Passage 8

Tap any word for its meaning.

In plain words

The very one who is within and without and everywhere is in me too. God who is everywhere is the form of the whole. God who is in me is the form of the individual. We must try to recognise the difference between the individual and the whole. It is like this: there is one tree. One can call it just a tree. That is the individual. There may be some hundreds of such trees. That is what is called a forest. A tree is not a forest. A forest is not without trees. What is made up of many trees is a forest. That is the form of the whole. If there is one house, we say one house. What many houses together make one can call a village. That is the difference between a house and a village, between the individual and the whole. One person may stay an individual. But there is a thing called society. Society is nothing but many individuals coming together. Without individuals there is no society. That society is the whole. The one who stays alone is the individual. So God is the very form of the Ātma that is the whole. That God, the form of the whole, is in me as the form of the individual. With the faith that without the individual there is no whole, he keeps to ekānta Bhakti. So wherever he looks, it is nothing but the feeling of God. Nothing but the form of God.

The basis of everything is the Name. It is the Name alone that wipes out every problem and gives man peace and safety. No other thing has the sweetness this Name has. Sweeter than all sweetness is the Name of God. The Name is not one thing and the form another. We must enquire into the close bond and kinship between these two. The form is the thing bought. The Name is the thing that buys. What must we have to buy another thing? With money in hand we can buy anything at all. So every man must increase the wealth called the Name. With this very Name we must sing bhajans and, through thinking on the Name, offer ourselves to this Named One. The Named One and the Name: the two are bound so that one cannot be without the other. Each rests on the other. Every devotee must enquire well into this divine feeling. To attain such a supreme principle there is only one path. We must foster human values. These, they said, are the four sādhanas. Maitrī, karuṇā, muditā, upekṣā. These are four small words. But all human values are contained in them.

Maitrī. We must form a bond with divine company. On the earth there is the topsoil. This soil, if it makes friendship with the wind, flies up to the sky.