Saint Sages are the salt of the earth. They are the saviours of humanity. They are the sustainers of society. Philo remarks, “Households, cities, countries and nations have enjoyed great happiness, when a single individual has taken heed of the good and beautiful. Such men not only liberate themselves, they fill those they meet with a free mind.”
An English professor in the purvasrama, Sri Krishnaprem was an orthodox devotee of Krishna and as such had no intention to follow Self-Enquiry. Yet he had a striking experience of the significance of the question, ‘Who am I?’, when he visited Bhagavan for his blessings.
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi emphasised several times that the holy Hill Arunachala is the heart of the world and the most ancient and oldest of hills. He also used to say that it is a natural Sri Chakra and that from each angle it has a different appearance. That is why it is a Siva linga with form and without form. From every direction it presents itself in a different majestic posture.
Of the outer symbol of Sri Arunachala on earth, Lord Siva says, “Meditate on the fact that in the heart of the Hill surges the spiritual glory, within which the whole world is contained.”
From every angle Arunachala presents a different aspect. But the Sivalinga, representing the Hill, symbolises its true shape, that of the formless including all forms.