Rama - My Spiritual Name


I took the spiritual name "Rama" as I sat beside the burning ghat of Poonjaji in Lucknow in September 1997. When the ashes on the funeral pyre had cooled, they were put into an urn and brought to the shores of the river Ganga in Haridwar. I wrote a song about the journey of these ashes from Lucknow to Haridwar, called Saying Goodbye.
This song was put on my first album of songs entitled "Rama Arunachala".

After the ceremony in Haridwar, where the ashes were cast into the Ganga,I continued my own journey to Arunachala in the south of India, where I composed more songs that would appear on the album, including the song Arunachala in the heart.

From Arunachala, my journey continued to Australia where I met a student of Poonjaji who was holding satsang meetings. I was invited to sing at these meetings and it was there that I recorded all the songs for my first Album. The recordings were completely live and unedited. All the sounds of people talking, scraping chairs, children playing, babies crying and many people singing along with me, created the full atmosphere of those meetings in Byron Bay in 1998. I would come early and start singing half an hour before the meetings were scheduled to begin. This gave me time to build up the level of participation from the attendees. By the time the meetings began the singing had expanded into full chorus. After the last song had finished, the hall was in complete silence for a some time until the talks began. That silence went very deep.