enter it again. If we are told that Arunagiri remained in the form of a parrot that he took to carry out the mission till his last days, I read later elsewhere that it was not so and that he took his human form again.
I look towards my daughter who is an avid fan of Marvel movies to help me out here: "Watching the 3rd episode of Marvel's "Moon Knight" I could see similarities between the show and what took place at AVM all these years. Lord Muruga had asked that my father give way or in Marc's case from the movie, his other personalities ask him to surrender his body so that they could take over and do their work. In another scene from the episode, several Egyptian deities use human 'avatars' to congregate in the Pyramid of Giza and pass judgment on Khonshu, who uses Marc's body as his own avatar. In order to have direct communication with us and guide us, the Siddhas and deities sometimes need to borrow our physical forms to convey their messages or perform their miracles. The scene in the pyramid reminds me of when Agathiyar and Kali once had a conversation with each other through my father and a devotee respectively here at AVM.
I suppose by picking certain people to work through, they gain access to not only their body, but also their skills, knowledge, and vocabulary. The way they healed my eye through the surgeons who operated on me as their medical capabilities were required, or how Agathiyar once could not find the right word to describe part of the female anatomy as the word was not known by the devotee he was speaking through. They often take many pauses when speaking, as if sifting through the current body's mental dictionary and trying to find exactly the words they require."
Readers can follow my daughter's film reviews at her website, "The Film Critic" at http://the-film-critic.weebly.com/
It is true that they source the right words from our existing library of the vocabulary of words. It is equally true that they can also feed the appropriate language though it might be alien to us as in my brother's case speaking the Chinese dialect and Ma Kali coming into the devotee who spoke to Agathiyar in an entirely unheard of language as mentioned above. Agathiyar took the liberty to have the words in the Jeeva Nadi in possession of the late Hanumathdasan Aiya appear in the Malay language for a seeker from Malaysia so that he could read it himself too as the latter could not comprehend the Tamil language used in the Nadi.
Hence who can comprehend the Siddhas, deities, and the Gods and their play?
