Passage 11

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In plain words

Without recognising such a tāraka principle, it is not enough to chant ‘Rām Rām’. We must make our mind one with the Ātma. Look. You have brought some sugar. There is water in a glass. You poured it into that water and stirred it. Look afterwards: the sugar will not come into your hand. You look; the sugar cannot be seen in the water. Where did it go? You brought it with your own hand. You saw it with your own eyes. Now that sugar will not come to your hand. Your eye cannot see it. Where has it gone? With your own hand you brought it. With your own eyes you saw it, yet the eye cannot see it and the hand cannot catch it. How can you tell that the sugar is here? When you put it on your tongue, you know the sugar is there. Another thing. For the children we poured juice into this cup. We poured fruit juice. The fruit juice is in the cup. But the cup does not know the taste of the fruit juice. It has filled itself to the brim, but the cup does not know. You put in a straw. You draw it up through the straw. The juice goes up the straw, but the straw knows nothing of it. The moment it falls on the tongue, its taste is known. Do you see where the taste is known? It is known on the tongue. Our body itself is a cup. In it dwells God, raso vai saḥ, the One whose form is rasa. The body does not know it. Our senses are the straw. With these senses we enjoy everything. But they too know nothing. The Buddhi, that is the tongue; the Buddhi alone knows. The tongue knows, but it does not enjoy it. It sends it on to the stomach. The stomach too does not know the sweetness. It digests it. It pushes the waste aside. It supplies the pure, clean juice to every limb. That is the digestive fire

Becoming Vaiśvānara, I dwell in the bodies of living beings; joined with prāṇa and apāna, I digest the four kinds of food.

I am in your belly as Vaiśvānara; I digest what you eat, supply it to your body and give you strength. If we go on enquiring well into Vedānta like this, in the end one thing alone comes out: Ekaṃ sat viprāḥ bahudhā vadanti.