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BHAKTI-YOGA.
instance, the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in keeping with their own nature, see Him as a huge buffalo; if a fish wants to worship God, it will have to form an idea of Him as a big fish; and man has to think of Him as man. And these various conceptions are not due to morbidly active imagination. Man, the buffalo and the fish, all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels so to say, with different shape and capacities. All these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water. In the man the water takes the shape of man, in the buffalo the shape of a buffalo, and in the fish the shape of a fish. Now, as each of these vessels, though containing the same water of the same sea of God, has to appear according to its own shape and capacity, so when men see God, they see Him as man, and the animals, if they have any conception of God at all, must see Him as animal, each according to its own mental
