22. God tells the thief to go and steal, and at the same time warns the householder against the thief.
23. How doth the Lord dwell in the body? He dwells in the body like the plug of a syringe, i.e. in the body, and yet apart from it.
24. The Lord can pass an elephant through the eye of a needle. He can do whatever He likes.
25. As fishes playing in a pond covered over with reeds and scum cannot be seen from outside, so God plays in the heart of a man invisibly, being screened by Mâyâ. from human view
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26. A man sitting under the shade of the Kalpa-vriksha (wishing-tree) wished to be a king, and in an instant he was a king. The next moment he wished to have a charming damsel, and the damsel was instantly by his side. The man then thought within himself, if a tiger came and devoured him, and alas! in an instant he was in the jaws of a tiger! God is like that wishing-tree: whosoever in His presence thinks that he is destitute and poor, remains as such, but he who thinks and believes that the Lord fulfils all his wants, receives everything from Him.
27. The landlord may be very rich, but when a poor cultivator brings a humble present to him with a loving heart, he accepts it with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction.
28. While a bell is being rung, the repeated ding-dongs can be distinguished one from the other, but when we stop ringing, then an undistinguishable sound only remains audible. We can easily distinguish one note from the other, as if each distinct note had a certain shape; but the continued and unbroken sound when the ding-dongs have ceased is undistinguishable, as if formless. Like the sound of the bell, God is both with and without form.
29. As a boy begins to learn writing by drawing big scrawls, before he can master the small-hand, so we must learn concentration of the mind by fixing it first on forms; and when we have attained success therein, we can easily fix it upon the formless.
30. As a marksman learns to shoot by first taking aim at large and big objects, and the more he acquires the facility, the greater becomes the ease with which he can shoot at the smaller marks on the target, so when the mind has been trained to be fixed on images having form, it becomes easy for it to be fixed upon images having no form.
31. God is the Absolute and Eternal Brahman, as well as the Father of the Universe. The indivisible Brahman is like a vast shoreless ocean, without bounds and limits, in which I can only struggle and sink. But when I approach the always sportive (active) personal Deity (Hari), I get peace, like the sinking man who nears the shore.
32. God is formless, and is with form too, and He is that which transcends both form and formlessness. He alone can say what else He is.
33. At a certain stage of his path of devotion, the devotee finds satisfaction in God with form; at another stage, in God without form.
34. The God with form is visible, nay, we can touch Him face to face, as with one's dearest friend.
35. As at one time I am clothed, and at another time naked, so Brahman is at one time with attributes and at another without.
38. As water when congealed becomes ice, so the visible form of the Almighty is the materialised manifestation of the all-pervading formless Brahman. It may be called, in fact, Sat-kit-ânanda solidified. As the ice, being part and parcel of the water, remains in the water for a time and afterwards melts in it, so the Personal God is part and parcel of the Impersonal. He rises from the Impersonal, remains there, and ultimately merges into it and disappears.
37. His name is Intelligence; His abode is Intelligence too, and He, the Lord, is Intelligence Himself.
38. Two are the occasions when the Lord smiles. First, when brothers remove the chains which partition off the family property, saying, This is mine and that is thine;' and secondly, when the patient is on the point of death, and the physician says, 'I will cure him.'
39. Lunatics, drunkards, and children sometimes give out the truth unconsciously, as if inspired by Heaven.
40. The sun is many times larger than the earth, but owing to the great distance it appears like a small disk. So the Lord is infinitely great, but owing to our being too far from Him we fall very, very short of comprehending His real greatness.
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