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50
BHAKTI-YOGA.
everything"* is all very true as a poetical figure-but no man can impart to another a single grain of truth, unless he has the undeveloped germs of it in himself. To whom do the stones and brooks preach sermons ? - to the human soul, the lotus of whose inner holy shrine is already quick with life. And the light which causes the beautiful opening out of this lotus comes always from the good and wise teacher. When the heart has thus been opened, it becomes fit to receive teaching from the stones and the brooks, or the stars, the sun and the moon, or from anything which has its existence in this divine universe; but the unopened heart will see in them nothing but mere stones and mere brooks. A blind man may go to a museum, but he will not profit by it in any way; his eyes
*And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermon in stones and good in every thing.
-Shakespeare's As you like it, Act II, Scene I.
