THE CHAMELEON

ONCE a man entered a wood and saw a small
animal on a tree. He came back and told another
man that he had seen a creature of a beautiful red
colour on a certain tree. The second man replied:
"When f went into the wood, I also saw that
animal. But why do you call it red? It is green."
Another man who was present contradicted them
both and insisted that it was yellow. Presently
others arrived and contended that it was grey,
violet, blue, and so forth and so on. At last they
started quarrelling among themselves. To settle the
dispute they all went to the tree. They saw a man
sitting under it. On being asked, he replied: *'Yes, I
live under this tree and I know the animal very
well. All your descriptions are true. Sometimes it
appears red, sometimes yellow, and at other times
blue, violet, grey and so forth- It is a chameleon.
And sometimes it has no colour at all. Now it has
a colour, and now it has none."
In like manner, one who constantly thinks of God
can know His real nature; he alone knows that
God reveals Himself to seekers in various forms
and aspects. God has attributes; then again He has
none. Only the man who lives under the tree
knows that the chameleon can appear in various
colours, and he knows further that the animal at
times has no colour at all. It is the others who
suffer from the agony of futile argument.

ALL PURE SPIRIT

ALL doubts disappear when one sees God. It is
one thing to hear of God, but quite a different
thing to see Him. A man cannot have one hundred
per cent conviction through mere hearing. But if
he beholds God face to face, then he is wholly
convinced.
Formal worship drops away after the vision of
God. It was thus that my worship in the temple
came to an end. I used to worship the deity in the
Kali Temple. It was suddenly revealed to me that
everything is Pure Spirit. The utensils of worship,
the altar, the door-frame - all Pure Spirit. Then like
a mad man I began to shower flowers in all
directions. Whatever I saw I worshipped

HE EATS, YET EATS NOT

ONCE Vyasadeva was about to cross the Jamuna.
The gopis also were there. They wanted to go to
the other side of the river to sell curd, milk, and
cream. But there was no ferry at that time. They
were all worried about how to cross the river,
when Vyasa said to them, "I am very hungry." The
milkmaids fed him with milk and cream. He
finished almost all their food. Then Vyasa said to
the river, "O Jamuna, if I have not eaten anything,
then your waters will part and we shall walk
through." It so happened. The river parted and a
pathway was formed between the waters.
Following that path, the gopis and Vyasa crossed
the river.
Vyasa had said, "If I have not eaten anything."
That means, the real man is Pure Atman. Atman is
unattached and beyond Prakriti. It has neither
hunger nor thirst; It knows neither birth nor death;
It does not age, nor does It die. It is immutable as
Mount Sumeru.

AN ANT WENT TO A SUGAR HILL

MEN often think they have understood Brahman
fully.
Once, an ant went to a sugar hill. One grain filled
its stomach. Taking another grain in its mouth it
started homeward. On its way it thought, "Next
time I shall carry home the whole hill."
That is the way shallow minds think. They don't
know that Brahman is beyond one's words and
thought, However great a man may be, how much
can he know of Brahman? Sukadeva and sages like
him may have been big ants; but even they at the
utmost could carry eight or ten grains of sugar!

'BEHOLD, O KING! BEHOLD'

ONCE, a king asked a yogi to impart Knowledge
to him in one word. The yogi said, "All right; you
will get knowledge in one word." After a while a
magician came to the king. The king saw the
magician moving two of his lingers rapidly and
heard him exclaim, "Behold, O king, Behold." The
king looked at him amazed when, after a few
minutes, he saw the two lingers becoming one. The
magician moved that one finger rapidly and said,
"Behold, O king! Behold."
The implication of the story is that Brahman and
the Primal Energy at first appear to be two. But
after attaining knowledge of Brahman one does not
see the two. Then there is no differentiation; it is
One, without a second—Advaita—non-duality.

WHEN FACE TO FACE

WHERE the mind attains peace by practising the
discipline of 'Neti, neti', there Brahman is.
The king dwells in the inmost room of the palace,
which has seven gates. The visitor comes to the
first gate. There he sees a lordly person with a large
retinue, , surrounded on all sides by pomp and
grandeur. The visitor asks his companion, "Is he
the king?" "No", says his friend with a smile.
At the second and other gates he repeats the same
question to his friend. He finds that the nearer he
comes to the inmost part of the palace, the greater
is the glory, pomp, and grandeur. When he passes
the seventh gate he does not ask his companion
whether it is the king; he stands speechless at the
king's immeasurable glory. He realizes that he is
face to face with the king. He hasn't the slightest
doubt about it.

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.