The mountain · The wider company of the hill

The wider spiritual Tiruvannamalai: Aurobindo, siddhas & the company of the hill

Arunachala is far more than Ramana alone. Across two thousand years it has drawn an extraordinary density of the holy ~ the ancient saints, Seshadri and the beggar-saint, the hidden siddhas, and figures as great as Sri Aurobindo. A wider map of spiritual Tiruvannamalai.

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It would be easy, spending time at Arunachala, to imagine that its whole spiritual life is Ramana ~ so vast is his presence here. But that would be to miss something remarkable about this hill: it has drawn, and gone on drawing, an extraordinary density of the holy, across centuries and across every kind of path. The ancient Tamil saints sang it; Seshadri Swami and the beggar-saint Yogi Ramsuratkumar walked its streets; and figures as great as Sri Aurobindo felt its pull from afar. This is a wider map of spiritual Tiruvannamalai ~ the fuller company of the hill.

Sri Aurobindo and Arunachala

The connection between Sri Aurobindo ~ the great sage, poet and revolutionary of Pondicherry ~ and Arunachala is real, if largely indirect, and it runs through the devotees the two shared. It is striking, first, that the two supreme spiritual luminaries of twentieth-century South India, Ramana at Arunachala and Aurobindo at Pondicherry, lived out their lives barely a few hours apart, and ~ by a remarkable coincidence that devotees of both have long pondered ~ left their bodies in the same year, 1950. Seekers of the age moved between the two: many who sat with Ramana also went to Aurobindo, and the beggar-saint Yogi Ramsuratkumar counted both Ramana and Sri Aurobindo among his “three fathers,” feeling a deep peace descend the moment he entered Aurobindo's ashram. The two hills of light ~ Arunachala and Pondicherry ~ were, in the lived experience of the seekers of that time, two poles of a single field. Aurobindo's path (the “Integral Yoga,” the transformation of the whole being and of life itself) and Ramana's (the direct inquiry into the Self) are very different in method and emphasis; but the age that produced them felt them as complementary summits, and many a seeker drew from both.

Why so much holiness gathers here

Step back, and a genuine mystery presents itself. Why should this one modest hill, in an ordinary district of Tamil Nadu, have drawn such an unbroken density of realised beings across two thousand years and more? The scriptures give the traditional answer: Arunachala is not a place where holiness happens to appear, but the very fire-form of Shiva, the secret Heart-centre ~ so that saints are drawn to it as iron to a lodestone, the Self in them recognising the Self that the hill is. Whatever one makes of that, the historical fact is undeniable: from the Nalvar and Arunagirinathar a thousand years ago, through the siddhas and sages of the intervening centuries, to Seshadri, Ramana, Yogi Ramsuratkumar and the ripples that reached Aurobindo and the modern world ~ this hill has been a magnet for the holy with few equals anywhere on earth.

Saints are drawn to Arunachala as iron to a lodestone ~ the Self in them, the tradition says, recognising the Self that the hill is.

The hidden ones: siddhas and unknown saints

Beyond the famous names lies a whole tradition of the hidden holy. Arunachala is spoken of, in the old accounts, as a dwelling-place of siddhas ~ perfected beings, some said to be of immense age, living unseen on the hill and in its caves, revealing themselves only rarely and only to those ready to meet them. Ramana himself, in his early years on the mountain, is said to have had such encounters, and the tradition holds that the hill is never without its hidden sages. Whether one takes this literally or as sacred poetry, it points to something every long-term resident comes to feel: that Tiruvannamalai holds far more spiritual life than is ever visible ~ that for every saint whose name is on a thousand walls, there are others, in a hut on the Girivalam road or a cave on the slope, whom the world will never know. The hill keeps its secrets.

The living town today

And it has not stopped. Tiruvannamalai today is one of the most spiritually alive towns on earth ~ home not only to the great ashrams but to a floating, international community of seekers, teachers, wanderers and practitioners of every conceivable path, drawn from all over the world to live in the shadow of the hill. Non-dual teachers hold satsang; yogis and meditators fill the guesthouses; the Girivalam road on a full-moon night carries every kind of devotion at once. Some of this is profound and some is passing, as such scenes always are; but the underlying fact is simply the ancient one, continuing: the hill goes on drawing the seeking heart, as it always has. To come to Arunachala is to step into a river of devotion two thousand years deep, and still flowing. See our pages on the saints of Arunachala and the ashrams of the town to meet more of its company.

Last updated 18 October 2026. Following the documented record preserved by Sri Ramanasramam and his devotees; where an account is traditional, it is told as such.