Many good souls have come by since I started on my journey seeking to know the Siddhas taking up the invitation by Agathiyar in my very first Nadi reading back then in the year 2002. I thought I shall pay tribute to these kind souls in a series of posts on Siddha Heartbeat 2.0
The one that came to my mind was a medical student Stalingiri hailing from South India who was studying in Russia then. He came into my life in 2014 having emailed me. He took it up upon himself to create digital posters announcing the many live streams I did back then. I am indebted to him for he took the trouble to engage in this tedious work amidst his studies. Today he is back in India.
Since his last round of visits in 2016, Agathiyar who told us not to move him from AVM has given permission for us to move him to the homes of devotees who desired to have him step into their homes recently. These photos were taken during today's prayer or puja at one such home of his devotee, the third home he is visiting. His move was initiated by the sole follower as seen in the pages of Siddha Heartbeat 2.0. Since then another faithful devotee of his and the host of today's puja had invited him over.
Agathiyar from AVM has also graced the covers of several books and appeared in video clips uploaded on the net. He has made his way to the billboards and album covers too.
His teachings and the practices he gave us had been carefully scripted as lyrics in the songs compiled and released as "Agathiyar Geetham". These songs can be heard on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/album/7ayGytaLor8l7KnDAJysLE. Accompanying videos can be watched at https://youtu.be/rlzWNFF6UyM
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?
When I went for a Nadi reading for the very first time in 2002, just as others are told about their present lives and what they were going through that we come to learn from the Siddhas are very much linked to our past lives and the karma we earned over time and many births, I too was told the stark truth about my former lives in the General Canto, Karma Canto and the Santhi Parikara Canto. Agathiyar could have let me face the consequences of my past actions. But instead, the most compassionate one chose to give me several parikaram or remedies or cures or course of actions to be taken to counter, subdue and lighten or possibly eradicate in total the cause. I was blessed to read my Gnana Canto too initiated by Sivabalan who had brought in Nadi Nool Aasan Senthilkumar then. In it, Agathiyar told me to visit all 5 temples of Lord Shiva or the Pancha Bootha Stalangal besides Palani. The uniqueness of these 5 temples of Lord Shiva that I came to know later, was that they were constructed for the respective elements namely earth, water, fire, air and space. For a beginner on the path, he is told to go and physically be in these places, to enter these sacred spaces. He is told to be at these temples so that he touches the ground there; inhales the air there; dips and baths and drinks the water there; touches the flame or arathi showered to the Gods and Goddesses there and imbibes the heat of the sun that shines down at these places. I made my very first pilgrimage to all the temples and abodes that Agathiyar had listed in my Nadi the following year. As Agathiyar had asked me to come back for another reading only three years after the first reading, and when I was 46, even as I wondered how and when the reading would come by since I was introduced to the existence of the Nadi by Siddha practitioner Dr.Krishnan in 1996 and only came to read it in 2002 after a colleague shared his experience in reading it two years earlier, Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal on the day I met him for the very first time in Kuala Lumpur in 2005, initiated and directed me to Nadi Nool Aasan Ramesh who was then in Kuala Lumpur, to read my Gnana Canto again. This time around Agathiyar mentioned my gurus in more detail after just hinting about the coming of them in the first Nadi reading in 2002.
The gurus initiated us to take up Kriyai, having us come out of Sariyai that involved temple worship and service to God. It was now service to the Guru and society in the form of Karma Yoga. We were told to learn about the 5 elements that maketh the body now, moving from what we saw established externally in the 5 temples for these elements. We were then taken to the next level that of Yoga.
We were told to cleanse the body and mind and avail them for the arrival of the divine energies within. After one qualifies on the path raising from an ordinary bhakta or devotee who brings his palms together in prayer before the deity and looks towards the skies and heavens for salvation; through Kriyai he learns to bring these deities first to his home through home puja and having them reside within the statues and pictures later. Then through Yoga he learns to bring the deities to reside within himself. The divine shall then bring out the Gnanam from within one. Such a one is a chosen candidate to build a shrine or temple for others to pray to and pray in. This shall be his purpose in life to experience God and share his experience with others too. These and many other facts are explained by PremKV too on his YouTube channel.
We look toward the skies and the massive monuments left behind by our ancestors with awe. But we fail to see the greatest miracle that is both a mystery and mystical in us. Life right from conception and birth, nay even before that too, till the last moments we spend in this physical body, and even after that has always amazed and mesmerized me. It makes me ask who is the genius behind all these? Who is the creator? Where is he? Where does he reside? Is he accessible to us? For one I came to realize that we are all co-creators of his in this grand design and grand play of his. He does not do the work directly but through us. But are we suitable candidates to carry out his divine work here? He shall reach out to us if and when we are ready for a change and fit to take on his massive work. For that to happen we need his grace. For that to happen we have to reach out to him. If we are obsessed with our desires and leave his thought out, he steps into the shadow.
Just as Marc Spector tells Steven Grant to surrender his body to Marc so that the alter can protect them both in the new Marvel series "Moon Knight", it is only when we surrender and give this body to him that he can work on us and others. Lord Murugan came to several of us asking us to surrender to him before he can even initiate changes in us. Are we ready to surrender ourselves?
