In the end everyone must come to Arunachala

All the excitement over Deepam had put the cubs into a state where they insisted on doing math even when Mum Lioness turned out the light and made threats that there would be no fresh batches of Ramana Munch made unless the cubs would stop solving equations for long enough to fall asleep. But when it came to their other subjects, the cubs would just scamper away swishing their tails and wiggling their ears and laughing and claiming they had never heard of words like social studies and could not do things they had never heard of. Med Tiger was getting concerned because Spotty had perfected the little tail swoosh and chuckle that Tirucub had shown him was the best response to an instruction like, "Sit down and get cracking on that social studies!" And in Spotty's case it really was true that he had no idea what those words meant. "How will he learn?" worried Med Tiger.

To make matters worse, Mama Hippolyta dropped by to say her little darlings Crumple and Rumple were writing one hundred page long essays, one a day. "They will never settle for a page less than that!" she boasted. "And their pencalfship is just superb!"

Tirucub threw a skeptical glance at his three younger brothers and whispered, "More likely they are eating a hundred rava ladoos!"

After Mama Hippolyta had waddled away, Mum Lioness stretched out her paws in a way that showed a set of sharp claws, and said, "Now cubs! There can be no more excuses ..."



"Oh, but Mum Lioness, we heard no one is to write a word until all the ghee on the Hilltop is burned up," interrupted Tirucub. "And all the smoke cleared entirely."

"I don't know where that rumour came from," said Mum Lioness, casting a sharp glance at Spotty who quickly hid under his tennis racket, "but you all must write a full page this afternoon."

"I have a better idea!" said Arunacub. "Let's put on a play for Med Tiger and Mum Lioness! We can start practicing now. Maybe later we can write it down."

Mum Lioness quite liked the idea so she gave a small purr and settled herself on a sunny rock with a collection of Suri Nagamma's letters to her brother.

"What will the play be about?" asked Omcub.

"The origin of the Hill," said Arunacub. "Om, you can be Vishnu, and Tiru, you can be Brahma."

Knowing the story, Om and Tiru at once began an argument.

"Anyone can see I am greater!" announced Tirucub.

"That's rediclious!!" shouted Omcub in a deep voice.

The other cubs began throwing themselves around chaotically in response to this argument, and soon Crumps and Rumps came galumphing along, demanding to know what was going on. When no one would tell them, they decided to join in the chaos. Mama Hippolyta arrived, shrieking and wailing that the cubs were a bad influence on her sons, and her ruckus added tremendously to the effect. The cubs soon found the wildness of the hippos altogether too much for them and they climbed up above the cave where the hippos could not scramble and called out beseechingly, "Siva! Settle this dispute so things can calm down!"

Siva manifested as a column of light and they heard him say, from within the light, "Whoever can find my upper or lower end is the greater!"

Omcub quickly om-ed himself into a little boar. "Whew!" thought Mum Lioness, glancing up from the Nagamma letters, "Thank goodness the cubs can turn into whatever they need to be and I am not required to spend the next month sewing a baby boar suit, or trying to track down enough swan feathers to completely coat Tirucub with them."

Omboar (Vishnu) bagan scratching in the earth at the bottom of the column of light.



Meanwhile, Tiru had om-ed himself into a beautiful swan and was soaring up, sternly telling the hippo twins to address him as Brahma when they began shouting, "Tiru! Come back and play with us!"



Spotty was instructed to hit a bit of an alse plant way up into the sky with his tennis racket, and when it came floating down, Tiruswan (Brahma) caught it in his beak. "I found this as the summit!" he announced.



Vishnu had stopped his scrabbling and become lost in bliss in the Supreme light.

Then Vishnu admitted his failure and turned to the Lord in praise and prayer: “You are Self-knowledge. You are OM. You are the beginning and the middle and the end of everything. You are everything and illuminate everything.” He was pronounced great while Brahma was exposed and confessed his fault.

Because Siva was too brilliant to behold as a column of light, in his mercy he manifested as the Arunachala Hill.

Spotty and Arunacub scrambled back up above the cave, hid behind rocks, and called down in what they hoped were Siva-ish voices: “As the moon derives its light from the sun, so other holy places shall derive their sanctity from Arunachala. This is the only place where I have taken this form for the benefit of those who wish to worship me and obtain illumination. Arunachala is OM itself. I will appear on the summit of this hill every year at Kartigai in the form of a peace-giving beacon.”



Med Tiger, who had been watching all this from a sunny spot near Mum Lioness, felt moved to stand up and add, "This refers not only to the sanctity of Arunachala itself but also to the pre-eminence of the doctrine of Advaita and the path of Self-enquiry of which Arunachala is the center. One can understand this meaning in our Beloved Father’s saying, “In the end everyone must come to Arunachala."