Coming down from the highest meditation²⁰

From 1946 to 1952, perhaps, over a six-year range, I used to go up high, very high, during my meditation. When I came down, I could not remember my name. It took me a long time to remember my name. For at least ten or fifteen minutes I could not remember. There was only one way for me to know: by looking at my notebook. I was a student, and we had to write down our name for the teacher to see. This happened many, many times.

Sometimes in my room I was meditating and one of my dearest friends or admirers would be there. He was not meditating; he was only watching me and seeing how high I was going. When I came back down, I asked him my name, and he told me. Many times this happened.

Sri Ramakrishna used to go up very high during his meditation. In two ways he would come down. One way was to touch his disciple Brahmananda, either his leg or some other limb. Then he became perfectly normal. Before that, he did not remember anything after he came down. He did not know where he was or what he was. This happened again and again. On other occasions, his disciples who were near him when he came down from his meditation used to give him a hookah to smoke. When he smoked, he remembered everybody’s name, because he had completely touched the earth-consciousness.

Quite a few times after meditating I used to go out of our house to the dining room, which was about four hundred or five hundred metres away, with only one sandal. One foot had a sandal and one foot had no sandal. I continued walking, and people would say, “What are you doing? Why are you wearing only one sandal?" Then I would go back and get the other sandal.

At times something else happened. There was a place where we would drop our plates after eating. A few times it happened that after eating I did not go there. I went straight out of the building and into the garden with my plate. People asked me, “What are you doing here?” There was a small park where I used to have very high meditations, and I walked there at least two or three times with my dish.