Paul Brunton and Arunachala

In the previous posting I wrote about the upcoming restoration of Paul Brunton's Cottage at Palakottu, west of Ramana Ashram and at the base of Arunachala. To read the posting go to this link here. Below is a short biography and extract from his famed book, "In Search of Secret India." 

Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was a British philosopher, mystic, and traveller. He left a successful journalistic career to live among yogis, mystics, and holy men, and studied a wide variety of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings. With his entire life dedicated to an inward and spiritual quest, Brunton felt charged with the task of communicating his experiences to others and, as the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective, his works had a major influence on the spread of Eastern mysticism to the West. He was also one of the first Westerners to first bring Arunachala and Sri Ramana Maharshi to greater public attention. 

Pencil drawing of Paul Brunton in his Cottage

The following extract taken from Paul Brunton 1936 book ‘A Message from Arunachala,’ describes the Hill’s appearance and antiquity in a way which has not been bettered: 

The Hill

"Somewhere in South India there is a lonely Hill which has been honoured with a high status in Hindu sacred tradition and legendary history. It lies near the same latitude as French-ruled Pondicherry, yet does not enjoy the latter’s advantage of catching the cooling coastal breezes. A fierce sun daily flays it with darting rays. Its form is uncouth and ungainly – a tumbled, awkward thing whose sides are jagged and broken. Whose face is a mass of jumbled rocks and thorny scrubs. Snakes, centipedes and scorpions lurk beneath the crevices of its multitudinous stones. During the dry summer months, cheetahs make their bold appearance with dusk, descending the Hill in a snarling quest of water. 

The whole peak offers no pretty panorama of regular outline, straight sides and balanced proportions, but rather the reverse. Even its base wanders aimlessly about on an eight-mile circuit, with several spurs and foot Hills, as though unable to make up its mind as to when it shall come to an end. Its substance is nothing but igneous and laterite rock. 

A geologist friend from America who visited me lately proclaimed Arunachala to have been thrown up by the earth under the stress of some violent volcanic eruption in the dim ages before even the coal-bearing strata were formed. 

In fact, he dated this rocky mass of granite back to the earliest epoch of the history of our planet’s crust, that epoch which long preceded the vast sedimentary formations in which fossil records of plants and animals have been preserved. It existed long before gigantic saurians of the prehistoric world moved their ungainly forms through the primeval forests that covered our early earth. He went even further and made it contemporaneous with the formation of the very crust of the earth itself. Arunachala, he asserted, was almost as hoary and as ancient as our planetary home itself. It was indeed a remnant of the vanished continent of sunken Lemuria, of which the indigenous legends still keep a few memories. 

The Tamil traditions not only speak of the vast antiquity of this and other Hills, but assert that the Himalayas were not thrown up till later. Untold centuries, therefore, pressed their weight upon this time-defying pile which rose so abruptly from the plain. 

And yet this unbeautiful and doddering greybeard among heights took my heart in pawn a few years ago and would not let me redeem the pledge. It held me captive in an intangible and indefinable thrall. It imprisoned me from the first moment when my eyes glanced at it till the last reluctant turning away of the head. I could no longer regard myself as a free man when such invisible chains clanged around my feet."

In Search of Secret India

As is the case with many pilgrims to Arunachala, my introduction to the Hill was through the writings of Paul Brunton in his remarkable book, “In Search of Secret India.”

The book charts the course of Paul Brunton’s spiritual quest travelling throughout India in search of a Guru. His journey led him to meet extraordinary men in very unordinary circumstances. Eventually he was to understand that his guru in form was Sri Ramana Maharshi, and three chapters in the book recount Brunton’s experiences both with Arunachala and with the Sage.

When the book “In Search of Secret India”, found its way into my life I was recuperating from an illness so was able to read the book many times in a restful and contemplative manner. Like Brunton, I also fell under the spell of several saints and sages presented “In Search of Secret India,” however my true enchantment was spun by what was termed, ‘The Hill of the Holy Beacon'. And the book left me with the overpowering intention to one day visit Arunachala during Deepam Festival, and view the light on top of the Holy Hill.

There can be no better joy in life then what man proposes and God disposes are unified and it has subsequently been my great good fortune to be allowed to be at Arunachala for many Deepams.

Below is a narrative from Brunton’s book which describes his first view of Arunachala;-

“ . . . We descend at a little wayside station and the train screeches and grinds away into the silent darkness. Night’s life has not quite run out so we sit in a bare and comfortless little waiting-room, whose small kerosene lamp we light ourselves.

