Passage 6

His poems 82

Also in his talks (47)

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In plain words

How, in what way, are we to make it one? In one place there is fire. In another place there is charcoal. When you put the charcoal in one place and the fire in another, the fire does not enter the charcoal. But when you set the charcoal right beside this fire, this fire passes wholly into the charcoal. When you fan air over it, the charcoal too becomes fire. In Vedānta they said this very thing: ‘Brahmavit brahmaiva bhavati.’ We must go close to divinity. It is not only going close. We must love that divinity beyond measure. That air called near and the Prema called dear, the two together, merge into the form of Brahman. Merely being near is not enough. You must fan the air. Only then does all this charcoal become fire. In the same way, merely being near divinity is not enough. We must make the principle of Prema too one with the principle of Sat-cit-ānanda. Only then does it become one. ‘Om ityekakṣaraṃ brahma.’ You can attain divinity through one single sound.

All the Worlds Are in the Body Itself

Today even all the sādhanas man does, he does merely to satisfy delusion. How does God dwell in our heart? How does He dwell in the body? When we look into it, God lives in the head. The head itself they called the world of God. Where is the world of men? It lies joined in our throat. Where is the world of the Nāgas? The world of the Nāgas is in our heart. The world of the gods, the world of men and the world of the Nāgas have their dwelling in the body. Even while enjoying so sacred a body, without knowing the principle of so sacred a body, we think the body is something that wears away. We say the body is something that burns away. No, no. The body may perish, the body may wear out, but the dweller in the body is not something that wears out.

The body is of the five elements; the body must fall sometime; the dweller in the body is free of all ill; reckon it well: for the dweller there is no death and birth; look at the truth: no marks of the fetters of delusion's bondage are on it; that very dweller is the God of gods, shining in the mind as the form of the Ātma.