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way, just don't hesitate, cut off my head and throw me out of the way. Pass me without looking back" -- because in meditation it is always possible that the last barrier will be the master. That is your last love, your great love affair. You may pass through all other small matters, psychological fixations, but what are you going to do with the last rope?
It happened in Ramakrishna's life:
Ramakrishna was a great devotee, and the path of devotion is full of imagination. Mind has the capacity to hypnotize itself and can see the object of imagination just standing before it.
You should pay attention to the fact that no Mohammedan or Christian ever experiences Krishna, no Hindu ever experiences Jesus. They all see what they imagine, what they believe in, what is their hypothesis. If you continuously go on insisting on a certain hypothetical concept of God, one day you will see that hypothesis becoming a reality.
Ramakrishna was a devotee of the Mother Goddess of Calcutta. An enlightened man, Totapuri, was just passing by. He looked at Ramakrishna and he felt great compassion for the poor fellow. He told Ramakrishna, "You think that you have experienced the Mother Goddess."
Ramakrishna said, "See, I have talked with her, and not one day but every day." He was an honest man, and what he was saying was absolutely true.
Totapuri laughed and he said, "Listen, that Mother Goddess is nothing but pure imagination. Unless you drop that you will never become enlightened. So sit down. I will remain here for three or four days, just for you. I have to help you in somehow dropping the Mother Goddess."
Now that was a very difficult matter. Ramakrishna had loved the Mother Goddess his whole life, danced before her. And he was not a traditional fellow; he was very untraditional, very loving, very innocent -- so much so that twice the trustees of the temple in which he used to worship, where he was the priest, had to call him saying, "This is strange what you are doing...."
First he would taste the food that was to be offered to the goddess, and then he would offer it. Now this is absolutely wrong according to the Hindu tradition.
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