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VelMont, the Zenith and Abhijit — A Journey from Experience to Inquiry
- Palani
- 6 hours ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
When the Land Found Us
VelMont, the Zenith and Abhijit — A Journey from Experience to Inquiry
For many years, VelMont existed only as a vision.
Beginning around 2014, we searched across the Bay Area for a piece of land where Murugan could have a home in the hills. We looked at one property after another. Some were beautiful. Some seemed practical. Yet for one reason or another, none became the place.
Ten years passed.
Then, in 2024, we arrived at the land that would become VelMont.
Sometimes we say that we found VelMont.
But as the years have passed, another thought has stayed with me:
Perhaps this place found us.
A Feeling Before an Explanation
From our first visit, several of us felt something different about the land.
It was difficult to put into words.
There was the openness of the hills. The enormous sky. The wind. The silence. The feeling of being removed from the constant movement of everyday life.
After Murugan worship began at VelMont, we started hearing similar comments from visitors.
Some told us:
“I feel very peaceful here.”
Others described the hill as blissful or deeply calming.
Some devotees returned later and told us that positive changes had happened in their lives after praying there. Others simply said that something about sitting quietly on the hill made them feel lighter.
These are personal experiences and testimonials, not scientific evidence of a special physical energy field. We cannot scientifically claim from these experiences alone that VelMont possesses a unique “positive energy.”
But when many people independently describe peace, stillness and connection in the same place, it creates a question worth exploring.
What is it about this space?
Long before we began researching astronomy or geography, we had already tried to express that feeling on the VelMont website:
Awaken the Divine Within 🌸
Have you ever stood in an open space, where the sky kisses the earth and the breeze feels like a whisper from the divine? In places like VelMont, where nature embraces silence, the soul finds its voice.
🕉️ “The journey of the soul is not about finding something outside; it’s about remembering what already lies within.”
Pause. Breathe. Connect.
In the stillness of these sacred spaces, the eternal truth reveals itself. The gentle rustle of leaves becomes a mantra, the vastness of the sky mirrors the infinite within.
Come, experience the serenity. Let your heart open, your mind rest, and your spirit soar.
At that time, these were simply words describing what we were experiencing.
We had no idea where those words would eventually lead us.
Then Came Shiva — and the Idea of Space
A few weeks later, our relationship with the land took another turn.
We came to recognize on the property what we experienced spiritually as a Swayambhu form of Shiva. What struck me personally was not simply the form itself, but what it suggested:
Shiva without boundaries. Shiva as space. Shiva as the sky surrounding us.
Immediately my thoughts went to Chidambaram.
In the Pancha Bhoota tradition, the Chidambaram Nataraja Temple represents Ākāśa — space or sky. The official Chidambaram Municipality description identifies the shrine as the Akasha Lingam, the sky element among the five elemental Shiva temples. (tnurbantree.tn.gov.in)
That connection stayed with me.
At VelMont, there are no enormous stone walls surrounding the spiritual experience.
You look up and there is sky.
You look outward and there are hills.
You feel the wind.
You hear silence.
And slowly I began wondering whether perhaps the space itself is part of the temple.
Not merely the structure we build upon the land.
The land.
The sky.
The silence.
The openness.
That thought eventually pushed me toward another question:
Where exactly is VelMont positioned on this Earth—and what is above it?
Looking Up from VelMont
That question led me into geography first and astronomy later.
And then came one observation that stopped me.
It involved something astronomers call the zenith.
The U.S. Naval Observatory defines the zenith very simply:
the point directly overhead in the sky. (aa.usno.navy.mil)
Imagine standing on the VelMont hill and drawing an invisible line vertically upward from the top of your head.
That line points to your zenith.
The horizon around you is at 0° altitude.
Halfway up the sky is 45°.
Straight above your head is:
90° — the Zenith
Every location on Earth has its own zenith.
And this is where VelMont’s position becomes interesting.
Vega — Almost Directly Above VelMont
One of the brightest stars in our northern sky is Vega.
