In the following passages Swami Abhedananda, who was a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, describes the deep state of Samadhi into which his guru would often fall into. These passages have been taken from the book Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
Samadhi was a natural state with Ramakrishna. He never had to make a special effort to attain it. We often heard him say that when he was four years old he went into Samadhi at the sight of the beautiful coloring of a tropical cloud.
In Samadhi his body would become absolutely motionless, his pulse and heart-beat imperceptible, his eyes would be half open and if anyone pressed his eyeball with the finger, his body would not move or show the least sign of sensation.
He would remain in this state sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for half an hour or an hour, and on one occasion he continued in it for three days and nights. Then he would come down on the plane of sense-consciousness and relate his experiences.
He had the power to separate himself from the cage of the physical organism and to go into this state of Divine communion at his will and stay there as long as he wished.
Frequently he told us that he reached such a height in Samadhi that if he had been like an ordinary mortal he could never have returned to his body; that no mortal had ever come back from that kind of Samadhi; and that the Divine Mother gave him this power to return to this plane simply to help mankind and to establish his mission.
Swami Abhedananda goes on to further record his guru Sri Ramakrishna as saying:
Sri Ramakrishna: “A Yogi controls his mind, the mind does not control him. When the mind is absolutely concentrated, the breath stops, and the soul enters into Samadhi. This state of breathlessness is called Kumbhaka. At the time of true meditation the body and senses become absolutely still like a piece of wood.”
“When I first saw Keshab Sen in the Adi (original) Brahmo-Samaj, I saw him sitting in meditation with other members; his mind was entirely withdrawn from the external world and his, body was perfectly motionless like a wooden stump; then I said to Mathur Babu: This man has hooked the fish.”
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Sri Ramakrishna: “As when aiming a gun, a man remains speechless and without breathing. In Divine Love one entirely forgets the external world with all its charms and attractions; even one’s own body, which is so dear to one, is easily forgotten. In Samadhi (ecstasy), when the breathing stops, the whole mind remains absolutely fixed upon the Supreme. All nerve currents (prana) run upward with tremendous force and the result is Samadhi or God-consciousness.”
