Walking on water

Once a man came to Ramakrishna. He was a great yogi. And he declared the same thing to Ramakrishna. He said, “Can you walk on the water? I can.” 

And Ramakrishna laughed and he said, “What is the point of it? How much effort and how much energy and how much time did you have to waste to learn this?” 

The man said, “Eighteen years.”

Ramakrishna said, “This is foolish. Just by giving two paise to the boatman he takes me to the other side. Just for a thing worth two paise – eighteen years! Are you stupid or something?”

This has always been the approach of a real spiritual man like Ramakrishna… What is the point? Even if you can walk on the water, what is the point of it? How is it relevant to your life problems? How is it going to help you? How is it going to make you more happy? Just by walking on the water, will you become happy? So why are you not happy while you are walking on the earth? Just by flying in the air, will you become happy? Who is preventing you? Right now why can’t you become happy?

Osho (Acharya Rajneesh) in the book Sufis: People of the Path

Ramakrishna Paramhans (1836-1886) was an Indian Hindu mystic whose parable-based teachings espoused the ultimate unity of diverse religions as being means to enable the realisation of the same God. After his demise, his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda popularised his ideas and founded the Ramakrishna Order, which provides spiritual training for monastics and householder devotees, and the Ramakrishna Mission which provides charity, social work and education.

Acharya Rajneesh (1931-1990), known later as Osho, was an Indian godman, philosopher, mystic and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed as a controversial religious leader during his life. He rejected institutional religions, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organised into any one system of religious dogma. He advocated meditation and taught a unique form called dynamic meditation. Rejecting traditional ascetic practices, he asked his followers to live fully in the world but without attachment to it. Pic courtesy: https://www.sannyas.wiki/