Personal God and Impersonal Truth

MASTER: “These things do not become clear until one has realized God. He assumes different forms and reveals Himself in different ways for the sake of His devotees. A man kept a solution of dye in a tub. Many people came to him to have their clothes dyed.

He would ask a customer, ‘What colour should you like to have your cloth dyed?’ If the customer wanted red, then the man would dip the cloth in the tub and say, ‘Here is your cloth dyed red.’

If another customer wanted his cloth dyed yellow, the man would dip his cloth in the same tub and say, ‘Here is your cloth dyed yellow.’ If a customer wanted his cloth dyed blue, the man would dip it in the same tub and say, ‘Here is your cloth dyed blue.’

Thus he would dye the clothes of his customers different colours, dipping them all in the same solution. One of the customers watched all this with amazement.

The man asked him, ‘Well? What colour do you want for your cloth?’ The customer said, ‘Brother, dye my cloth the colour of the dye in your tub.’

(Laughter.)

Illustration of the chameleon “Once a man went into a wood and saw a beautiful creature on a tree. Later he told a friend about it and said, ‘Brother, on a certain tree in the wood I saw a red-coloured creature.’ The friend answered: ‘I have seen it too. Why do you call it red? It is green.’

A third man said: ‘Oh, no, no! Why do you call it green? It is yellow.’ Then other persons began to describe the animal variously as violet, blue, or black. Soon they were quarrelling about the colour. At last they went to the tree and found a man sitting under it. In answer to their questions he said: ‘I live under this tree and know the creature very well. What each of you has said about it is true. Sometimes it is red, sometimes green, sometimes yellow, sometimes blue, and so forth and so on. Again, sometimes I see that it has no colour whatsoever.’

“Only he who constantly thinks of God can know His real nature. He alone knows that God reveals Himself in different forms and different ways that He has attributes and, again, has none. Only the man who lives under the tree knows that the chameleon can assume various colours and that sometimes it remains colourless. Others, not knowing the whole truth, quarrel among themselves and suffer.

Illustration of ice and water

“Yes, God has form and, again, He has none. Do you know how it is? Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is like a shoreless ocean. In the ocean visible blocks of ice are formed here and there by intense cold. Similarly, under the cooling influence, so to speak, of the bhakti of Its worshippers, the Infinite transforms Itself into the finite and appears before the worshipper as God with form. That is to say, God reveals Himself to His bhaktas as an embodied Person. Again, as, on the rising of the sun, the ice in the ocean melts away, so, on the awakening of Jnāna, the embodied God melts back into the infinite and formless Brahman.”

DOCTOR: “Yes. When the sun is up, the ice melts; and what is more, the heat of the sun turns the water into invisible vapour.”

MASTER: “Yes, that is true. As a result of the discrimination that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory, the aspirant goes into samādhi. Then, for him, the forms or attributes of God disappear altogether. Then he does not feel God to be a Person. Then he cannot describe in words what God is. And who will describe it? He who is to describe does not exist at all; he no longer finds his ‘I’. To such a person Brahman is attributeless. In that state God is experienced only as Consciousness, by man’s inmost consciousness. He cannot be comprehended by the mind and intelligence.

“Therefore people compare bhakti, love of God, to the cooling light of the moon, and janana, knowledge, to the burning rays of the sun. I have heard that there are oceans in the extreme north and extreme south where the air is so cold that it freezes the water into huge blocks of ice here and there. Ships cannot move there; They are stopped by the ice.”

DOCTOR: “Then in the path of bhakti the aspirant meets with obstacles.“MASTER: “Yes, that is true. But it does not cause the devotee any harm. After all, it is the water of the Ocean of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, that is frozen into ice. It will not injure you if you continue to reason, saying, for instance, that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. This reasoning will awaken in you Jnāna, which, like the sun, will melt the ice of divine forms back into the infinite Ocean of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

“I-consciousness”

“In the samādhi that comes at the end of reasoning and discrimination, no such thing as ‘I’ exists. But it is extremely difficult to attain it; ‘I-consciousness’ lingers so persistently. That is why a man is born again and again in this world.

Parable of the cow

“The cow suffers so much because she says, ‘Hamba! Hamba!’, that is, ‘I! I!’ She is yoked to the plough all day long, rain or shine. Or she is slaughtered by the butcher. But even that doesn’t put an end to her misery. The cobbler tans her hide to make shoes from it. At last the carder makes a string for his bow from her entrails and uses the string in carding; then it says, ‘Tuhu! Tuhu!’, that is, ‘Thou! Thou!’ Only then does the cow’s suffering come to an end.

“Likewise, only when a man says: ‘Not I! Not I! I am nobody. O Lord, Thou art the Doer and I am Thy servant; Thou art the Master’, is he freed from all sufferings; only then is he liberated.”

DOCTOR: “But one must fall into the hands of the carder.” (All laugh.)

MASTER: “If this ego cannot be got rid of, then let the rascal remain as the servant of God.

(All laugh.)

Harmless and injurious ego & “Ripe ego” and “unripe ego”

“A man may keep this ego even after attaining samādhi. Such a man feels either that he is a servant of God or that he is a lover of God. Sankaracharya retained the ’ego of Knowledge’ to teach men spiritual life. The ‘servant-ego’, the ‘Knowledge ego’, or the ‘devotee ego’ may be called the ‘ripe ego’. It is different from the ‘unripe ego’, which makes one feel: ‘I am the doer. I am the son of a wealthy man. I am learned. I am rich.

How dare anyone slight me?’ A man with and ‘unripe ego’ cherishes such ideas. Suppose a thief has entered such a man’s house and stolen some of his belongings. If the thief is caught, all the articles will be snatched away from him. Then he will be beaten. At last he will be handed over to the police. The owner of the stolen goods will say: ‘what! This rogue doesn’t know whose house he has entered!’

Childlike nature of perfect souls

“After realizing God, a man becomes like a child five years old. The ego of such a man may be called the ’ego of a child’, the ‘ripe ego’. The child is not under the control of any of the Gunās . He is beyond the three Gunās . He is not under the control of any of the Gunās -sattva, rajas, or tamas.

Just watch a child and you will find that he is not underthe influence of tamas. One moment he quarrels with his chum or even fights with him, and the next moment he hugs him, shows him much affection, and plays with him again. He is not even under the control of rajas. Now he builds his play house and makes all kinds of plans to make it beautiful, and the next moment he leaves everything behind and runs to his mother. Again, you see him wearing a beautiful piece of cloth worth five rupees.

After a few moments the cloth lies on the ground; he forgets all about it. Or he may carry it under his arm. If you say to the child: ‘That’s a beautiful piece of cloth. Whose is it?’, he answers: ‘Why, it is mine. My daddy gave it to me.’ You may say, ‘My darling, won’t you give it to me?’ and he will reply: ‘Oh no, it is mine. My daddy gave it to me.

I won’t give it to you.’ Some minutes later you may coax him with a toy or a music-box worth a penny, and he will give you the cloth. Again, a child five years old is not attached even to sattva. You may find him today very fond of his playmates in the neighbourhood; he doesn’t feel happy for a moment without seeing them; but tomorrow, when he goes to another place with his parents, he finds new playmates; all his love is now directed to his new friends, and he almost forgets about his old ones. Further, a child has no pride of caste or family. If his mother says to him about a certain person, ‘This man is your elder brother’, he believes this to be one hundred per cent true. One of the two may have been born in a brahmin family and the other may belong to a low caste, say that of the blacksmiths, but they will take their meal from the same plate. A child is beyond all ideas of purity and impurity. He is not bound by social conventions. He doesn’t hesitate to come out naked before others.