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Acharya Totapuri Teachings On Meditation

Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa disclosed some of the meditations he had learned from his teacher of Vedanta, Totapuri:

Nangta [Tota Puri] used to tell me how a jnani meditates: Everywhere there is water; all the regions above and below are filled with water; man, like a fish, is swimming joyously in that water. In
real meditation you will actually see all this.

Take the case of the infinite ocean. There is no limit to its water. Suppose a pot is immersed in it: there is water both inside and outside the pot. The jnani sees that both inside and outside there is
nothing but Paramatman. Then what is this pot? It is ‘I-consciousness’. Because of the pot the water appears to be divided into two parts; because of the pot you seem to perceive an inside and an
outside. One feels that way as long as this pot of ‘I’ exists. When the ‘I’ disappears, what is remains.
That cannot be described in words.

Do you know another way a jnani meditates? Think of infinite akasha and a bird flying there, joyfully spreading its wings. There is the Chidakasha and Atman is the bird. The bird is not imprisoned in a
cage; it flies in the Chidakasha. Its joy is limitless.