One morning Tirthram woke up with a new resolve. He remembered Shankaracharya and paid obeisance to him mentally. Then, he got his head shaved. He took off his clothes and tossed them into the river. The current of water carried the clothes away.
Now he wore only langot. He took dips in the holy water of Ganga and put on saffron robes.
According to the tradition of ‘Teertha’ sect he reversed his name to become ‘Ramtirtha’.
He chanted ‘Om’ and sat under a tree in meditation.
Now as a true ascetic Ramtirtha was only a seeker. Wish for union with Creator was his only ambition. Spiritualism was his sole property. His knowledge had been reduced to only three letters G, O and D. The rest of the 23 letters had lost meaning to him. His new world had no use for the mathematics because his sole objective ‘God’ was beyond any calculation. Infinity had no final figure. His wife and the children were now strangers. He ate only to survive to put in more hours in meditation.
After becoming Ramtirtha he decided to leave the garden in which he had been camping with his disciples. He sent away his disciples Narayana and Tularam to preach Dharma and his message in other regions of the land.
One day, Ramtirtha slipped away from the garden without telling anyone. He didn’t want to be buttonholed by his disciples on any pretext.
He turned up at Tehri. There he found a cave on the bank of Ganga. He went in and liked it. He started living in it like the cave man. All the corrupting influences of the civilisation had been erased. The only difference now between him and the original cave man was that he had the knowledge that cave man lacked.
One day, as he was meditating a group of bears came there. They circled around him while he chanted ‘Om’. Soon, the bears lost interest in him and went away.
Six months later Narayana returned from his preaching mission. He had great difficulty in locating his guru’s cave.
Seeing the guru again gave him great joy.
It is said that later a wolf and a panther also visited the cave. They too went away after showing some initial interest. The locals and the disciples interpreted it as miracle. The truth could be that Ramtirtha had no fears having disowned everything that caused the fear of loss. The beasts could smell no fear and they left.
But the incidents made him a miracle man which impressed the locals who were steeped in blind faiths. The crowds began to converge on the cave to see the miracle man. It annoyed Ramtirtha who wanted peace and solitude to let his spiritual evolution go on.
One night, he again fled to escape from the unwanted attention along with his disciples Narayana and Tularam. The locals got no wind of the departure of their miracle man they were fanaticizing about that he would deliver them of all their miseries.
The three went to Yamnotri, the origin of Yamuna river. They put up in a temple and stayed there for fifteen days. From there he went to Sumeru mountain. The beauty of the mountain overwhelmed him. He stared at the peaks, cascading waterfalls, trees and lush green beauty around. He roamed around in ecstatic mood uttering exclamations.
He thought that even heaven could be no better place. Sumeru mountain is extensively quoted in Hindu scriptures and it is backdrop of several divine episodes. May be, his devotional commitments were psychologically embellishing the beauty of the mountain.
He sat at various scenic spots and meditated. After spending a few days on Sumeru Ramtirtha descended to Gangotri via Ghanesalu. He stayed there for a month and then moved on to Badrinath.
At Badrinath he met his disciple Shivgana-charya who had been looking for him. He wanted to take Ramtirtha to Mathura where a grand religious conference had been organised. Ramtirtha’s name was proposed to preside over the conference which was more like a congregation.
Ramtirtha happily accepted the invitation and went to Mathura with his disciple.
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