Fw: [MillionPaths] A dialogue between David Godman and Maalok

[Guest guest]

Living the Inspiration of Sri Ramana Maharshi

A dialogue between David Godman and Maalok, an Indian academic now teaching in America

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Maalok: Ramana Maharshi has had a lasting influence on your life. For

those of us who don't know much about the Maharshi, could you please

share some of the salient aspects of his life that have influenced

you deeply.

David: About two or three times a year someone asks me this question,

'Summarize Ramana Maharshi's life and teachings in a few words for

people who know little or nothing about him'. It's always hard to

know where to start with a question like this.

Let me say first that Ramana Maharshi was one of the most highly

regarded and widely respected spiritual figures that

twentieth-century India produced. I can't think of any other

candidate who is as persistently held out to be an example of all

that is best in the Hindu spiritual tradition. Everyone reveres him

as the perfect example of what a true saint and sage ought to be.

How did this come about? While he was still in his teens Sri

Ramana underwent a remarkable, spontaneous experience in which his

individuality died, leaving him in a state in which he found his true

identity to be the Self, the immanent and transcendent substratum. It

was a permanent awakening that was truly remarkable because he had

not previously had any interest in spiritual matters. He left his

family home a few weeks later, without telling anyone where he was

going, and spent the remainder of his life at the foot of Arunachala,

a holy mountain and pilgrimage center that is about 120 miles south

west of Chennai.

After a few years there - a period in which he was largely

oblivious to the world and his body - he began to attract devotees

because there was a spiritual radiance emanating from him that many

people around him experienced as peace or happiness. This, I think,

is the secret of his subsequent fame and popularity. He didn't get a

reputation for being a great sage because of what he did or said. It

came about because people, who arrived at his ashram with all kinds

of questions and doubts, suddenly found themselves becoming quiet,

peaceful and happy in his presence. There was a continuous, benign

flow of energy coming off him that somehow evaporated the mental

anxieties and busy minds of the people who came to see him. He didn't

ask people to come. People just came of their own accord. A 19th

century American author once wrote that if you invent a better

mousetrap, even if you try to hide yourself in the woods, people will

beat a path to your door. People beat a path to Sri Ramana's door -

for many years he lived in very inaccessible places - because he had

something far better than an improved mousetrap to offer; he had a

natural ability to induce peace in the people around him.

Let me expand on this because this is the key to understanding

both his state and the effect he had on other people. When he had his

final experience at the age of sixteen, his mind, his sense of being

an individual person vanished forever, leaving him in a state of

unassailable peace. He realized and understood that this was not some

new experience that was mediated by and through his 'I', his sense of

being an individual person. It was, instead, his natural state,

something that is there all the time, but which is only experienced

when the mind and its perpetual busy-ness is absent. By abiding in

this natural and effortless state of inner silence he somehow charged

up the atmosphere around him with a healing, quietening energy. People

who came to see him spontaneously became happy, peaceful and quiet.

Why? Because Sri Ramana himself was effortlessly broadcasting his own

experience of happiness, peace and quietude in such a way that those

people who were around him got an inner taste, an inner flavor of

this natural state that is inherent to all of us. I should say that

this power was not restricted to his physical vicinity, although it

did seem to be stronger there. People who merely thought about him

wherever they happened to be discovered that they could experience

something of this peace simply through having this mental contact

with him.

So, having given that background, I can now answer the question:

'Who was Ramana Maharshi and what were his teachings?'

Sri Ramana Maharshi was a living embodiment of peace and

happiness and his 'teachings' were the emanations of that state which

helped other people to find and experience their own inner happiness

and peace.

If all this sounds a little abstract, let me tell you a story

that was passed on to me by Arthur Osborne's daughter. In the 1940s

their house was a kind of dormitory for all the stray foreigners who

couldn't find anywhere else to stay near Sri Ramana's ashram. A

miserable, crabby women appeared one evening, having been sent by the

ashram. They put her up, gave her breakfast and sent her off to see

Sri Ramana the next morning. She came back at lunchtime looking

absolutely radiant. She was glowing with happiness. The whole family

was waiting to hear the story of what happened, but she never said

anything about her visit to the ashram. Everyone in the house was

expecting some dramatic story: 'He looked at me and this happened,'

or 'I asked a question and then I had this great experience.' As the

lunch plates were being cleared away, her hosts could not contain

their curiosity any longer.

'What happened?' asked one of them. 'What did Bhagavan do to you?

What did he say to you?'

The woman looked most surprised. 'He didn't do anything. He

didn't say anything to me. I just sat there for the whole morning and

then came back for lunch.'

She had been just one new person sitting in a crowd of people,

but the power coming off Sri Ramana had been enough to wash away a

lifetime of depression, leaving her with a taste of what lay

underneath it: her own inherent, natural happiness and peace.

Sri Ramana knew that transformations such as these were going on

around him all the time, but he never accepted responsibility for

them. He would never say, 'I transformed this woman'. When he was

asked about the effect he was having on people, he would sometimes

say that by continuously abiding in his own natural state of peace, a

sannidhi, a powerful presence, was somehow created that automatically

took care of the mental problems of the people who visited him. By

abiding in silence as silence, this energy field was created, a field

that miraculously transformed the people around him.

Your original question was, 'Why has Ramana Maharshi influenced

me so much?' The answer is, 'I came into his sannidhi and through its

catalytic activity I discovered my own peace, my own happiness.'

.........................

the rest of the article at :

http://www.davidgodman.org/interviews/al1.shtml

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