Be Still - It Is The Wind That Sings

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When Arthur Osborne founded The Mountain Path in 1964, he daeclared: "The aim of this journal is to set forth the traditional wisdom of all religions and all ages, especially as testified to by their saints and mystics, and to clarify the paths available to seekers in the conditions of our modern world." And then he added: "The Mountain Path is dedicated to Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi."

This anthology of articles and poems that he contributed to the journal under his own name and various pseudonyms complements an earlier volume, For Those with Little Oust. Included is a longer work on the 'question of Progress' as well as 16 hitherto unpublished poems.

Taken together, they form a powerful testament of the clarity and dedication he brought to bear upon his chosen task as a devotee of Sri Ramana Maharshi. Whether elucidating the subtleties of Bhagavan's life and teachings, bridging the apparent diversity of religious practice and belief, or simply surrendering to the exquisite inspirations of his Muse, Arthur Osborne's energetic writings from the last decade of his life continue to strike an inner chord at the turn of the millennium.

There is not Much One Can Say as a Foreword to this collection" of the various writings of Arthur Osborne his words speak for themselves. This is the second collection of articles, mainly gleaned from the earlier editions of The Mountain Path when he founded it and initially, before getting world-wide contributions, he also wrote many of the articles himself under various pseudonyms. Most of these he abandoned as time went by and the magazine acquired a larger and more international readership and list of contributors. Abdullah Qutbuddin carried on longer than many of his other aliases and I have a suspicion that he had more than a sneaking fondness for H. Sebastian Gubbins.

Although founding The Mountain Path, putting it together, writing many of the articles and doing the editing was very hard work, he never seemed to make it so. As a child I could, without anxiety, interrupt him when he was working and he just picked up again where he left off. It was only when he was trying to do something practical with his hands like making toast that he had to make a supreme effort to concentrate, and we interrupted him at our peril.

My father was a man of towering integrity that comes out in all his writing and in spite of his great erudition he never used a complicated word when a simple one would do. This was because he believed implicitly in the value and the essential simplicity of truth. It was the core of the man and basis of his love for Ramana Maharshi and his quest for Self-realization.