David Godman interview with Maalok https://www.davidgodman.

org/living-inspiration-sri-ramana-maharshi-2/8/

Sri David Godman

Ramana Maharshi Arunachala Tamil Saints Personal Stories Interviews Books

Translations 

Living the Inspiration of Sri Ramana

Maharshi
Sri Ramana loved this mountain passionately. He wrote devotional poetry about it
that at times verged on the ecstatic, and in all the �fty-four years he lived here, he
could never be persuaded to go more than a mile from the base of the mountain.

Maalok: How did the mountain of Arunachala get to be such a powerful place?
Was it because of all the pilgrims who have been coming here for centuries and
worshipping it?

David: This is a question that intrigues

me, but I have no answer to it. Sri Ramana
said, in one of his poems, ‘Mysterious is
the way it works, beyond all human
understanding’. He clearly recognised its
power, but I don’t think he had any
explanation for it.

Years ago I heard Lakshmana Swamy

make the following remarks about the
mountain. ‘When I gaze at Arunachala, I
Bhagavan walking on Arunachala
know I am in the presence of jnana. There
with his attendant.
is the same energy coming o� the hill that

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I felt when I sat in Bhagavan’s presence.’

I don’t think this kind of energy would accumulate from all the prayer and worship
of devotees. In fact, I think it is the other way round. People o�er worship here
because, at some intuitive level, they feel the power coming o� the mountain.

Lakshmana Swamy seems to sense spiritual power in unexpected places. In the days
when he was more accessible, when he moved around more outside his compound,
he would occasionally comment that he could sense small amounts of spiritual
power in certain places, animals, trees, and even apparently inanimate objects. He
seems to have an extra faculty that picks up these emanations. However, nothing
remotely compared to the power that he felt radiating from the mountain of
Arunachala. For him, for Sri Ramana, and for many other saints who have been
drawn here, this mountain is radiating the power of the Self in a way that no other
place is doing. Jnanasambandhar, a famous Tamil saint who came here in the sixth
century, described it in one of his poems as a ‘condensed mass of jnana‘. I like that
description. It echoes the principal myth of Arunachala in which Siva condenses
himself from an e�ulgent column of light into the form of a mountain for the
bene�t of devotees who want a less blinding form to worship. Following this
version of events, one can say that though the brightness of the original column of
light has gone, the condensed spiritual radiance of Siva-jnana is still there. The
energy that comes o� the mountain is so intense, so awesome, even great saints such
as Sri Ramana just gaze in wonder at it.

When Lakshmana Swamy �rst moved back to Arunachala about twelve years ago,
he initially lived in a rented room that had no windows facing the hill. He could
only see a small outcrop of rock at the base of the western side of the mountain from
one of his side windows. However, that was more than enough for him. Saradamma
told me that he would sit by the window and gaze, in a state of rapture, at this tiny
portion of the mountain for hours together. As with his own Guru, Sri Ramana, the
power emanating from the mountain drew his attention to itself and kept it �xed
there.

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Sri Ramana once wrote in one of his verses to Arunachala:

“ ‘I have discovered a new thing! This hill, the lodestone of lives, arrests the
movements of anyone who so much thinks of it, draws him face to face
with it, and �xes him motionless like itself, to feed upon his soul thus

”
ripened. What a wonder is this!

When there is no mind to delude you into believing that you are just looking at a
form of a mountain, the power of Arunachala compels your attention to such an
extent, it is sometimes hard to look anywhere else.

I was once making the seating arrangements for one of Lakshmana Swamy’s public
darshans. I put his chair facing the hill.

Saradamma saw what I had done, laughed and said, If you leave it there, he won’t
notice anyone. He will spend the whole time gazing at the hill. If you want him to
look at the people who come, put his chair so it faces away from the hill. Then there
will be no distractions.’

I asked him once, ‘How did this mountain come to be enlightened?’ It seems a
strange question to ask, but I couldn’t think of phrasing it any other way. Here was
this very solid mass of granite rock that was emanating the power of the Self. How
did it get that way?

He said he didn’t know and couldn’t speculate. He could clearly feel its power, but
he couldn’t think of any scenario that would explain how it came about.

I tried a couple of leading questions, such as, ‘Was there some enlightened being
who took the form of this hill or became one with it in some way?’ He said ‘No’ to
that one and to all my other pro�ered suggestions. In the end we were back to Sri
Ramana’s comment: ‘Mysterious is the way it works, beyond all human
understanding.’

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The preceding sentence, by the way,

says, ‘Look, there it stands as if
insentient’. Ordinary people, people with
minds, look at this mountain and see
insentient rock. Those with true vision
come here and see and feel the radiation
of Siva-jnana.

Maalok: Is it true that Ramana Maharshi

encouraged people to do a pradakshina
around the sacred Arunachala mountain
Lucia and Arthur Osborne in their
as often as possible? Isn’t
Tiruvannamalai garden
recommendation of this kind of practice a
bit ‘out-of-sync’ with his general
teaching of being still? Could you also explain the signi�cance of doing this
pradakshina?

David: Lucia Osborne, Arthur Osborne’s wife, made an interesting comment in

The Mountain Path about twenty-�ve years ago. She wrote that Sri Ramana never
prescribed a spiritual practice for anyone unless he was �rst asked for advice.
However, there was one exception to this rule: he often encouraged people to walk
around the hill, even if they had not asked whether or not they should do it.

When Sri Ramana spoke of ‘being still’, he wasn’t talking about sitting motionless
on the �oor. He was speaking instead about mental silence. He advocated
pradakshina of Arunachala as a means of reaching this silence. Kunju Swami has
recorded a story in which Sri Ramana speaks of a kind of ‘walking samadhi‘ that
sometimes overtakes one as one is doing the pradakshina.

