Kandar Anubhuti is a fifty-two verse poem,
rich in mythological symbolism, in which Arunagirinatha frequently
refers to his quest for God and his subsequent experience of him.
Some of the key verses are given below. The title can be
translated as 'The Direct Experience of Skanda'.
2
O Lord, God of the deva realm!(1)
Are you not joyous, carefree, unsorrowing, the great yogi, the one
who desires the good of all beings, the one who is possessed of
kind speech, and the one who performs divine dramas? O Murugan! I
beg you, please enlighten me about the experience of liberation in
which everything ceases to exist, that good state in which the
sense of 'mine' is lost.
3
O Shanmukha!(2)
What is reality? Is it the earth, water, fire, air or ether? Is it
the state in which knowledge arises? Is it the chanting of the
Vedas? Is it the 'I' principle or the mind? Or is it that
place where 'I' was accepted?(3)
12
Glorious Murugan, deathless and unborn! Thief who
kidnapped Valli, she who was born to a red deer!(4)
When he through silence instructed me 'Be silent!', what a wonder!
I was unable to cognise even a single external object.
13
Neither with form nor without it; neither
existence nor non-existence; neither darkness nor light; that
Absolute Reality is Murugan, our Guru, he who wields the
incomparable vel.(5) Is
there any possibility of knowing him except through his grace?
14
O Mind! Abandon, abandon the desires that venture
out through the five gates of the body, the mouth, the eyes, the
nostrils and the ears. Surrendering at the feet of Lord Murugan,
who wields the vel in his hands, take the path to
salvation.
20
Beloved One! Mighty Lord! Primordial sound of
Om! Protector and saviour of the deva realm! O Great
One who gave me upadesa in the form of a direct experience.
This slave gained that Supreme Reality, the most difficult of all
to attain. How wonderful!
22
O Lord who bows to the feet of Valli, the one with
beautiful hair!(6) O Murugan,
Lord of the devas, great as Mount Meru!(7)
What a wonder! By meditating on you in the form of Kumara, the
eternal youth,(8) and by bowing
to your lotus feet, I have been blessed with the attainment of
true tapas.
27
In the past, greatly did I cherish a way of life
that was as transient as lightning. Now, is this the fruit born of
my fate? O King! O God mounted on the peacock! You are gold, you
are gems, you are grace divine, the real wealth.
28
Untainted divine nectar! King with the piercing
vel! Embodiment of jnana! What else can I say? The
Transcendental Reality swallowed the 'me', the individual self,
leaving That alone which is mere existence.
30
Lord Murugan, wielder of the vel, whose
form shines like the crimson sky! On that day you revealed to me
the unique divine experience. Having it and experiencing it is the
only way to understand it. Is it something to talk about? How can
it be told to someone else?
31
You decreed that I should fall into the mire of
maya and lead a useless life in this way. Have I, in my
previous life, done anything despicable to deserve this? O
peacock-mounted God, may you prosper ever after!
34
O Shanmukha, child of the Ganga! Abode of grace!
Mighty warrior! Possessor of the peacock! Please grant me the boon
that my mind and intellect may not be dimmed by the evil of
pursuing beautiful women.
37
I am the close associate of the Lord,(9)
he who threw his mighty vel at the mountain.(10)
O mind, long to attain that knowledge called serenity that kills
the ego and uproots it entirely.
40
Murugan, you who roamed, looking for Valli, all
over hills covered with pools and green fields of millet with
their lookout perches. I will not forget the sharp vel that
expelled evil from me. Should I remain deluded by this samsaric
life?
42
In a state of thinking without thinking, the
incomparable vel bestowed on me knowledge of the Ultimate.
As soon as it was granted to me, my relationship with the world
was severed; speech and mind ceased, along with ignorance and
knowledge.
43
Beloved of the one [Valli] who is adorned with
beautiful clothes and precious gems! By your love and by your
grace the fettering desires have been broken and reduced to dust.
Out of that was born the magnificent, speechless, direct
experience of you!
48
O Lord, do you not inseparably stand in the
intellect of those in whom every kind of knowledge has ceased?
Their relationships have come to nothing, their darkness has been
destroyed. Lord of the vel! You abide forever in those who
have conquered delusion.
49
That which alone is is to be realised by oneself.
How can this be described to anyone else? Lord of manifold forms
who wields the sparkling light of the vel! Divine
resplendence enveloped in grace! You remove the misery of those
who think of you.
(1) Though
Indra is traditionally regarded as being the king of the devas,
Arunagirinatha assigns this role to Murugan in order to pursue a
complex spiritual analogy. In Arunagirinatha's scheme the devas
represent the various bodily functions. They keep the mind and the
body in a state of sattvic harmony and are presided over by Indra,
who represents the prana, the animating and sustaining life
force in the body. A demon called Surapadma symbolises both the
ego and the hostile forces that try to overthrow or destroy the
state of physical and mental well being that the devas,
under Indra, have engendered. When they temporarily succeed,
mental misery and disease result. When the devas appeal to
their ultimate Lord, Murugan, for assistance, he intervenes and
restores the sattvic status quo by destroying the evil forces.
Mythologically, Surapadma was a demon who
tried to fight Murugan. When he took the form of a tree, Murugan
split him into two. One of the two parts was transformed by
Murugan into the peacock that eventually became his vahana
or vehicle, while the other half was transformed into the cock
that Murugan holds aloft as a banner or emblem.