NASA identifies Vega as Alpha Lyrae, the brightest star of the constellation Lyra. It lies approximately 25 light-years from Earth, and its celestial declination is:
+38° 47′ 01.28″
or approximately
+38.784°
NASA describes declination as the celestial coordinate analogous to latitude on Earth. (science.nasa.gov)
VelMont lies at approximately:
37.75° North latitude
Now compare the numbers:
Vega: +38.78°
VelMont: +37.75°
Difference:
about 1.03°
Because of this close match, when Vega reaches the highest point of its daily path across VelMont’s sky, its altitude is approximately:
90° − |38.78° − 37.75°|
= about 88.97°
The zenith is 90°.
Vega reaches approximately 88.97°.
In simple language:
Vega passes only about one degree away from the point directly above your head at VelMont.
That relationship follows directly from standard celestial-coordinate geometry; the U.S. Naval Observatory explains how an observer’s latitude and a star’s declination determine its altitude in the local sky. (aa.usno.navy.mil)
This does not mean Vega remains permanently above VelMont.
Earth rotates, so Vega moves across the apparent sky every day. But at the moment when it reaches its highest point, it passes extraordinarily close to VelMont’s zenith.
Then I Learned Vega Had Another Name
The astronomical observation was interesting by itself.
But the next discovery brought this inquiry much closer to our Murugan tradition.
In ancient Indian astronomy, Vega is identified with Abhijit.
Historian of Sanskrit astronomy S. R. Sarma explicitly identifies Abhijit with Alpha Lyrae — Vega while documenting Sanskrit astronomical instruments on which the star was represented. (srsarma.in)
The Sanskrit name Abhijit carries the idea of victory or one who conquers.
Abhijit was important enough to appear among the ancient Indian nakshatra traditions, even though later systems commonly standardized the zodiac into 27 nakshatras.
But then came an even more surprising discovery.
Abhijit Appears in a Story with Skanda
In the Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 219, Abhijit appears in an episode involving Skanda—Murugan himself.
The Sanskrit text describes Abhijit as competing with Rohini for seniority and withdrawing to undertake tapas.
Then Indra speaks to Skanda about the resulting celestial problem:
nakṣatraṃ gaganāc cyutam… kālaṃ tv imaṃ paraṃ skanda brahmaṇā saha cintaya
The passage tells Skanda to consider, together with Brahmā, the issue created by the nakshatra’s departure and its relationship to the reckoning of time. (Sacred Texts)
That means the connection is not something we created for VelMont.
There really is an ancient textual relationship:
Abhijit → Skanda
And astronomical scholarship identifies:
Abhijit → Vega
Today, from VelMont:
Vega → passes about 1° from our zenith
Put together:
Skanda / Murugan
↓
Ancient story involving Abhijit
↓
Abhijit identified with Vega
↓
Vega passes almost directly overhead at VelMont
I find that deeply thought-provoking.
But it is important to say what it does not prove.
The Mahābhārata does not say that Vega is “Murugan’s star.”
It certainly does not mention VelMont.
And astronomy does not tell us that VelMont was divinely selected because Vega passes overhead.
Those would be conclusions beyond the evidence.
What we can say is that the individual pieces of the relationship are real.
An Ancient Star With an Extraordinary Astronomical History
Vega is remarkable even without the VelMont connection.
Because Earth’s rotational axis slowly changes orientation through a process called precession, our North Star changes over thousands of years.
Today that role belongs to Polaris.
NASA explains that roughly 14,000 years ago Earth’s north celestial pole pointed toward Vega, and that approximately 12,000 years from now it will again point toward Vega. (science.nasa.gov)
So over the enormous cycle of Earth’s changing orientation, Vega has occupied—and will again occupy—a special position in humanity’s northern sky.
Modern astronomy has also studied Vega extensively. NASA places it about 25 light-years away and observes an enormous disk of dust and debris surrounding the star. (science.nasa.gov)
Ancient people knew it as Abhijit.
Modern astronomers know it as Vega.
