Killing Kali

 

Since I comment essentially everything on this blog…

In 1864, the Bengali Hindu mystic Ramakrishna met Tota Puri, a monist Shaiva sannyasin of the Advaita philosophical school. Initially, Tota Puri looked down on the rustic bhakta, who worshipped Kali as his “mother”, instead initiating him (quite brutally) into monist meditation. However, Tota soon realized that Ramakrishna was a more advanced spiritual practitioner than himself. And when Ramakrishna went out of samadhi, he told Tota that Brahman and the Mother were the same. Indeed, the pantheist monk even had a vision of Kali, stopping him from drowning himself in the Ganges!

True story? That´s anybody´s guess, of course, but that is the official version. (The second clip is from an old film about Ramakrishna´s life, featuring his famous encounter with Tota Puri.)

Now, compare this to Sadhguru´s retelling of the same story.

Sadhguru, a contemporary Shaiva Tantrika (not sure if he´s also a monist), claims that Tota Puri converted Ramakrishna to *his* perspective, making Ramakrishna “kill Kali” with a sword, both Kali and the sword being products of Ramakrishna´s consciousness. And presumably the Universal Consciousness? But of course, that´s not what happened. I do realize that gurus often tell stories for didactic purposes, but this one was pretty hard to swallow!

Another thing to investigate on a chilly Sunday evening…