When, stilling my mind, It drew me up to It, and I came close, I found that It was the Immovable.’ But even when I came to know through another that It was the same as thiruvannamalai I did not understand its meaning. From my childhood it appeared to my intelligence that Arunachala was something very great. Its action is difficult for anyone to understand. Referring to this incident the sage says later on in one of his hymns to Arunachala ‘Oh, great wonder! As an insentient hill It stands. The very name ‘Arunachala’ acted as a magic spell on venkatarAman, and with an evident excitement he put his next question to the elderly gentleman, “What! From Arunachala! Where is it?” And he got the reply that Tiruvannamalai(7) was Arunachala. The boy asked him where he had come from. One day an elderly relative of his, called on the family in Madurai. It was apparently by accident that venkatarAman heard about aruNAchala when he was sixteen years of age.

Saint appar beautifully captures the stages of one's spiritual progress towards the Supreme, in the song munnam avanuDai nAmam kETTAL (She got to hear first, His Name) (6). He would be carried away or even beaten without his waking up in the process. In this he was rather unusual he would not know of anything that happened to him during sleep. If some of them had any grievance against him at any time, they would dare play pranks with him, only when he was asleep. His school mates and other companions were afraid of his strength. There he was sent to Scott’s Middle School and then to the American Mission High School. This necessitated him go to Madurai along with the family and living with his paternal uncle Subbaiyar. He studied in the elementary school in the thirucuzi village and later on for a year at dindukkal. One who tries and realizes God becomes the saint and other ignorant are just masses!!' Showing the truth of that song in a single birth, venakaTarAman, who later became a saint, had nothing apparently extra-ordinary in his childhood. If once cleanses well the bronze plate, it would reflect like a mirror. (5), where he says, 'There is no difference between the bronze that is used as dull plate for eating or that is so shining to reflect the face. There is a beautiful songs by saint basavaNNa. On the festival procession the Lord natarAja of the temple was take out and when the God is just re-entering the temple, by the grace of God, azagammAL gave birth to venkatarAman.

It was the very great arudhra darshanam (4) day. There lived the pious couple sundaram aiyar, azagammAL. Thiruccuzi (1) is a village south of Madurai in Tamilnadu, that has the beautiful temple of Lord shiva that was sung by saint sundharar (2) (3). A saint who lived in the shade of the Lord aruNAchalEshwara in the recent 20th century and showed the world by example the difficult to comprehend philosophies through the implementation in his simple life, is sri ramaNa mahaRishi.

Ramana maharshi ashram tiruvannamalai