And from VelMont, today, it passes almost directly overhead.
Coincidence or Connection?
This is the point where I believe we need both faith and intellectual honesty.
It would be easy to say:
“We found proof that VelMont is divinely positioned.”
But we have not.
Science does not allow us to make that statement from these observations.
The fact that Vega passes almost overhead is a consequence of VelMont’s latitude and Vega’s current celestial declination.
The experiences of peace reported by devotees are genuine experiences, but they do not by themselves prove an unknown physical energy.
The association of Abhijit with Skanda exists in an ancient text, but the Mahābhārata does not predict VelMont.
So I do not want to force a conclusion.
I find the question itself far more beautiful.
What are the chances that a group of Murugan devotees searched for years for a hill, eventually established a spiritual center on this particular piece of land, began describing the space itself as spiritually powerful, discovered an association with Shiva as Ākāśa—and then later learned that the ancient star Abhijit passes almost directly above them?
Perhaps it is coincidence.
Perhaps it carries meaning only because our human minds naturally seek patterns.
Perhaps spirituality gives that pattern another interpretation.
At this stage, I cannot scientifically choose among those possibilities.
And perhaps we do not need to.
The Land Found Us Before We Understood It
What touches me most is the sequence.
We did not study Vega and then search for a property at 37.75° latitude.
We did not study Abhijit and choose VelMont because of the Mahābhārata.
We did not begin with Chidambaram and decide to construct an open-space center resembling the Akasha concept.
The order was almost exactly the reverse.
First came the dream.
Then came years of searching.
Then came the land.
Then came the experience of peace.
Then came the words:
“where the sky kisses the earth.”
Then came our experience of Shiva and Ākāśa.
Only afterward came the questions.
And only afterward did we look upward and discover Vega.
That is why, for me, this journey is not about trying to prove that VelMont is special.
It is about understanding why this place keeps inviting us to look deeper.
Space for Realization
Perhaps the most important lesson from Chidambaram is not that God exists in one particular physical location.
It is the opposite.
Ākāśa has no walls.
Space cannot be held.
The sky cannot be placed inside a sanctum.
Likewise, the zenith is not something we can touch.
Vega is twenty-five light-years away. (science.nasa.gov)
Yet when we stand quietly beneath the night sky, something unimaginably distant can appear almost exactly above us.
Maybe that is why open spaces affect us so deeply.
They remind us how small our physical existence is—and at the same time how intimately connected we are to something enormously larger.
At VelMont, perhaps the mountain is not asking us merely to look at Murugan.
Perhaps Murugan is asking us to look through the form toward the infinite.
To feel the earth beneath our feet.
To feel the wind.
To look into the sky.
To become quiet.
And ultimately to turn that same attention inward.
Because realization may not be about discovering a distant God somewhere beyond Vega, beyond the stars, or beyond the universe.
It may begin much closer.
In silence.
In awareness.
In the space within ourselves.
That was the thought behind the words we wrote before we knew any of this:
Awaken the Divine Within.
And today those words mean something deeper to me.
We searched for ten years for a place to house Murugan.
Perhaps VelMont is teaching us that the Divine was never asking only for a place to be housed.
Perhaps the purpose of the space is to help us become still enough to recognize what has always been present.
The hill.
The sky.
Abhijit above us.
Murugan before us.
Silence around us.
And somewhere within that vast space—
a moment of realization.
VelMont — A Space for Self-Realization and Direct Connection with the Divine.
A Note on Science and Spiritual Experience
The astronomical statements in this article can be independently tested: Vega’s coordinates are measured by astronomy, zenith is geometrically defined, and the Mahābhārata passage involving Skanda and Abhijit exists in the Sanskrit text. (science.nasa.gov)
The interpretation that these relationships have spiritual significance for VelMont is our reflection, not a scientific conclusion.
We intend to continue investigating VelMont’s geography, astronomy and natural environment with that distinction always in mind:
Measure what can be measured, experience what can be experienced, and never confuse one for proof of the other.
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