TOTAPURI’S
LESSON
From Sri
Ramakrishna had to learn the significance of Kali, the Great Fact of the
relative world, and of maya, Her indescribable Power.
One day,
when guru and disciple were engaged in an animated discussion about Vedanta, a
servant of the temple garden came there and took a coal from the sacred fire
that had been lighted by the great ascetic.
He wanted it to light his tobacco.
Totapuri flew into a rage and was about to beat the man. Sri Ramakrishna rocked with laughter. “What a shame!” he cried. “You are explaining
to me the reality of Brahman and the illusoriness of the world; yet now you
have so far forgotten yourself as to be about to beat a man in a fit of
passion. The power of maya is indeed
inscrutable!” Totapuri was embarrassed.
About
this time Totapuri was suddenly laid up with a severe attack of dysentery. On account of this miserable illness he found
it impossible to meditate. One night the
pain became excruciating. He could no
longer concentrate on Brahman. The body
stood in the way. He became incensed
with its demands. A free soul, he did
not at all care for the body. So he
determined to drown it in the Ganges.
Thereupon he walked into the river.
But, lo! He walks to the other bank.
Is there not enough water in the Ganges?
Standing dumbfounded on the other bank, he looks back across the
water. The trees, the temples, the
houses, are silhouetted against the sky.
Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, he sees on all sides the presence of
the Divine Mother. She is in everything;
She is everything. She is in the water;
She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comfort.
She is knowledge; She is ignorance. She
is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or
imagines. She turns “yea” into “nay”,
and “nay” into “yea”. Without Her grace
no embodied being can go beyond Her realm.
Man has no free will. He is not
even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the
body and mind, She resides in Her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the Brahman that Totapuri had been
worshipping all his life.
Totapuri
returned to Dakshineswar and spent the remaining hours of the night meditating
on the Divine Mother. In the morning, he
went to the Kali temple with Sri Ramakrishna and prostrated himself before the
image of the Mother. He now realized why
he had spent eleven months at Dakshineswar.
Bidding farewell to the disciple, he continued on his way, enlightened.
From THE GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA , Translated
into English by Swami Nikhilananda
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