In the Name of God

Hi James,

Just learned about David Godman who claims that he got established in the Self when seeing Papa Ji.  Do you know about him?  If you do maybe you can talk about him in next week’s meeting.  He seems like an interesting person. 

Definitely not.  I know him well enough and I don’t have a high opinion of him.  David is basically a hagiographer.  He is supposed to be an expert on Ramana but evidently didn’t understand the import of the two texts Ramana wrote that have been accepted by the Vedanta sampradya as having the status as the Upanishads, Upadesha Saram and Sat Darshanam.  Both unequivocally point out that self inquiry removes ignorance of the already accomplished self.  If the unborn Self is your nature, how can you be established in it? 

Anyway, he conveniently assumed that Papaji was actually a disciple of Ramana, not just a person who “got it” during a brief conversation.  David is actually the father of the modern Neo-Advaita movement.  He assumed that all his establishing was actually sadhana and qualified him to speak about liberation but establishing yourself in the Self is impossible because you were never not the Self in the first place as noted above.  He may understand that intellectually, but you are only doing sadhana if your life conforms to dharma, among other things. 

If you want me to continue to teach you, you need to quit trolling around the internet listening to the Neos.  Yes, there is a small upside, but there is also a pernicious downside, which is a basic confusion about the experience and knowledge topic.  Once you have heard Vedanta properly and have understood why the traditional Vedanta sampradaya has accepted Ramana’s teaching as a modern Upanishad, then listen to the Neos all you want.  Unfortunately, you won’t listen long because they only offer a few crumbs, not the full loaf.  They have one small bit right…”I am That”…which is totally easy in so far as the Self is actually known to everyone in the form of the ever-present, ever-experienced “I,” as Ramana says.  Who doesn’t know they exist and that they are conscious?  

Speaking of dharma, which is not David’s strong suit, he once asked me to make a cover for a book he had written on Annamalai Swami, one of Ramana’s disciples who was a jnani and a karma yogi.  He wanted me to do it as “karma yoga,” meaning free.  David is notoriously cheap and hasn’t clue what karma yoga is.  If you do karma yoga properly are remunerated handsomely. In any case, you can equally do remunerated work as karma yoga, so I told him that I would do it for the going rate for graphics work.  He didn’t like that idea so he kept pestering me until I agreed to do it for 2000 rupees, which was a small fraction of the going rate at the time.  I had just finished a commission for $2000, which would keep me afloat in India for a long time in those days.  Normally I would have done it for nothing but I was involved in writing How to Attain Enlightenment and didn’t want to take time out from that project. 

Anyway he agreed to pay 2,000 rupees and I did the cover, which, as usual, was a lot more work than it appeared to be.  In any case, I did it as karma yoga anyway, and it was a good cover, but he didn’t honor his agreement.  Six months later our paths crossed on the stairs of an internet shop…me going down and he coming up.  He had no escape so I asked him why he didn’t honor his commitment.  He said, “Oh, that was karma yoga!”  It took considerable will-power not to send him flying down the stairs.   

I shared the story with my friends and others in Tiru and several of them added similar stories to mine.  That was a long time ago and over the intervening years, I didn’t have another thought about him.  Isvara takes care of people like that in Its own way, usually by patiently frustrating their aspirations until the light in their eyes goes dim.  As it says in Handel’s Messiah, “He makes the rough places plain.”   

Your email came in yesterday by the Grace of God and In the Name of God, who is the King of Dharma, I am not only delivering Vedanta’s message on the knowledge and experience topic this week once more, but I am am delivering this small story about David for the benefit of seekers everywhere.

People can claim whatever they want to impress others and thereby impress themselves.  Sometimes there is a basis for those claims and sometimes not.  David has a strong spiritual vasana and he promoted his gurus, Papaji and Ramana, as karma yoga, hopefully for different reasons, so he gets credit for his guru bhakti.  And yes, he deserves love as do all sentient beings who are resolved to know what they are irrespective of how they behave, as the Gita says.  And as Christ said, “Hate the sin, not the sinner”  That sinner is the Self momentarily bewitched by Maya, ignorance of Its unborn wholeness.  

Love,

James