Thirumaalum pandriyaaych chendrunaraath thiruvadiyai
Urunaam ariyavoor anthananaay aandukondaan
Orunaamam oruruvam ontrumillaarku aayiram
Thirunaamam paadinaam thellenaam kottaamoo
Uneducated people with no true knowledge who wrote commentaries on the Thiruvasagam have all claimed that “Thellenam kottaamoo” refers to women clapping their hands and dancing kummi, and that it is merely a women’s game. What absolute ignoramuses they are, without even a penny’s worth of wisdom!
Thiruthellenam means the Auspicious Lord (Thiru) exists! Do you know where? Clearly—He shines as light in our eyes, in the open space (Ambalam), for all to see! It means He is firmly established there!
Even when Thirumal went down to the deepest netherworlds as a boar, he could not see the holy feet of the Lord who stood spanning the heavens and the earth! Yet, for the sake of Manikkavasagar, the Lord took the form of a Brahmin at Thirupperun-thurai, imparted spiritual instruction (Gnana Upadesam) and initiation (Gnana Deekshai), and took him under His grace! That one supreme God does not possess just one form! All forms are His form! He does not have just one name; all names are His! Let us sing a thousand names of such a Lord and bow to Him!
One must know where God resides and bow to Him there. God is very clearly present in our own bodies, dancing as the light in the pupils of our eyes for everyone to realize! Realizing this, we must bring our two hands together (which represent our eyes), unite the Sun and Moon kalas (divine light), and perform Gnana Tapas (spiritual penance) to worship Him! “Clapping two hands” symbolically means singing and dancing while uniting the light of the two eyes! Manikkavasagar is asking us to do this penance!
“Ulloliyaada onmaamalark kankalil neertthiraiyadu” (As the inner light dances, a curtain of tears plays in the bright, flower-like eyes).
Inside the pinhole of our pupils, the Lord dances as the light of Sivam! The divine light will keep dancing! As one continues to do this Gnana Tapas (inner light dancing), the light will multiply! Tears will well up in the peerless flower-like eyes. They will ooze! Tears will cascade down like a curtain! When doing penance by realizing the light of the pupil, tears will overflow! This is the very meaning of “Kaathalaagi kasindhu kanneer malgi” (Melting with love, tears overflowing)!
“Kadai kannithen ulampugundha thiruvantha” (He cast a sidelong glance and entered my heart).
To bestow grace upon Manikkavasagar at Thirupperunthurai, the Lord Himself took the form of a Brahmin, sat as the Guru, and showed him the ultimate (Kadai kaatti)—giving spiritual instruction and initiation, and entered his heart! Kadai kaatti means showing the ultimate soul-center situated at the very end of the inner path of the two eyes; He showed the highly radiant Sivam and bestowed His grace! Vallalar, too, “opened the shop” (kadai virithaar – a play on words meaning he revealed this ultimate spiritual truth)!
Uvalaich samayangal ovvaatha saathiramaam
Savalaik kadalulanaayk kidandhu thadumaarum
Kavalaik keduththuk kazhalinaigal thandharulum
Seyalaip paravinaam thellēnam kottaamō
The Illusion of False Paths
The yoga, tapas (penance), and karma preached by false religions, fake godmen, and bogus ashrams are nothing but contradictory scriptures. They will never align with the Truth! Why? Because there is simply no Truth in them! If one seeks out such deceitful, truthless people, they become like frail, malnourished infants who have been deprived of a mother’s nourishing milk—stunted and weak. Ignorant of the Ultimate Truth, they will only falter and stumble!
However, for those who realize the Lord’s holy feet within their own eyes and perform sincere tapas, the Supreme Lord Himself will eradicate their sorrows and bestow His divine grace upon them!
“Let us sing His glories and clap Thellenam!”
Our great Sage Manikkavasagar urges us to unite the light of our two eyes, perform penance upon the Supreme Lord who graces us by eternally standing as the divine Light within our vision, and thereby attain Perinbam (Supreme Bliss)!
The Danger of Modern Cults
Today, countless ashrams have mushroomed across the world. Especially in India, fake godmen are swarming like termites! We can only pray they do not each start claiming a new religion or spiritual path for themselves in the future.
The followers of Buddha formed Buddhism, followers of Jesus formed Christianity, followers of Prophet Muhammad formed Islam, and followers of Guru Nanak formed Sikhism. Similarly, there are Parsis, Jains, Jews, and many such religions. All these founders were indeed enlightened beings and great saints who received God’s grace. That is acceptable!
But the dark secrets of today’s so-called godmen are stinking up our daily newspapers and television screens! If fools gather and create even more new religions, this world will simply not be able to bear it. We are already struggling to withstand the conflicts and quarrels caused by existing religious divides and foolishness! If a new religion is born now—a religion born of pure arrogance and ego, spreading like the destructive, wild frenzy (madham) that grips an elephant—what will become of this world?!
In our sacred Bharatavarsha (India)—the holy land that gave birth to the 63 Nayanmars, the 12 Alvars, and countless Siddhas and Jnanis (enlightened sages)—not a single saint ever founded a new religion! Nor did they endorse doing so!
