From Sri Ramakrishna Totapuri 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." (This version of the incident is
taken
from the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Saradananda, one of the
Master's direct disciples.) 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.
Sri Ramakrishna later described the significance of Totapuri's lessons:
"When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive — neither creating nor
preserving nor destroying —, I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the
Impersonal
God. When I think of Him as active — creating, preserving, and
destroying —, I call Him Sakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God.
But
the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal
and
the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the
diamond
and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to
conceive
of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one."
After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six
months
in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "For six months at a
stretch",
he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never
return;
generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I
was not
conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils
just
as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became
matted
with dust."
His body would not have survived but for the kindly attention of a monk
who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow
realized
that for the good of humanity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved.
He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing
soul to
the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting moments
of
consciousness he would push a few morsels of food down Sri
Ramakrishna's
throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the command of the Divine
Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon
there-after
after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and
night the
pain tortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical
plane.