In 1978, I began to do voluntary work for Sri Ramanasramam. I spent my first eighteen months here just meditating, practicing self-inquiry and occasionally walking round Arunachala. I spent about a year reading the teachings and practicing the technique of self-inquiry, mostly in Ireland, and then, in early 1976, I decided to go to India to visit Sri Ramana’s ashram. In that silent space, I knew directly and intuitively what Sri Ramana’s words were hinting and pointing at. It was more of an experience in which I was pulled into a state of silence. It wasn’t that I had found a new set of ideas to believe in.
My mind stopped asking questions and abandoned its search for spiritual information.
Reading Sri Ramana’s words for the first time completely silenced me. Integral Yoga Magazine: How did you first become interested in the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi and go to India?ĭavid Godman: In the mid-1970s, I read Arthur Osborne’s The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words. David has published more than thirteen books on Sri Ramana Maharshi, his teachings, and his direct disciples, and shares the inspiration and wisdom of Sri Ramana with our readers. He now lives in a new home he built about two miles from the base of Sri Ramana’s beloved Arunachala, a holy mountain in South India. Since then, he has lived almost continuously in Tiruvannamalai, the town where Sri Ramana spent all his adult life. David Godman (his family’s actual surname!) read a book in 1974 about the great sage and jnani, Sri Ramana Maharshi, and two years later traveled to his ashram in India.