Arunachala Story

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

I received this story from a friend yesterday, who gave me permission

to share it:

 

 

A little story here on Arunachala: The powerful attraction of that

place was proved to me personally before I ever knew of its glorious

reputation (or its Ramana connection). In the late 1970s, in Joseph

Campbell's The Mythic Image, on page 92, I saw a photo of the temple

at Tiruvannamali which impressed me greatly. In the late `80s, a

friend visiting Bangkok brought me the book "Ways to Shiva: life and

ritual in Hindu India". On page 54 was a photo of the same temple,

obviously taken from nearly the same spot on a hill behind the temple

complex. I wanted to BE there so bad, that my first trip to India (in

1993) was planned around going to the December music festival in

Madras, and then working my way to several of those Chola-era temples

in Tamil Nadu, with the intention of going to that particular town

and climbing up to the exact spot those photos were taken from (all

the while thinking more of the view I wanted to see, rather than the

hill itself).

Traveling solo, on the Mahabalipuram-Tiruvannamalai bus, I caught my

first glimpse of that mountain behind the temple, straight ahead,

still 10 or 15 miles in the distance. An incredible thrill ran

through my body. I mean like whole-body euphoria. Totally unexpected

and unexplained. I kept looking for it again each time the bus

rounded a corner.

Later on that day I did climb to that spot, and then further up along

the trail I sat out on a rock outcropping overlooking the town, and

experienced very clearly the total completion of My Search, My Story.

Everything was perfectly resolved in timelessness. Nothing left to

do. I never visited "the Ashram", which I learned was just a short

way over the saddle. In the following weeks I started reading and

appreciating Ramana Maharshi, and from books learned what I had

already found out myself about the mountain. Wonderfully and

mysteriously attractive.

 

(BTW, from Ken Wilber's early books, I had already encountered

references to R.M. but hadn't yet followed up on them. I was content

in my Buddhist-framed spiritually, and had never been attracted to

the various Hindu/Vedanta approaches; too much "God" stuff, at the

time, for this ex-Baptist.)

 

 

 

LoveAlways