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Sakthi Vikatan
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22 Oct, 2010
2010-10-22-part 1 and 2 Ramanamaharishi
God of Compassion. Guru’s Grace
Uththaṇḍi
Nāyaṉār
had an urgent call to leave Bālaswāmy for his town. He was worried about
who will take care of Bālaswāmy in his absence. There was no dearth for
food. Someone will bring the food for Bālaswāmy. He worried about having
a person to safeguard Bālaswāmy from the intrusive and bothersome
visitors.
Pazhaṉisāmi,
a Malayali and the officiating priest at Tiruvaṇṇāmalai
Vinayakar Temple in the AyanKuḷam
Street very often met Bālaswāmy. Thirty-seven year old Pazhaṉisāmi
brings no-salt-added Naivēttiyam to Bālaswāmy. Vinayakar Puja was
important for him.
Pazhaṉisāmi was an acquaintance of Srinivasa Iyer. The latter told the
former, “You shed tears holding on to a rock idol as God. There you see
a God sitting in the human form. He who knows Braḥmam is equal to God.
Go help him. Perform Puja.”
His outlook and direction changed; Pazhaṉisāmi developed deep love for
Bālaswāmy. With a view to help him, he sat by his side and experienced
an inexpressible deep spiritual transformation.
Pazhaṉisāmi is not a youngster. He is not a mere man. He realized the
Brahma Tejas. Pazhaṉisāmi lived in a small town near Palakkad and in
search of spiritual liberation could not stay at home and came to
Tiruvannamalai as the appropriate place for his
spiritual development. The mountain, the temple, and the Sadhus made him
ecstatic.
AyanKuḷam Vinayakar Puja had a sparse crowd and gave him a deep
tranquility. He enjoyed the solitude and helped him control his sensual
impulses. It was a stepwise progress.
In a mature state, Pazhaṉisāmi surrendered to Bālaswāmy.
For the mature-minded, Jñāṉi’s proximity gave comfort. Sitting close to
him precipitated a flood of laughter. Compassion sprang forth. Love was
brimming. For all these, there was no need for them to see face to face.
There was no compulsion for a talk.
Singing, reading… are non-events there.
At mealtime, the daily duty of the caretaker comprises giving food to
Bālaswāmy, wiping the face, hands and feet, changing the loincloth,
cleaning the sitting place and sitting him back in his place. That
completes the daily duty. When a devotee supplicates in a loud voice, the
caretaker discourages and removes him gently and prevent people from
prostrating before Bālaswāmy and touching him.
Pazhaṉisāmi’s customary duty is to offer solace by saying, ‘What is the
use of seeking material welfare? Ask yourself the cause of desire and
grief. Think deeply of what really undergoes pain and suffering?’ He
makes the supplicants sit there for a while and later send them on their way.
Pazhaṉisāmi does not know reading and writing in Tamil. He knows only
Malayalam. He used to borrow Tamil spiritual books (Vivēka
Sūdāmaṇi,
Kaivalya Navanītham…)
from the Mutt Library and tried to read them. Those books are hard to
read even for the Tamil speakers. Pazhaṉisāmi did not understand the
head or tail of what he read. He read them again and again and tried to
keep them in his memory.
Pazhaṉisāmi's
inability, Bālaswāmy understood. One day, Bālaswāmy took the book from
him and turned each page applying a sweeping motion on each page and
gave it back to him. A sudden change was inside of him. He thought, he
understood everything in the book.
‘There is nothing new in these books. I have earlier realized all that in the
books. All these are in my experience and knowledge. Such was his
understanding. Movingly, he opposed his palms at Bālaswāmy, who smiled
back at him ever so slightly.
Pazhaṉisāmi is a blessed person. He is where he should be. He received
what he needed. Guru’s compassion and grace were in abundance. Knowing the
pupil’s needs, the Guru satiates his spiritual thirst. A good Guru talks
little. He does not engage in elaborate long-winded discussions and
lectures. He does not order pupils to do physical exercises.
He does not show off pranayama exercises and self-enquiry. He
instructs the pupil by saying without telling, and by thought transfer.
The transformation takes place in the devotee.
He who is in touch with himself, who immerses deep into his self, and
who knows who he is, he can touch and change the mind of the other.
Guru’s proximity is ecstasy. The continuous mirth inside oneself is
supreme joy. A hubris-free majesty. A control with no anger. A
desireless state. Whatever one needs, he will get: a trust replete with
the essence of solitariness and a fertile mind.
The great disciple close to the Guru will know his lifespan with
clarity. He knows the time of his death. The big question shatters; the
answer appears from inside as a pearl; the determined lifespan become
known; there is cessation of conflict with others and desire for things
does not afflict him.
Your calculus ends before mine. What fight do I have with you? Come and sit
down. No one to call an enemy of mine. No one to call as a relative. The
calculus that everyone comes and goes is easily understood. That is a
great liberation.
You can realize inside the godliness well up into a flood. Then, you
will know and understand clearly the meaning of Great Sayings (Mahāvākyas).
The mind is immersed in solitary tranquility. It feels things as they
are. All these do not come from teaching. It is not learnt from
lectures. The hubris of the lecturer and the listener’s impatience are
in head to head rivalry; all are liable for misinterpretation. Silence
is the good stratagem.
The Jñāni can bring about internal changes in a disciple and make him or
her a
mature one.
Pazhaṉisāmi is a mature disciple. He was intensely pursuant in finding
God. Finding Bālaswāmy after a long wandering and looking for God as his
Guru was the end of his journey.
Thāyumāṉaswāmy in his poem says, “You are the mountain caught in the
hold called love.” Bālaswāmy was in the love-hold of Pazhaṉisāmi and
taught him.
