Talks Excerpt 457. Swamiji explains to a child how God can be One but in many forms.
From Mother Radha’s recordings of Swamiji
Swamiji tells a story about Akka as we called her, a delightful old lady, whom we all loved. She lived at the ashram for some time. When surprised or as she often was, teased by Swamiji, she would exclaim, ‘Oh, Narayan!‘ Swamiji quotes Akka as saying, ‘Nowadays girls and boys fall in love every second. They go against the mother, against the father, against the guru. They find the boy or girl that they like and they live together for one week, two weeks, three weeks. But when poverty knocks at the door, love flies out the window.’ [laughter] Says Swamiji: Remember this. These are wise words, no matter how much you laugh, for these are truthful words.
Devotee: What did Swamiji mean when he said, ‘Unknowingly we shall realise God?’ Swamiji: No matter even if you realise God, you can’t say, ‘I know God fully.’ You can’t express it – so it’s unknowable. Yet you will know that That which has realised God, will know It has realised God.
When I say, ‘It has realised God,’ I don’t mean the ego, the little ‘I’. That ‘I’ cannot know Him.
Child’s question: God is only One, so how can he have all these forms? [Swamiji holds up his fingers]. Swamiji: Tell me how many fingers are here? Count, out loud. Child: One, two, three, four, five. Swamiji: That’s four fingers and one thumb. Whose are they? Child: Yours, Swamiji. Swamiji: They are separate, right? But I am only one. How many hearts have I got? Child: One. Swamiji: What pumps blood in this finger? Child: The heart.
Swamiji: Right, the heart. Now, the small finger can’t say, ‘It is my blood,’ can it? because the blood belongs to the heart. So there is one God but that one God takes different names and different forms.
People don’t know this, therefore they say ‘my God’ and ‘your God’. Since God is Almighty, He can do anything and everything. He can take many forms.
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These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.