Passage 8

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In plain words

If he says the elephant is like a wall, that is true! If another says the leg is like a pillar, that too is true! If yet another says it is like a winnowing fan, that too is true! But this alone is not the elephant. All these joined together are the elephant. That is what we have to recognise today. Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, Allah, Īśvara, Jesus, the Zoroastrian: we speak of all of them separately. God is all of them joined together.

Develop the faith ‘I am God’

Every person must try to recognise this feeling of oneness well. Wherever you go, do not give room to these differences. God is one. He alone is great. The English say God is great. God alone is great. There is nothing that surpasses this. God, who is great, dwells in everyone in a way worthy of praise. He dwells in everyone. So from now on, let every one of you experience the body as humanness; but you must strengthen the good faith, ‘God is right within me, right within me.’ This is what Mīrā too taught. ‘Kṛṣṇa! Merā dil tumhārā mandir’: ‘my very heart is Your dwelling. In my heart there is God alone,’ she said. Little by little, develop the faith ‘I am God’, I am GOD. Put the body into God's work. For ‘Deho devālaya prokto jīvo deva ssanātanaḥ.’ The body is a temple. In it the hṛdaya is the inner shrine; not physical heart. The hṛdaya is on the right side; the heart is on the left side. In it, Divinity, ‘Nīlatoyada madhyasthā…’ As lightning flashes white amid dark clouds, it flashes once like that in the spinal column, vidyulekha… It is in the spine, between vertebrae 9-12. Through it alone all the limbs work. Divinity is everywhere. Recognise this truth and develop the faith, ‘God is not off somewhere; He is right within me.’ But until that experience comes, you must hear Swami's teachings well, put them into practice and experience it through that.