The primary impetus for this outcome is love. No one outside of yourself
can teach love for all. It
is a natural stream coming from inside. Once you remove the impediments,
the stream by itself becomes a flood.
Venkatrama Iyar working in the Taluk Post office in Tiruvannamalai was
amazed by Bālaswāmy.
He developed a healthy curiosity to find the inner source of this Rishi
and of the river of love. Where did this youngster come from? Who are
his birth parents? Who raised him? Who are the parents? Under whose
merit did this child take birth? He is immersed in Brahma Laya. What is
the beginning of this? These are the questions, he wanted answers for.
The teenager-the future Bhagavan and the presently dubbed Bālaswāmy- was
unknown to anybody there.
Who are you? What is your name?
He presented him with a paper and a pencil and waited for
answers. He said to himself, ‘I am not going to the office today. I
don’t care if the superiors become angry with me.
It must be known who you are.
So, he presented the loving order mixed with some nagging.
He saw a writing on the wall, ‘Service is the reward for service (that
is rendered). (For
this, this is the service.) That was written by Bālaswāmy. That means
the youngster knows his three R’s. He must have been from a good family.
He must have gone to school.
He insisted on knowing his natal name.
Assenting to Venkatrama Iyar’s request, Bālaswāmy wrote in English,
‘Venkatraman, Tirucchuzhi.’ ‘Tirucchuzhi-Where is it? Iyar did not
know. It is a place of Siva’s temple.
Sundarar wrote poems on the temple. Bhagavan himself pointed to
the name as Tirucchuzhi.
The town came to know of his name and town: Venkatraman and Tirucchuzhi.
This is the first time the world came to know of him, Bālaswāmy
the youngster in search of himself and immersed within himself. This was
when he became known to the outside world for the first time.
...
Let us get Darśan
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Sakthi
Vikatan 2010-10-22-part2
Kanchi Mahan, the god of compassion.
Pattābhi raked his memory and presented it as an interesting story.
There are many nuggets of information and lessons in those narratives.
This is the same story of one who hails from Tirunelveli side. His name
is Sivan. He visited the
Mutt from his village often.
He belonged to Vīra
Saiva sect. He had broad strokes of ash stripes on his forehead. He
looked like ‘Siva Pazham.’ He was a stickler to purity. He was strict in
Caste and Sectarian Convenances (Convenances,
the social proprieties or conventionalities).
He won’t use or eat onion in his food. That strict- observance.
When
Sivan goes to Kanchipuram, Periyava is all. He was about 80. Very rich.
Mahāperiyava was his God. What Periyava said was Vedas (=Holy
Testament). Coming to
Kanchi, he brought a turmeric-colored bag with loincloth, holy ashes,
some currency notes…
When he sat in Periyava’s Sanctum, he was unaware of passage of time.
Ten days of Darśana was not enough.
OK, will he talk to Periyava. No.
Will he ask questions? Not even that.
“Periyavar does not have to talk to me. What is important is that I am
in his thoughts.
Outside of the Mutt, he never eats or drinks.
Once, Siva went to receive orders from Periyava, after Darśan.
Usually, Periyava moves his hand in a gesture of blessings. But that
day, he said, “Are you leaving for your place? Won’t you have a drink of
soda? OK, you are leaving. At least do it.” Periyava gave him permission
to leave, mentioning about the drink.
Sivan boarded a bus in Chengalput going to Tirunelveli. There were four
youngsters causing hue and cry. Sivan could not take the ruckus. Who
will discipline that rowdy gang?
As the bus was nearing Madurai, the driver stopped the bus at a village.
There was a convenience store at the bus stop. Sivan saw soda bottles
piled high at the shop. Periyava’s advice to drink soda came to his
mind.
He felt thirsty. He got down from the bus thinking of the advice of
Periyava and quenching his thirst. He came back to his seat after the drink.
He did not find his yellow bag left on his seat. There was nothing of
value in the bag.
The rowdy youngsters mocked him and said, “Hey, Old man, are you looking
for your yellow bag? See
your bag on the seat behind yours. Go and sit there.”
The yellow bag was on the seat in front of the last seat in the bus and
behind his original assigned seat. Sivan thought to himself, “OK, it is good enough to reach home.
Why should I engage in any altercation with these boys?" Sivan sat where
the boys asked him to sit.
Two of the four youngsters sat on his original seat on the bus.
It was dark of night. It was an hour since the bus moved from the store.
What happened? A bus coming from the opposite direction at high speed
crashed on this bus.
The youngsters, who confiscated his seat on the bus and talked to him
mockingly, died on the spot. The eldely Sivan escaped without even a
scratch.
Why did Periyava say, ‘Go have a soda before you leave.’?
Why did the bus driver stop at a hamlet opposite to the convenience
store? The staked bottles were visible to Sivan from the bus. Why so? He
escaped death because he got down from the bus for a drink and found he
lost his seat to the youngsters upon re-boarding.
How
do these things happen?
Thinking of it… On one side is the instance, when he escaped death. On
another side, the two youngsters lost their lives.
His mind and soul were hobbled by their death.
He understood that ten days of Darśan of Periyavar saved him from the
catastrophe. ‘Have a soda’ rang in his mind and was a direct voice from
God himself.
This event happened in 1983, after Periyava returned to Kanchi from a
pilgrimage.
When I was talking to Siva, he described the event in great detail to
me. I brought this event to the attention of Periyava.
Periyava enquired, “Is Sivan in good health?” He must have told, “I
saved him.” Stupid. When and where I saved him? Paramesvara saved him.”
Hearing this, I was horripilated.
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