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Ramakrishna and Tides   They all sat in the Panchavati. Ramakrishna asked M. to explain the cause of the tide. M. drew on the ground the figures of the sun, moon, and earth and tried to explain gravitation, ebb-tide, flood-tide, new moon, full moon, eclipse, and so forth.  Master (to M.):  "Stop it! I can't follow you. It makes me dizzy. My head is aching. Well, how can they know of things so far off? You see, during my childhood I could paint well; but arithmetic would make my head spin. I couldn't learn simple arithmetic."     From The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, by M.  In Bengali, translated to English by Swami Nikhilananda. Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York, 1969. Excerpt on page 185. Ramakrishna lived from February 18, 1836 to August 15, 1886. He was born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay  (sometimes rendered "Chatterji", a practice evidently originating during the British Raj) in a small village in Bengal and spent most of his life in the Dakshineswar temple near Calcutta. The reader is encouraged to obtain the book and form their own opinion of the significance of Ramakrishna's life. The book Great Swan by Lex Hixon (Shambhala Publications, Boston, 1992) is a useful guide. Lex and I attended the New York R-V Center during the same period, around 1970, when Nikhilananda was still alive and active. Great Swan describes Ramakrishna as a "spiritual genius" and I agree. I would only add that to me, the episode of Ramakrishna's life spent in the presence of Totapuri is particularly important in putting his other experiences into perspective.  In other words, Sri Ramakrishna was a spiritual genius who found mathematics and astronomy incomprehensible. But another Indian of the same era,  Srinivasa Ramanujan, is considered of the the greatest mathematical geniuses of all time. Ramanujan was born into a family of devout Tamil brahmins in the year following the death of Ramakrishna and the lives of the two men have some interesting parallels. For examples, both completely immersed themselves in their life's great passion from an early age, both had a deeply intuitive approach, and both quickly surpassed their mentors, who were themselves considered great masters. Ramanujan went to England as a young man to study with one of the pre-eminent mathematicians of the day, G. H. Hardy. No need to repeat the various anecdotes of his brief life; they may be found in any number of websites. What is less well-documented is that he may have been an early victim of what later became a common syndrome among vegan Hindus (to whom not only meat but also dairy and egg products are taboo): upon moving from India to England, they soon sickened and many died. This was a great mystery for many years, as their diet did not noticeably change, until careful research revealed the cause: the rice in India was hand-cleaned, and as a result contained adequate B12 in the form of the ovum of weevils. Vitamin B12, essential to human health, is naturally present only in animal products (leaving aside garden topsoil and certain rare mushrooms). So yet again, evolution trumps ideology.