(2) Murugan
was created from light that came out of Siva's third eye. Siva
gathered this light in his hands and passed it on to Vayu, the god
of wind. The power of the light was too much for him so he gave it
to Agni, the god of fire, who deposited it in the Ganges. Ganga,
the goddess of the Ganges, was also unable to bear the power so
she carried it to a small pond and left it there. In this pond the
light transformed itself into six babies. Parvati subsequently
joined the babies together in a form that had one trunk, twelve
arms and six faces. This is Lord Shanmukha, 'The Lord with Six
Faces'. Because he was born from Siva's third eye, 'the eye of
wisdom', he stands for divine knowledge and is held to be an
incarnation of pure consciousness. His name Skanda means 'the
joined one', a reference to the way Parvati amalgamated his
bodies. It can also mean, 'one who was ejected' or 'one who leaped
out', a reference to the light that emanated from Siva's third
eye.
Arunagirinatha most probably obtained his
mythological information on Murugan, and its symbolic
significance, from the Kanda Puranam, a fourteenth century
Tamil text by Kacchiyappa Sivachariar that gives extensive
information on the Skanda avatara. There it is written:
That mass of consciousness, which is called 'The Supreme
Brahman', which is formless and also with form, which is
beginningless, who is the One and also the many, assumed a form
with six grace-showering faces and twelve hands and took
avatara as Murugan for the redemption of the world.
(3) These
seem to be rhetorical questions. The implied answer is that
Reality is the place or state where the fully surrendered 'I' was
destroyed. Arunagirinatha offered his 'I' to God. In the Heart,
the place where God accepted the offer, Arunagirinatha found
reality.
(4) Cursed
by the rishi Kanva, Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi were
once wandering in a forest in the forms of Sivamuni, a speechless
saint, and a deer. Once, as they were gazing lovingly at each
other, the deer became pregnant and later gave birth to a human
child. Abandoned by her mother because she was not a deer, she was
found by Nambirajan, a hunter-king, and adopted as his daughter.
She was named Valli after the place (Vallikkodi) where she was
found. In her previous life as Sundaravalli she had fallen in love
with Murugan and had obtained a boon from him that she would
become his consort. As she grew up her devotion to Murugan
increased until no other thought occupied her mind. Unable to
resist her one-pointed devotion, Murugan appeared before her in
the form of a hunter, tested her devotion, accepted her, and later
married her.
Devotees of Murugan regard Valli as the
universal mother who is always occupied with the welfare of
devotees. She knows how pure and evolved each jiva is, and
she brings to Murugan's attention all the mature souls who are
ready to be released from samsara.
In a more general sense Valli's spiritual
career symbolises the progress of all advanced souls who are on
the final stage of their journey to God. First, there is intense
devotion. When that devotion matures, God appears in the form of
Guru and tests the readiness of the devotee. If the devotee is
accepted, the divine marriage takes place.
(5) The
vel is the spear-like weapon with which Murugan destroyed his
enemies during his physical avatara. At the symbolic level
it is jnana-sakti, the power that destroys ignorance
and wrong knowledge in his devotees. When the demons invade the
body and the mind obscuring sattva and threatening the
prana itself (see the note to verse two), Murugan wields his
vel to destroy the invading enemies.
The vel is the look of grace that
the Guru bestows on the devotee. It pierces and destroys the ego,
its target, and bestows jnana. In one of his verses Ramana
Maharshi describes Murugan as, 'The six-faced Lord who came on
earth…in order to bestow his own state by destroying the karmas of
those seeking refuge at his feet…and who plays the game of
throwing the spear which is the glance of jnana…' (The
Mountain Path, 1984, p. 94)
(6) When
Murugan appeared before Valli, he first tested her devotion. She
passed the tests so successfully, Murugan prostrated to her and
placed his head on her feet. Murugan bhaktas, in
interpreting this event, say that God becomes the slave of all
those who can demonstrate pure and complete devotion to him.
(7) Meru is
a mythological mountain, said to be the greatest on earth. Its
dimensions are incalculable. It is regarded as the axis of the
earth.
(8) Kumara,
'the eternal youth' is one of the many names of Murugan. Since it
has the meaning, 'the one who destroys maya,' it also
signifies the power of the Self. Arunagirinatha is saying that by
meditating on the formless sakti and by surrendering to the
divine he discovered the real nature of tapas. In this
context the 'eternal youth' is not merely the ever-young form of
Murugan, it is the eternal consciousness that he represents.
(9) An 'iraiyon
parivaram' is a close associate of the Lord. The term denotes
someone who has come close enough to God to have a direct
experience of him.
(10) This
refers to one of the major events in Murugan's avatara.
Krauncha was one of the lieutenants of the asura Taraka,
who was the younger brother of Surapadma. Krauncha used to assume
the form of a mountain, with many paths leading to it. When
passers-by, particularly sadhus and sages, came near,
Krauncha would kill them.
The sage Agastya, who was travelling near
the mountain, avoided the fate of the other sages by intuitively
understanding ahead of time the danger of going near Krauncha. He
cursed the asura, telling him that he would have to remain
in the shape of the mountain until he was destroyed by the vel
of Murugan.
When Murugan led the deva army on
his southward march to attack Surapadma, he encountered Krauncha
en route and destroyed him with his vel.
Krauncha represents the mount of karma
that cannot be moved or destroyed by any force other than the
vel, the jnana-sakti of the Lord. Surapadma
represents the ego and the state of ignorance in general. Both
have to be eradicated by the 'glance of grace'.
The first half of the verse indicates
that Murugan has already thrown 'his mighty vel' at
Arunagirinatha's mountain of karma, thereby destroying it. The
second half of the verse can therefore be taken to be advice to
others, calling on them to attain that serene state in which the
work of the vel can be effective.