Passage 7

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In plain words

In this way Tyāgarāja, singing to himself,

holding Your feet, this Tyāgarāja lives in peace: what tapas did he do!

‘This alone is sweetness enough for me’: in this way Tyāgarāja went on spreading his teaching about the bond and kinship with God. Divinity is in all living beings. It is in all human beings. So all of you, speak without giving room to differences of form, as ‘Rāma’, ‘Kṛṣṇa’, ‘Īśvara’. Do not give the least room to these differences: ‘Brahmā created, Viṣṇu protected, Śiva punished’! All are one! ‘Here, there, wherever you look, there is the One alone, dwelling lovingly in the Ātma’: the One alone is in all! If we say, this is the ear, this the nose, this the mouth, this the hand, this the leg, does the body merely by that become many separate things? The body is all these joined together. God is all forms united!

God is all forms joined together

You all know this. Five blind men wanted to describe an elephant. Their teacher spoke. ‘Children! You decide what this elephant is like.’ One felt all over the elephant's belly with his hands and said, ‘Sir! The elephant is like a big wall.’ Another took hold of a leg and felt it. ‘Sir! The elephant is like a big pillar,’ he said. Yet another took hold of the ears and felt them: ‘Sir! The elephant is like a winnowing fan,’ he said. One went round to the back and took hold of the tail: ‘This is like a rope,’ he said. So they spoke. What each one saw was right, as far as he was concerned!