The Eternal Glory of Sanatana Dharma
Sage Manikkavasagar did not start a religion! Sage Agastya did not start a religion! Vallalar did not start a religion! This is the true glory of India!
What flourished and continues to flourish here is only Sanatana Dharma! Sanatana Dharma is the universal code of righteous living meant for all of humanity. Across eons and yugas, from a time beyond human measurement to this very day, what shines vibrantly in the sacred land of Bharat is this eternal Sanatana Dharma, which guides a human being on how to truly live as a human being!
It is a profoundly significant fact that no Gnani born here ever started a religion! What originated here is not a religion at all; it is Sanatana Dharma! Calling it the “Hindu religion” is fundamentally incorrect. We are not just “Hindus” bound by a conventional religion—we are the inheritors of the eternal Sanatana Dharma!
Indians! We have no “religion”! Ours is Sanatana Dharma! Sanatana Dharma is the universal path that guides a human being to live truly as a human—with discipline, character, and justice—to realize and experience the One Supreme Lord, the Great Light (Peroli), and to merge completely with Him!
This path is common to all people of the world! “Yadhum Oore, Yavarum Kelir” (The world is my village, and all are my kin!). “May all living beings live in happiness!” This is the core principle and ultimate ideal of the path of Sanatana Dharma! Do not mistake this for some new religion or newly founded sect! It is the ancient, eternal way of life that has existed in the sacred land of Bharat (India) since time immemorial! It is our way of life, spoken by the Lord Himself! It is what our ancestors realized, lived by, and passed down to us!
Sanatana Dharma proclaims that all people of the world, beyond the boundaries of caste, religion, race, and language, are the children of the Almighty Lord! This is exactly what Thiruvarutprakasa Vallalar (Ramalinga Swamigal) refers to as Sanmargam (The Path of Truth)!
Let us envision a society of absolute equality, free from the divisions of caste, religion, race, and language! Realizing that we are all children of the Supreme Being, the Paramatma, the Great Light, let us unite under one umbrella! Let us create a new world! Let us eradicate all artificial differences! Let the whole world live together as one!
Poem Segment:
“He stood before me in full view; singing of His compassionate holy feet…”
The Divine Encounter at Thirupperunthurai To bestow His divine grace upon Manikkavasagar, the Lord of the South—who is the Light of the entire universe—took a human form and came before him at Thirupperunthurai! Embodied as pure Auspiciousness (Sivapazham) in the guise of an ascetic (Sannyasi) and surrounded by His divine retinue, He appeared!
Manikkavasagar saw Him with his own eyes! He saw Him as his eyes drank in the cool nectar of His form! He saw Him as his heart swelled with boundless joy! He felt an intense, mystical force drawing him in! He rushed toward Him like a calf eagerly running to its mother cow!
Who is God? Where is He? How do we see Him? Did He not appear directly as a Guru to grant His divine vision to Manikkavasagar? Did He not take him under His grace? Did He not cast a sidelong glance of supreme grace and grant him spiritual initiation (Deekshai)?
Sing the glorious grace of the Lord who is the very embodiment of compassion! Praise His holy feet, sing, and dance! Perform Gnana Tapas (inner spiritual penance) to unite with His holy feet and merge with Him!
The Truth of the Divine These are not mere stories! This is the absolute Truth! Believe it!
Our great-grandfather lived 200 years ago, didn’t he? Just because we haven’t seen him with our own eyes, does it mean he never existed? Vallalar lived a mere 150 years ago! The court documents and Tahsildar reports from that era still exist as irrefutable proof today! It is the undeniable truth! Believe it!
Does anyone inherently know who their father is? Only the mother knows! We know our father only because our mother tells us! If someone foolishly asks, “How can I trust my mother?” what answer could possibly be given to them?!
The Creator of Body and Soul
Our mother gave us this physical body, but it is God who gave us life! A mother can only form and deliver the gross physical body (Sthula Sarira) in the womb, and even that cannot happen without the grace of God! He is the ultimate protector and provider, sustaining every living being—from a toad trapped inside a rock to the fetus growing within the womb!
It is the Supreme Lord, who is both Mother and Father to us all, who blesses the developing infant in the womb by granting it a soul and a body in accordance with its karma. It is the Almighty Paramatma (Supreme Soul) Himself who resides within us, blessing us by becoming our very life force, the divine Light, and the Jivatma (individual soul)!
The Secret of True Wisdom
This is the ultimate secret of the Vedas! This is the secret of Gnana (divine wisdom)! This is the absolute truth proclaimed by the Siddhas and enlightened sages!
They conveyed these profound truths through coded, mystical language (Paribhashai). Why?
- So that those who genuinely seek may find it!
- So that those with a burning desire may attain it!
- So that those who have the true vision may behold it!
The Path to Supreme Bliss
The enlightened sages gave us countless texts of spiritual wisdom so that humanity may realize this profound truth: Our very own eyes are the holy feet of the Lord!
They wanted seekers to realize that God shines as the divine inner light right there, within the pupil of the eye. By understanding this, one can perform Gnana Tapas (inner spiritual penance), merge with the Lord, and attain Perinbam (Supreme Bliss).
It is with this exact same intention—that every single person should reach and realize God—that I, your humble servant, have offered this exposition of Mei Gnana (True Spiritual Wisdom)!