David Godman

David Godman (born 1953) has written on the life, teachings and disciples of Ramana Maharshi, an Indian sage who lived and taught for more than fifty years at Arunachala, a sacred mountain in Tamil Nadu, India. In the last 30 years Godman has written or edited 16 books on topics related to Sri Ramana, his teachings and his followers.

Biography

Early life

David Godman was born in 1953 in Stoke-on-Trent, England. His father was a schoolmaster and mother a physiotherapist who specialised in treating physically handicapped children. He was educated at local schools and in 1972 won a place at Oxford University.[1]

It was sometime in his second year there that he became interested in Ramana Maharshi after reading about his teachings in a book that had been compiled by Arthur Osborne. Godman has said:

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.[1]

Life and work in India

Godman first visited the Tiruvannamalai ashram of Ramana Maharshi in 1976.[2] For eight years, between 1978 and 1985, he was the librarian of the ashram.[3] In the 1970s, Godman frequented Nisargadatta Maharaj’s satsangs in Mumbai.[4]

In the early 1980s Godman started to visit Lakshmana Swamy, a disciple of Ramana Maharshi, in his ashram in Andhra Pradesh. At the instigation of Lakshmana Swamy he wrote No Mind – I am the Self,[5] about the lives and teachings of Lakshmana Swamy and Saradamma, the latter being Lakshmana Swamy's own disciple.[6] When Lakshmana Swamy and Saradamma moved to Tiruvannamalai in the late 1980s, Godman looked after and helped to develop their new property, which was located close to Sri Ramanasramam.[7]

In 1985 his edited anthology of Ramana Maharshi’s teachings, Be As You Are, was published by Penguin.[8]

In 1987 Godman conducted extensive interviews with Annamalai Swami, a devotee of Ramana Maharshi who worked at Sri Ramanasramam between 1928 and 1938. The interviews were the primary source for his book, Living by the Words of Bhagavan, a biography that chronicled Annamalai Swami's relationship with Sri Ramana.[9][10]

Godman has contributed to a scholarly debate on the true identity of Larry Darrel, a character who appeared in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge.[11][12] Maugham visited Ramanasramam in 1938 and later wrote an essay entitled "The Saint" about his visit. Maugham used the character of Darrel as a follower of a Hindu guru featured in the novel; the guru's physique and teachings were based on those of Ramana Maharshi.[13]

In 1993 Godman moved to Lucknow at the invitation of H. W. L. Poonja,[14] Poonja, a devotee of Ramana Maharshi who subsequently became a well-known spiritual teacher. In his later years Poonja was more generally known as ‘'Papaji’'. Godman made a documentary on Poonja’s life and teachings,[15] edited a collection of interviews[16] that various visitors had had with Poonja in the early 1990s, and compiled an authorised three-volume biography entitled Nothing Ever Happened.[17] In 2006, he edited a collection of conversations that had taken place in Poonja’s home in the early 1990s.[18]

After the death of Poonja in 1997, Godman returned to Tiruvannamalai. A year later he edited and published a collection of dialogues that had taken place between Annanalai Swami and visitors to his ashram in the 1980s.[19]

Between 2000 and 2002 Godman brought out The Power of the Presence, a three-volume anthology of mostly first-person accounts that chronicled the experiences that visitors had had with Ramana Maharshi between 1896 and 1950.[20]

Between 2004 and 2008, in collaboration with T. V. Venkatasubramanian and Robert Butler, he translated, edited and published three books of Tamil poetry,[21][22][23] composed by the Tamil poet Muruganar, which recorded the teachings of Sri Ramana along with Muruganar’s own experiences.

In 2012, Venkatasubramanian, Butler and Godman translated and published a bilingual (Tamil and English) edition of Sorupa Saram, a Tamil philosophical work composed several hundred years ago by Sorupananda.[24] THe three have also collaborated on translations of other Tamil mystic poetry. Among their subjects were Manikkavachakar,[25] Thayumanuvar,[26] and Tattuvaraya.[27]

In 2014, in collaboration with the Whole Life Foundation, Godman filmed a twenty-seven episode, 15-hour series of talks on Ramana Maharshi's life, teachings and followers.

Works

Books

Documentaries

References

  1. 1 2 "An Interview with David Godman". Realization.org. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  2. "An Interview with David Godman". Integral Yoga Magazine. Archived from the original on 2012-02-21.
  3. Godman, David. "David Godman". Realization.org. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  4. Archer, Rick (15 October 2013). "David Godman". Buddha At The Gas Pump. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.
  5. Reninger, Elizabeth. "Guide Review: David Godman's "No Mind, I Am The Self" – The Lives & Teachings Of Sri Lakshmana Swamy & Mathru Sri Sarada". Taoism.about.com. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  6. "Interview with David Godman". Realization.org. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  7. "An Interview with David Godman". Realization.org. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  8. "Book Review of Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi". Parabola. 10: 94–97. Winter 1985.
  9. "A Dialogue between David Godman and Maalok".
  10. David Godman, Living by the Words of Bhagavan p. 4-5
  11. "Somerset Maugham and The Razor's Edge". The Mountain Path: 239–245. 1988.
  12. "Somerset Maugham's Swami". The New York Times. July 22, 2010.
  13. "Somerset Maugham and the guru". The Telegraph. August 10, 2014.
  14. Davis, Leesa (2011). Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism: Deconstructive Modes of Spiritual Inquiry. Bloomsbury Academic.
  15. 1 2 3 "Papaji – H. W. L. Poonja". Avadhuta Foundation. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  16. Papaji Interviews ISBN 978-0-96380-220-0
  17. David Godman, Nothing Ever Happened Volume One, page 9
  18. The Fire of Freedom, Satsang with Papaji volume 1 ISBN 978-0-9638022-6-2
  19. Final Talks ASIN B001DQ4P1A
  20. Viswanathan, Susan (2010). The Children of Nature: The Life and Legacy of Ramana Maharshi. Roli Books.
  21. Padamalai ISBN 0-9711371-3-7
  22. Guru Vachaka Kovai 9780971137189
  23. "Ramana Puranam, composed by Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Muruganar". The Mountain Path: 51–58. July 2006.
  24. Venkatasubramanian, T. V.; Butler, Robert; Godman, David (2012). Sorupa Saram by Sorupananda. ISBN 978-0-98852-850-5.
  25. "Bhagavan, Manikkavachakar and the Tiruvachakam". The Mountain Path: 67–80. October 2005.
  26. "Bhagavan and Thayumanavar". The Mountain Path: 49–65. October 2004.
  27. "Tattuvaraya". The Mountain Path: 55–71. October 2011.
  28. Be As You Are, ISBN 0-14-019062-7
  29. Papaji Interviews, ISBN 0-9638022-0-8
  30. Nothing Ever Happened, ISBN 0-9638022-5-9
  31. Final Talks, ISBN 0-9711371-8-1
  32. The Power of the Presence (Part 1), ISBN 0-9711371-1-0
  33. The Power of the Presence (Part 2), ISBN 0-9711371-0-2
  34. The Power of the Presence (Part 3), ISBN 0-9711371-2-9
  35. Padamalai, ISBN 0-9711371-3-7
  36. Guru Vachaka Kovai ISBN 978-0-9711371-8-9
  37. "About us". Whoamidocumentary.com. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  38. "Talks on Sri Ramana Maharshi: Narrated by David Godman". YouTube. 2015-09-28. Retrieved 2016-10-07.

External links

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