Passage 11

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In plain words

Those who worship with the twofold feeling, ‘I must be well, society must be well,’ have the middle place, it has been said. He alone who recognises and knows the oneness that all beings are one, all living creatures are one, is the ananya bhakta. Ananya Bhakti does not mean thinking of Hari always, at all times, everywhere. That is not ananya Bhakti. Ananya means seeing everyone with equal regard, with no other distinctions, and experiencing them so: this is ananya Bhakti. Divinity is in all human beings. All human beings are embodiments of God. God does not mean that He is somewhere in some holy place. We must not go searching for God, thinking that He is in some particular place. God is the very One who is everywhere. If you frame so vast a God in so small a photo and set it in your pūjā, what an insult it is to God! You keep that photo to develop your feeling, to tell Him your Prema; but that photo alone is not God. That idol alone is not God. That locket alone is not God. God is He who fills every place. The divinity that fills the whole of the atom, the body and the cosmos is the true divinity. So divinity is pervading all. When we recognise this truth, all beings too are understood to be forms of God. So, ‘Sarvabhūta namaskāraṃ keśavaṃ pratigacchati.’ To whomever we offer salutation, we have saluted Keśava Himself. Taking the same in another way, ‘Sarvajīva tiraskāraṃ keśavaṃ pratigacchati’: whomever we revile, we have in turn reviled Keśava Himself. Only because man keeps petty, narrow feelings in his heart: for me this god alone, only he is my god. Those who say, “I like Rāma, I do not like Kṛṣṇa,” or “I like Kṛṣṇa, I do not like Rāma”: what sort of people are they? Narrow-hearted people. God is He who has a thousand heads.