Tiruvannamalai - one piece of heaven

This is the place with the holy mountain, which is said, that it does not let you go, if you fit with its energy. The name of the mountain is Mt Arunachala, and here is the ashram of Sri Ramana Maharshi, who was meditating on this mountain until he got enlightened. This place is the hometown of a lot of sadhus, who came here to get enlightened too, it has some ashrams and also a big temple, where at the moment a festival was going on.
On my way to the top of the Mt Arunachala
with Jana

and other indian friends
you can see the big size of the temple


People say, that the teaching of Sri Ramana Maharshi is of highest level, but I haven't heard of it until now. Also I was not really interested on his teaching, still thinking I have so much and enough knowledge in my head, and only need to practice. I knew, I am a beginner in practicing meditation and all spiritual techniques, but what I didn't know, i found out there!
On my first day, I met Eddie. That what this, mid in his fifties old, irish man and me had in common was the same hairstyle *g*. As I saw later, to have no hair is always good for a nice talk. But anyway, he was my first "spiritual" friend, in my spiritual friendship career. Through him, I met a lot of local "westerners", who live there and often hold different activities. So I also joined to sing Bhajans, went to a singing ball meditation, checked out the festival site... and met very special people and friends - people with the same "wavelength" than me.
In the time there, I was confronted with two questions. The first question is "Who am I?" - that is the main issue of Sri Ramana's teaching. When meditating, the same question is "Who is observing?" (the mind, the body, the seeing, the hearing...), because you easily can say, I am not the body, I am not my ears, I am not my mind, I am not this characteristic feature of me (e.g. spontaneous, friendly, bullheaded) ... I must be something below all this. I didn't understand, what the people meant when they said, they know who is observing - because I didn't! I am speaking of the experimental level!!! Theoretically its easy, that must be the soul - that was also what my mind said to me, its easy, I know! (That I didn't know, I realized when I first experienced.) The second question was "What is important?" (for me, and for everyone, in general). I realized, I didn't know even what is important for me in my life, and I thought, this is a problem. I knew on theoretical level, how strong the mind is, and that you can live the life you want easily, using the mind correctly. But not to know which life, everything, makes the mind useless. And also my concept of my spiritual goal was broken, when a friend told me, it is not important for him, what you believe and if to see anything (opening of the third eye), ... it is all just a question of consciousness. I even just now realize, that I understood nothing at this time on experimental level - of course my mind said, I know, very easy! What else I saw there very clearly was, that everyone is a teacher for you, a mirror, a reflection, and in some you see an ideal. So I found my first ideal, my first Guru, here, in a friend.
After one week of enjoying the life there, my feeling inside said to me, I have to leave. At the same time, I thought I am crazy, now I found what I wanted, everything is perfect and I am leaving - I think it was too much for me, this energy?! Leaving was very easy, the mountain didn't hold me back, and not the mountain was it, what I loved most, it was the people I met, who made this place so special for me.
I am sorry, but I never took my camera - no pictures of the best parts!