THE KING AND THE MAGICIAN

As you go nearer to God you see less and less of
His upadhis, His attributes. A devotee at first may
see the Deity as the ten-armed Divine Mother;
when he goes nearer, he sees her possessed of six
arms; still nearer, he sees the Deity as the twoarmed
Gopala. The nearer he comes to the Deity,
the fewer attributes he 5-ees. At last, when he
comes into the presence of (he Deity, he sees only
Light without any attribute, Listen a little to the
Vedantic reasoning. A magician came to a king to
show his magic. When the magician moved away a
little, the king saw a rider on horse-back
approaching him. He was brilliantly arrayed and
had various weapons in his hands. The king and
the audience began to reason out what was real in
the phenomenon before them. Evidently the horse
was not real, nor the robes nor the armours. At last
they found out beyond the shadow of a doubt that
the rider alone was there. The significance of this is
that Brahman alone is real and the world unreal.
Nothing whatsoever remains if you analyse.