We wait patiently while day fights with darkness for supremacy. When a pale dawn emerges at last, creeping bit by bit through a small barred window in the back of our room, I peer out at such portion of our surroundings as becomes visible. Out of the morning haze there rises the faint outline of a solitary hill apparently some few miles distant. The base is of impressive extent and the body of ample girth, but the head is not to be seen, being yet thick-shrouded in the dawn mists.

. . . . . I judge that we have now travelled about five or six miles, when we reach the lower slopes of the hill whose vague outline I had seen from the station. It rises like a reddish-brown giant in the clear morning sunlight. The mists have now rolled away, revealing a broad skyline at the top. It is an isolated upland of red soil and brown rock, barren for the most part, with large tracts almost treeless and with masses of stone split into great boulders tossed about in chaotic disorder.

Arunachala in the 1940's

Brunton’s companion said:

“. . . . . Once a year the temple priests celebrate their central festival. Immediately that occurs within the temple, a huge fire blazes out on top of the mountain, its flame being fed with vast quantities of butter and camphor. It burns for many days and can be seen for many miles around. Whoever sees it, at once prostrates himself before it. It symbolizes the fact that this mountain is sacred ground, overshadowed by a great deity.”

The hill now towers over our heads. It is not without its rugged grandeur, this lonely peak patterned with red, brown and grey boulders, thrusting its flat head thousands of feet into the pearly sky. Whether the holy man’s words have affected me or whether for some unaccountable cause, I find a queer feeling of awe arising in me as I meditate upon the picture of the sacred mountain, as I gaze up wonderingly at the steep incline of Arunachala.

“Do you know,” whispers my companion, “That this mountain is not only esteemed holy ground, but the local traditions dare to assert that the gods placed it there to mark the spiritual centre of the world!”

[In Search of Secret India by Paul Brunton]

The Hill

Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was a British philosopher, mystic, and traveler. He left a successful journalistic career to live among yogis, mystics, and holy men, and studied a wide variety of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings. With his entire life dedicated to an inward and spiritual quest, Brunton felt charged with the task of communicating his experiences to others and, as the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective, his works had a major influence on the spread of Eastern mysticism to the West. He was also one of the first Westerners to first bring Arunachala and Sri Ramana Maharshi to greater public attention.

The following extract taken from Paul Brunton 1936 book ‘A Message from Arunachala,’ describes the Hill’s appearance and antiquity in a way which has not been bettered:

The Hill

Somewhere in South India there is a lonely Hill which has been honoured with a high status in Hindu sacred tradition and legendary history. It lies near the same latitude as French-ruled Pondicherry, yet does not enjoy the latter’s advantage of catching the cooling coastal breezes. A fierce sun daily flays it with darting rays. Its form is uncouth and ungainly – a tumbled, awkward thing whose sides are jagged and broken. Whose face is a mass of jumbled rocks and thorny scrubs. Snakes, centipedes and scorpions lurk beneath the crevices of its multitudinous stones. During the dry summer months, cheetahs make their bold appearance with dusk, descending the Hill in a snarling quest of water.

The whole peak offers no pretty panorama of regular outline, straight sides and balanced proportions, but rather the reverse. Even its base wanders aimlessly about on an eight-mile circuit, with several spurs and foot Hills, as though unable to make up its mind as to when it shall come to an end. Its substance is nothing but igneous and laterite rock.

A geologist friend from America who visited me lately proclaimed Arunachala to have been thrown up by the earth under the stress of some violent volcanic eruption in the dim ages before even the coal-bearing strata were formed.

In fact, he dated this rocky mass of granite back to the earliest epoch of the history of our planet’s crust, that epoch which long preceded the vast sedimentary formations in which fossil records of plants and animals have been preserved. It existed long before gigantic saurians of the prehistoric world moved their ungainly forms through the primeval forests that covered our early earth. He went even further and made it contemporaneous with the formation of the very crust of the earth itself. Arunachala, he asserted, was almost as hoary and as ancient as our planetary home itself. It was indeed a remnant of the vanished continent of sunken Lemuria, of which the indigenous legends still keep a few memories.

The Tamil traditions not only speak of the vast antiquity of this and other Hills, but assert that the Himalayas were not thrown up till later. Untold centuries, therefore, pressed their weight upon this time-defying pile which rose so abruptly from the plain.

And yet this unbeautiful and doddering greybeard among heights took my heart in pawn a few years ago and would not let me redeem the pledge. It held me captive in an intangible and indefinable thrall. It imprisoned me from the first moment when my eyes glanced at it till the last reluctant turning away of the head. I could no longer regard myself as a free man when such invisible chains clanged around my feet.