It’s all very illogical and not even Sri Ramana had an explanation of how and why it
worked. If skeptics who wanted to be convinced of the e�cacy of pradakshina came
to him to ask him about it, he would say, ‘Try it and see’. He had found from long

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experience that people who had completed one pradakshina would always enjoy it,
and soon afterwards would want to do it again. After a few circuits of the hill, most
people would be convinced that it was doing them some good. One became
convinced by experience rather than by any sensible or rational explanation.

When Sri Ramana sent people o� to do pradakshina, he was sending them to

commune with his own Guru for a few hours. Walking around the base of the
mountain, one is always aware of its looming presence. By being aware of the
constantly changing form of the mountain as one walks around it, one is putting
one’s attention on a highly charged form of the divine. And once the mind has
made contact with that divine form, the grace, the energy of that form begins to
�ow. This is what silences people as they open themselves to the mountain’s power.

I should also mention that Sri Ramana taught that the power of this mountain is not
dependent on whether or not one believes it to be divine. Sri Ramana said that it is
like a �re. Those who approach it get burnt whether they believe in it or not.

Maalok: About you – what exactly made you leave everything and come to
Tiruvannamalai in your early youth? Could you also share some of the surrounding
circumstances, your state of mind, and the events that led to this move?

David: I �rst came across Sri Ramana’s teachings in 1974 by reading one of the few
books about him that had been published in the West. I read this book in a few
hours and immediately my whole world view was transformed. It wasn’t just a new
piece of information that I could �le away with all the other pieces of knowledge I
had stored in my brain; it was a living transmission that completely changed the
way I perceived myself and the world around me. I didn’t have to think about the
teachings or convince myself that they were true. I recognised the truth of them as
soon as I read them.

Nor was it just one set of beliefs being replaced by another. It was more a case of a
busy, searching mind being utterly silenced by an exposure to the light of a higher
power. In the months preceding my discovery of Sri Ramana, I had bought and read

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many spiritual books. The information they contained had been stored in my
memory, but none of it had truly touched me. When I read Ramana Maharshi’s
words for the �rst time, my mind actually stopped. I stopped searching and I
stopped reading spiritual books. The words had a power in them that silenced my
mind. I didn’t judge these words and decide that they were correct. The words
themselves went straight inside me, stopped the busy-ness of my questing mind and
gave me a state of silence that had within itself the conviction ‘This is the truth’.

A few months later I dropped out of university and went to Ireland to meditate. I
chose the west of Ireland because it was remote and cheap. I wanted to have a
complete break from all the things I had been doing, all the people I had been
associating with. I wanted to drop all the trivia that had accumulated in my life. I
lived there alone – it was in the Limerick area if anyone wants to know – for about
nine months, growing my own food and meditating. At the end of that period I had
to leave because my landlady wanted her house back. I took a break by going to
Israel for the winter, thinking that I would go back to Ireland the following spring.
While I was in Ireland, the thought came to me, ‘Why not have a quick trip to India
before you settle down in Ireland again?’ I decided to come here for a few weeks.

The weeks turned into months, and then the months turned into years. I am still
here twenty-six years later. I think the key moment came while I was walking
around Sri Ramana’s samadhi. It must have been some time in 1976. I was
wondering how much longer I would be able to stay here before I had to go ‘home’.
As I was walking, an understanding suddenly dawned in me: ‘I don’t have to go
home. This is home. I already am home.’

This revelation actually stopped me in my tracks. I stopped walking and was

suddenly �lled with a �ood of happiness, of relief. Something in me acknowledged
that I was physically, spiritually and emotionally home. The thought of leaving, or
having to leave, never arose again.

Maalok: What about your own relationship with Arunachala? Can you brie�y

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elaborate on what this mountain has meant to you in the almost three decades you
have spent here?

David: I came here initially because of Sri

Ramana and his teachings. I just wanted to
be in the place where he had lived and
taught. Later, I realised that it had probably
been the power of Arunachala that had
brought me here. One of Sri Ramana’s
devotees, Sadhu Om, once wrote a nice
poem about Arunachala, comparing it to a
post to which a cow is attached by a long
rope. The cow walks round and round the
post, shortening the rope with each circuit.
Sadhu Om standing behind
Eventually it is stuck next to the post,
Muruganar
unable to move anywhere. That’s how I feel
sometimes. The mountain has pulled me here, shortened my tether inch by inch
until I now feel that I am pressed up against it, unable to go anywhere else. It’s a
very happy imprisonment, though. I enjoy it. I have no desire to be anywhere else.

I see Arunachala as the source, the powerful fountainhead of the lineage that
includes not only Sri Ramana and his disciples but also all the other saints who have
lived here in the last 1,500 years. I am fascinated by these people, but I can’t say
why. Perhaps it is because all these people are conduits of this power that is
Arunachala.

For me, Arunachala is the power of the divine in a physical form.

If you want to ask, ‘Why have you chosen to spend your adult life near this
mountain in South India?’ I would �rst say, ‘I don’t think I had a choice. I was
drawn here by a power that is beyond my control.’ Then I might add, ‘Why should
I not choose to spend my days sitting in the presence of God, because I have to

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accept that this is what this mountain is.’

Maalok: David, it has indeed been a great joy to have this heart-to-heart
conversation with you. I am very grateful to you for sharing your insights, and for
your extraordinary generosity in sparing your time. On behalf of all of us, a heartfelt
thank you!

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