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Can
we backtrack a little? Can you tell me something
about your own background… some details of
your family and how you came to be interested
in Ramana Maharshi?
I
was born in 1953 in Stoke-on-Trent, a British
city of about 300,000, located about halfway between
Birmingham and Manchester. My father was a schoolmaster
and my mother was a physiotherapist who specialised
in treating physically handicapped children. Both
of my parents are dead. I have one sister who
is a year older than me. She is a former professional
mountaineer who now teaches mountain and wilderness
skills and occasionally leads groups to exotic
and inaccessible places. My younger sister, now
43, teaches in a college in England, although
nowadays she apparently spends most of her time
monitoring the competence of other teachers, which
I assume doesn't make her very popular.
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| No
Mind — I Am The Self by David Godman |
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I
was educated at local schools and in 1972 won
a place at Oxford University, where I did very
little academic work, but had an enormous amount
of fun. Sometime in my second year there I found
myself getting more and more interested in Eastern
spiritual traditions. I seemed to have an insatiable
hunger for knowledge about them that resulted
in massive bookstore bills, which I couldn't really
afford, but not much satisfaction. Then, one day,
I took home a copy of Arthur Osborne's The
Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his Own Words.
Reading Ramana's words for the first time
completely silenced me. My mind stopped asking
questions, and it abandoned its search for spiritual
information. It somehow knew that it had found
what it was looking for.
I
have to explain this properly. It wasn't that
I had found a new set of ideas that I believed
in. It was more of an experience in which I was
pulled into a state of silence. In that silent
space I knew directly and intuitively what Ramana's
words were hinting and pointing at. Because this
state itself was the answer to all my questions,
and any other questions I might come up with,
the interest in finding solutions anywhere else
dropped away. I suppose I must have read the book
in an afternoon, but by the time I put it down
it had completely transformed the way I viewed
myself and the world.
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| "Reading
Ramana's words for the first time
completely silenced me. My mind
stopped asking questions, and
it abandoned its search for spiritual
information." |
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experiences I was having made me understand how
invalid were the academic techniques of acquiring
and evaluating knowledge. I could see that the whole
of academia was based on some sort of reductionism:
separating something big into its little component
parts, and then deriving conclusions about how the
"big something" really worked. It's a
reasonable approach for comprehending mechanical
things, such as a car engine, but I understood —
and knew by direct experience — that it was
a futile way of gaining an understanding of oneself
and the world we appear to be in. When I went through
my academic textbooks after having these experiences,
there was such a massive resistance both to their
contents and to the assumptions that lay behind
them, I knew I could no longer even read them, much
less study them in order to pass exams. It wasn't
an intellectual judgement on their irrelevance,
it was more of a visceral disgust that physically
prevented me from reading more than a few lines.
I dropped out in my final year at Oxford, went to
Ireland with my Ramana books, and spent about six
months reading Ramana's teachings and practicing
his technique of self-inquiry. I had just inherited
a small amount from my grandmother so I didn't need
to work that year. I rented a small house in a rural
area, grew my own food, and spent most of my time
meditating.
This
was 1975. At the end of that year my landlady
reclaimed her house and I went to Israel. I wanted
to go somewhere sunny and warm for the winter,
and then return to Ireland the following spring.
I worked on a kibbutz on the Dead Sea and while
I was there decided I could have a quick trip
to India and Ramanasramam before I went back to
Ireland. I figured out the costs and realised
I couldn't afford it unless another £200 appeared
from somewhere. I decided that if Bhagavan wanted
me to go to India, he would send me the money.
Within a week I received a letter from my grandmother's
lawyer saying that he had just found some shares
that she owned, and that my share of them would
be £200. I came to India, expecting to stay six
weeks, and have been here more or less ever since.
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| Sri
Ramana Maharshi |
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| I've
always wondered about your name. Is Godman your
birth name or did you change it? |
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| It's
my family name. I never had any desire to take a
new name, and no one has ever tried to give me one.
