Arunāchala and Subjective Spiritual Experience

Arunāchala is the Sanskrit name of a hill in Tiruvannamalai that has been honored since time immemorial as the physical body of Śiva. The sacred mountain radiates grace, and millions of pilgrims come each year from around the world seeking blessings and transformation. Sri Ramana Mahārshi is the most famous of many saints who have been drawn to Arunāchala, _or Annamalai in Tamil (the local language), and given themselves to the mountain. He shared the mountain’s energy and message with the world through his teachings. But many others came before him, like Guhai Namaśivāya, who meditated in a cave on the mountainside until his soul left his body and split the giant rock above him. And others have come since, like Swami Nārāyana, who recently lived for eighteen years right beside the summit under a canvas tarp, rarely spoke or walked, and survived almost entirely on milk brought to the summit by devotees. Today saints and seekers continue to come to _Arunāchala, drawn by Śiva’s presence. They join themselves to the sacred vibration that radiates from the mountain and participate in its radiance.

Arunāchala is truly the holy place. Of all holy places it is the most sacred! Know that it is the heart of the world. It is truly Śiva himself! It is his heart-abode, a secret kshetra. In that place the Lord ever abides as the hill of light named Arunāchala. – Sri Rāmana Mahārshi

Arunāchala Śiva invites us into relationship; it calls out to be experienced. When we see it in a photo, or walk the eight-mile pilgrimage route around it, when we sit in its caves or stand on its summit, we have the opportunity to experience the heart of Arunāchala Śiva. But too frequently, we deny our own spiritual experiences. Or perhaps more often, our beliefs about what’s possible are so strong and rigid that they don’t even allow us to accept that we’re having a spiritual experience at all. It’s like sitting outside in the sun and not feeling the warmth because the forecast called for cold. Or perhaps the person next to us says “You’re crazy, it’s not warm! It’s cold.” Who do we trust? Our own experience of warmth? Or the others who deny it?

The scientific method has served us profoundly in penetrating the manipulation of spiritual truth by elites. But it has also stripped us of our own subjectivity. It has subjugated our own freedom of experience to “experts” and machines. If we happen to have an experience that contradicts what’s commonly accepted as possible or verifiable, we risk being mocked and discredited. This need not be so. We can be scientifically scrupulous in our exploration of our own inner experiences, if we remain open and flexible enough for those experiences to manifest and touch our awareness.

The good news is that no belief system or social pressure can actually revoke, or even diminish spiritual experience. Experiences persist, sometimes below the surface of what our conscious awareness will allow, sometimes poking through and challenging the status quo of our own belief systems. They persist because, as the saying goes, Truth will out. What is real cannot stay hidden beneath the veil of falsehood forever. So when Arunāchala Śiva, or any other spiritually alive entity, calls to you, the message is always received.

The original dualistic Śaiva Siddhānta philosophies considered the Divine, the creation, and the individual as distinctly and eternally separate. The world of birth, life, and death was considered to be like a prison from which only God’s grace could offer liberation. Liberation came in the form of a guru, who would offer initiation and mystically empowered mantras that would lead toward freedom, but not union with the Divine, who is forever separate from all individual souls. This dualistic Śaiva Siddhānta tradition was one of the first emergences of what we now call tantra.