AS YOU GO FROM NEAR TO NEARER

A MUSSALMAN, while saying his prayers,
shouted: "O Allah! O Allah!" Another person said
to him: "You are calling on Allah. That's all right.
But why are you shouting like that? Don't you
know that He hears the sound of the anklets on the
feet of an ant?"
When the mind is united with God, one sees him
very near, in one's own heart. But you must
remember one thing. The more you realize this
unity, the farther your mind is withdrawn from
worldly things. There is the story of Vilwamangal
in the Bhaktamala. He used to visit a prostitute.
One night he was very late in going to her house.
He had been detained at home by the Sraddha
ceremony of his father and mother. In his hands he
was carrying the food offered in the ceremony, to
feed his mistress. His whole soul was so set upon
the woman that he was not at all conscious of his
movements.
He did not even know how he was walking. There
was a Yogi seated on the path, meditating on God
with his eyes closed. Vilwamangal stepped on him.
The yogi became angry, and cried out: "What? Are
you blind? I have been thinking of God and you
step on my body!" "I beg your pardon" said
Vilwamangal, "but may I ask you something? I
have been unconscious, thinking of a prostitute,
and you are conscious of the outer world though
thinking of God. What kind of meditation is that?"
In the end Vilwamangal renounced the world and
went away in order to worship God. He said to the
prostitute: 'You are my Guru. You have taught me
how one should yearn for God." He addressed the
prostitute as his mother and gave her up.