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You
said that you spent six months practicing self-inquiry
based on your reading of Sri Ramana's books. Were
you able to get a good understanding of the method
from your reading? I ask because this seems to
be difficult for most people. Did you need to
modify your understanding later when you went
to Sri Ramanasramam?
I
did find it hard to practise self-inquiry merely
by reading books simply because I did not have
access to much material. I had at that time only
managed to find Arthur Osborne's three books on
Ramana. Though they explained most aspects of
the teachings quite well, I don't think that Osborne
had a good understanding of self-inquiry. He seemed
to think that concentrating on the heart center
on the right side of the chest while doing self-inquiry
was an integral part of the process. When I later
read Bhagavan's answers in books such as Talks
with Sri Ramana Maharshi and Day by Day
with Bhagavan, I realized that he specifically
advised against this particular practice. Overall,
though, I got a good grounding from these books.
I had a passion to follow the practice and a deep
faith in Bhagavan. I think that this elicited
grace from Bhagavan and kept me on the right path.
If the attitude is right and if the practice is
intense enough, it doesn't really matter what
you do when you meditate. The purity of intent
and purpose carries you to the right place.
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| "If
the attitude is right and if the
practice is intense enough, it
doesn't really matter what you
do when you meditate. The purity
of intent and purpose carries
you to the right place."
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If someone wants to learn
self-inquiry, what should they read? |
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| I
don't know what book I would recommend to new people
who want to start self-inquiry. Be As You Are
is certainly a good start since it was designed
for Westerners who have had no previous exposure
to Bhagavan and his teachings. There is also a book
by Sadhu Om: The Path of Sri Ramana Part One.
It is a little dogmatic in places but it covers
all the basic points well. Self-inquiry is a bit
like swimming or riding a bicycle. You don't learn
it from books. You learn it by doing it again and
again till you get it right. |
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| Could
you briefly describe what your life has been like
in Tiruvannamalai? What work have you done at Sri
Ramanasramam? |
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I
spent my first eighteen months just meditating,
practicing self-inquiry, and occasionally walking
round Arunachala. In 1978 I began to do voluntary
work for Sri Ramanasramam. I looked after their
library from 1978 to 1985, edited their magazine
for a short period of time, and from 1985 onwards
did research for my various books. In the later
1980s and early 90s I also devoted a considerable
amount of time to looking after Lakshmana Swamy
and Saradamma's garden. They bought land in Tiruvannamalai
in 1988 and I ended up helping to develop it.
In 1993 I went to Lucknow and spent four years
with Papaji, where I wrote Nothing Ever Happened.
Since my return to Tiruvannamalai in 1997 I have
been writing and researching new books on Ramana.
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| How
have you supported yourself in India all these years? |
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I
didn't. Grace supported me. I have found that
if you give all your time to God and his work,
then he looks after you. I came here with $500
in 1976. I didn't earn money for twenty years,
but I always had enough to live on. Until I left
Lucknow I gave the proceeds from all my books
to the various organisations that supported me
while I was writing them.
When
I first came to Arunachala I fell in love with
the place and wanted to stay as long as I could.
I knew I didn't have much money, but I wanted
to make it last as long as possible. There was
a meter ticking away in my head: I have so much
money, I am spending so much per day, and that
means I have so many more days here. Those numbers,
those equations were there all the time. Then,
one day, as I was doing pradakshina of Arunachala,
it all dropped away. It wasn't a mental decision.
I stopped walking, turned, and faced the hill.
I knew in that moment that whatever power had
brought me here would keep me here until its purpose
was finished, and that when it was time to go,
it wouldn't matter if I was a millionaire or not,
I would have to leave. From then on I stopped
caring about money. In the period that I was worrying
about money, all I did was spend. When I stopped
caring, complete strangers would come up to me
and give me money. Whenever I needed money, money
just appeared out of nowhere.
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| "From
then on I stopped caring about
money. In the period that I was
worrying about money, all I did
was spend. When I stopped caring,
complete strangers would come
up to me and give me money." |
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Photo
of Sri Ramana Maharshi copyright Sri Ramanasramam
and others. Used by permission.
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This
page was published on September 28, 2001 and
last revised on October 15, 2001.
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