Lucy Cornelssen - The Setting (2)

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This is also particularly the secret of Arunachala, the Hill

of Light. In the language of the Puranas, it is the Heart of the

World, and the ancient legend of its origin goes like this:

Brahma, the Lord of creation, and Vishnu, the divine

sustainer of it, were quarrelling about their status, as to which

one of them was the greater. As their discussion grew heated,

things in the universe got into disorder, and the minor deities

fell in fear and anxiety. Finally they resorted to Lord Siva, the

All-powerful, for aid. Between the quarrelling Gods there

appeared suddenly a gigantic pillar of light, the sight of which

dumbfounded them for a moment. Out of this light came a

mysterious Voice:

“He who shall find the upper or the lower end of Me shall

be deemed the greater one.”

 

Immediately both of the antagonists put themselves to work.

Vishnu took the form of a boar and started to dig deep into the

soil in search of the lower end of the column of light. Brahma

transformed himself into a swan and soared higher and higher.

Neither of them arrived at an end of the apparition.

Vishnu, catching the idea that the mysterious Voice might have

a deeper meaning, gave up and sat down, to find it in the depth

of meditation.

Brahma, troubled by the idea that Vishnu might have been

successful, became envious, and when there came falling just

then a heavenly flower, he grasped it and decided to pretend

that he had found it on top of the magic light.

 

Vishnu, thus being deceived, complained to Lord Siva,

asking why He had bestowed on Brahma the Grace of success.

Thereupon Siva revealed Himself in the pillar of Light, and,

blessing both of them, declared:

“I am Siva; I am Brahman, the mystery of the universe,

and thus Atman, the mystery of beings. Nobody can reach Me

by his own endeavor. But to those who surrender wholeheartedly

to Me, to them I reveal Myself. You ask Me to stay on earth for

being worshipped. Well, I shall stay here as Arunachala, the Hill

of Light, and when during Autumn the Moon shall arise on the

horizon at the same hour when the Sun is setting, there shall be

a huge fire lit on the summit, radiating far around. To those

who see the Light and meditate on it as the symbol of

enlightenment I shall grant the highest Truth.”

 

Thousands of Indian legends and parables are at the same

time veiling and revealing the living Truth about God, Man

and World. In this legend of Arunachala, Brahma stands for

buddhi, the reason, Vishnu for ahamkara, the ego of man, Siva

for Atman, the secret of man’s true Nature. Neither reason nor

ego can, of their own talents, reach the Supreme Atman, the

supreme Self, the true nature of man; they have to submit.

Only then the Atman reveals Itself.

 

This is the teaching of Arunachala...Siva, the Hill of Dawn,

the Dawn of Wisdom. It is also the teaching of Arunachala Ramana.

Who is Sri Ramana, the Maharshi of Arunachala?

Another Voice of the Spirit of the land, lost in the sea,

calling the spirit of the 20th century.

 

When India got her independence, she stressed her

intention to play her part in the concert of nations as a secular

state like all others, but did not proclaim any particular theoretical

ideal. More gifted than others, she was able to personify her

national intentions in a Triple Star of contemporary great souls:

Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sri Aurobindo,

each of them a national and social beacon-light who at the same

time stretched out a hand in friendship towards the world.

Let us remember: Swami Vivekananda laid the foundation

of the first nationwide organization for the social uplift of the

suffering masses at home, simultaneously carrying abroad the

rich spiritual heritage of his country, which was then practically

unknown outside India.

 

Mahatma Gandhi brought the precious gift of national

independence to his tortured native country by the proclaimed

idea of non-violence, living himself as a personality of the highest

human standard, so that the world bowed down to him in

veneration when he laid down his very life in the service of his

people.

 

Sri Aurobindo, too, who retired finally for the greater part

of his life to Pondicherry in the South, had been very active in

the struggle for national freedom, before he took his eminent

place beside the other two by his Maha-yoga and his immense

literary work, in which he propagated a Divine Life on earth as

the goal of human evolution. A noble vision indeed!

 

The precious gifts of Gandhiji and Swami Vivekananda

are present everywhere in modern India and form her life and

blood, as it were. The radiance of the Triple Star of great souls,

surely a national symbol as worthy as it is meaningful, covers

the subcontinent... the mysterious land, lost in the sea... as an

invisible triangle spreading from northeast to northwest and to

the far south.

 

But during the time of that heroic and spectacular struggle,

when those great souls did tapas and offered their very lives as

yajna for the sake of the many who could not help themselves,

the spirit of the hidden depths had already silently embodied

itself in another great soul.

 

When Mahatma Gandhi’s political career as such might

be said to have begun, with the founding of the Natal Indian

Congress, at his instance and with his active co-operation in

Durban in May, 1894, when Swami Vivekananda had his

marvelous success at the World Congress of Religions in

Chicago in 1893, the boy Venkataraman, the later Maharshi

Ramana, was still a schoolboy, more fond of games than of

mathematics and English Grammar. When on his return in

1897 the Swami started his triumphal tour in the same region

of South India and prophesied in one of his speeches that South

India was going to take a leading part in the spiritual

regeneration of the world, that in the 20th century there was

going to rise in South India a flood of atmic power, which

would inundate not only the whole of India but the entire world,

that same boy Venkataraman, then in his seventeenth year, had

already given up school, home and family, past and future, name

and personality, and was living lost in the unfathomable Silence

of Arunachala, the most sacred Siva lingam, and in

contemplation of the Great Experience that had led him there.

 

He never went abroad to preach the ancient wisdom of

his race to the world like Vivekananda; he did not fight for

political Independence like Gandhiji; he did not even dream

of a future Divine Life on earth like Sri Aurobindo. His was a

quite different way.

 

Those three Great ones form for ever the Triple Star who

dedicated their lives to the uplift of the millions of their people.

He remained a Lone Star, living the life of man’s true nature, a

silent model for each individual who feels the agony of this age,

when man seems to have forgotten his true nature. He remained

the Lone Star of Arunachala, pointing steadily in the same

direction, like the polaris, guiding the individual and therewith

mankind to its highest destination.

 

 

HUNTING THE ‘I’ according to

Sri Ramana Maharshi

LUCY CORNELSSEN