About ten years ago an Australian man at Ramanasramam asked if I would meet with a group of Australian devotees and talk to them about Ramana Maharshi. I agreed, but when I turned up, I discovered that it was going to be a formal interview with him, with the Australian devotees as an audience.
Our dialogue covered a wide variety of topics. Because the interviewer, John David, seemed to have very little knowledge of Bhagavan’s life or teachings, much of the interview was spent correcting many of the wrong ideas he seemed to have. When I read the transcript later, I realised that, serendipitously, this format of going back to basics and correcting his erroneous beliefs had turned the interview into an ideal presentation of the life and teachings of Bhagavan for people who knew little or nothing about them. For years I had it posted on my old site as a recommended read for people who were new to Bhagavan.
Our dialogue covered a wide variety of topics. Because the interviewer, John David, seemed to have very little knowledge of Bhagavan’s life or teachings, much of the interview was spent correcting many of the wrong ideas he seemed to have. When I read the transcript later, I realised that, serendipitously, this format of going back to basics and correcting his erroneous beliefs had turned the interview into an ideal presentation of the life and teachings of Bhagavan for people who knew little or nothing about them. For years I had it posted on my old site as a recommended read for people who were new to Bhagavan.
When the interview was over, John David told me that he didn’t accept my explanations of Bhagavan’s teachings on the mind. He wanted me to debate them publicly with a western vedantic scholar he knew, but I refused. Instead, I expanded the edited transcript of our conversation by several pages in an attempt to convey a more detailed presentation of what Bhagavan’s teachings on the mind really were.
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