As part of Syntagma’s Meta- series, we’ll be launching Arunachala News in September.

This is a new website providing on-the-spot coverage of life on India’s most mystical mountain : Arunachala. It will be authored by Meenakshi Mammi, who writes a newsletter from this sacred spot made famous worldwide by the presence of Ramana Maharshi in the first half of the 20th century.

Ramana’s method was quite simple:

“As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one’s self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one’s nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one’s self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form “Who am I?”, is the principal means.”

Readers who follow our other websites across Syntagma Media’s network will know we have for a while had an informal supplement, or grouping of blogs, concerned with spiritual and paranormal topics.

Now that A Spirit of Place is no longer with us, owing to the author losing interest in writing about places she had never visited, we have just two sites left in this section: this one and Supernatural, authored by Deborah Woehr.

However, in September we are going to extend the group with a number of new sites based on different topic areas. One we are very hopeful of setting up arrived as a result of A Spirit of Place and may manifest in the form of a blog written directly from Arunachala, that mystical place which was the home of Ramana Maharshi in the first half of the 20th century.

Others are in the pipeline and will make up a new supplement called MetaSyntagma. Stay tuned for more information.

We have a new blog in the network, Numinous Places, devoted to sacred places, people and objects. It’s being authored by Adelle Tilton our Creme de la Femme editor, and Deborah Woehr who blogs Supernatural for us.

I’ve just put up a post on Arunachala Hill and Ramana Maharshi, which I thought might be appreciated by readers of this blog.

Hop over to sample the world’s numinous places.

In the final post on Ramana Maharshi as part of this series, here is the opening page of Ramana’s book, Spiritual Instruction:

1. What are the marks of a real teacher?

Steady abidance in the Self, looking at all with an equal eye, unshakeable courage at all times, in all places and circumstances.

2. What are the marks of an earnest disciple?

An intense longing for the removal of sorrow and attainment of joy and an intense aversion for all kinds of mundane pleasure.

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