Here is a small story of an interesting meeting we recently had with a sadhu from Jharkhand named Hari Baba. He stays in a small village in Jharkhand, and was attending the annual Gita Yagya at Rambaba Ashram, near Jamshedpur. He is a very unique sadhu, always in a type of inner trance, not very aware of the outside around us.
While sitting and meditating internally, if you talk to him, sometimes without breaking his meditation he will halfheartedly talk something with you, but clearly not being fully there with you. Other times he will tell you directly not to talk with him because he is “doing his yoga”.
The sadhu next to us mentioned he had been trying to talk to him for 15 days, but Hari Baba was not allowing him to talk.
Somehow when we asked him he agreed to talk, all the while remaining in his trance like state. First he said he remembered me and had met me before, but that I was now looking older. When I mentioned we were coming from Odisha he said he had once traveled 2,000 kilometers throughout Odisha on a bicycle going between the various holy places.
He then said, “That time when I was in Puri, I visited one shakti peetham located 4 km out in the ocean.”
Knowing that there is no physical temple accessible to normal people out in the ocean, I asked, “Is everyone able to visit this temple in the ocean?”
He replied casually, “Yes, many people are going. You just have to walk on top of the water. And when you get there if you have any impurity in your mind, then your body will dissolve and you will die.”
That was the end of that conversation, and he went back into his trance.
