Totapuri
c. 1800-1890
c. 1800-1890
aka: Ishwar Totapuri, Tota Puri, Nangta Baba...
| Once a vedantin master named Totapuri was visiting him. He began to question Ramakrishna about the superficiality of dancing and chanting and singing devotional songs. These were of no use, he said. If Ramakrishna really wanted to know the ultimate, he should search for the one absolute. This duality of a devotee and his god was incorrect. Ramakrishna was a very humble and unique person. He immediately bowed his head to the feet of Totapuri and asked him to teach this path of nonduality. So Totapuri taught him how to sit in meditation. Ramakrishna would sit with his eyes closed and he would soon be feeling very blissful. Totapuri asked him what was happening. He said he was seeing the mother goddess. Totapuri would not accept this as defeat. He said that if Ramakrishna was seeing the goddess Kali, what was there in it to be so overjoyed about? “All this is imagination – this mother and this goddess – all this is your own projection...” --Osho Finger Pointing to the Moon, ch. 15 |
wandering ascetic of 19th century India
history has little verifiable substance
said to have been born in the Punjab region of NW
India
lived naked
had 700 sannyasins as disciples, focusing on the
practises of Adi Shankara and his ideas of Hindu
vedanta.
met mystic Ramakrishna and had various encounters
with him
said by his followers to have lived to 350 years of
age, although no verification of any birth or death
dates.
history has little verifiable substance
said to have been born in the Punjab region of NW
India
lived naked
had 700 sannyasins as disciples, focusing on the
practises of Adi Shankara and his ideas of Hindu
vedanta.
met mystic Ramakrishna and had various encounters
with him
said by his followers to have lived to 350 years of
age, although no verification of any birth or death
dates.
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