Michelle: Let's move on to Be As You Are.

May 18, 2003

Michelle: Let's move on to Be As You Are. That's the book that most people associate with you. How did that come to be written?

David: In 1983 I went back to England, hoping to get a job. I had been in India seven years, and for most of the previous five years I had been supported by Ramanasramam because I had been doing various jobs for them - running their library, editing their magazine, and so on. I wanted to come back to India with enough money to be financially independent. I wanted to live outside the ashram, supporting myself, and I wanted to spend more time meditating, without being dependent on an institution for food and accommodation. Well, it didn't work out. No one wanted to hire me to do anything. I sent off lots of applications for jobs that I was eminently qualified to do and either received no reply at all, or I received rejection letters that were downright offensive. I had started and run a library in India for five years, but when I applied for a job to run a private library that was smaller than the one in Tiruvannamalai, I received a reply that said: 'Dear Mr Godman, Thank you very much for your very entertaining application. However, we would prefer to engage someone who is qualified to do the job.' This went on for months. I even blew an interview to pick up litter because I laughed at the wrong moment. Bhagavan says in Maharshi's Gospel that if you are destined to work, you cannot avoid it, and if you are destined not to work, no matter how hard you look for a job, no one will hire you. That was my situation in the summer of 1983. What I didn't realise at the time was that Bhagavan had other plans for me. The landlord of the house where I was staying was a philosophy lecturer in Leicester University, and so was his wife. He had just delivered a manuscript his wife had written to the editor of a London publisher.

When she discovered that he too was a philosophy lecturer, she had said, 'Why don't you write a book for us as well. We are always looking for new books on philosophy.'

I perked up when I heard this. This was something I could do. I called up the editor and asked if she wanted a book on Ramana Maharshi. Her reply astounded me:

'Come to my office at once. Don't go anywhere else. We want you. Come right now.' After months and months of rejections, this was an astounding turn of events. I thought up a quick plan for a book and discussed it with her a few hours later. She checked on the sales figures of the few other books on Ramana that had been published in the West and said, 'We'll do it'. It was as simple as that. I was given a contract and sent off to India to put together Be As You Are. I was astonished because I had been brought up believing one of the standard myths of authorship. The would-be writer spends months or years writing a book. He or she then spends just as long sending the manuscript off to various publishers, who all reject it. Then, if he or she is lucky, the 101st publisher finally says 'Yes'.

It was my destiny to come back to India and write books on Bhagavan, his teachings, and his disciples. When I tried to do something else, I couldn't make it happen.

When I went to Lakshmana Ashram in 1982, it was to get away from the writing and editing work I was doing for Ramanasramam. Within a couple of weeks I was writing a book there. When I went to England the following year, hoping to generate enough cash so that I wouldn't have to do writing work in India, I ended up coming back with a contract for a book on Bhagavan. That has been my work, my destiny, more or less ever since. Nowadays, I don't try to fight it. I enjoy it.

www.davidgodman.org