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THE STEELY BARB
is a very carnest seeker who takes precisely the opposite attitude 10 that of the materialistic king. Śrī Rāmakrishna used often to recite this tale to illustrate the mystery of ināyā. It is an apt, surprising, and memorable example, touched with the gentle humor characteristic of so many Indian popular narratives.
An old guru-so we hear-was about to conclude the secret lessons that he had been giving to an advanced pupil on the omnipresence of the divine Spiritual Person. "Everything," said the wise old teacher, while his pupil listened, indrawn and full of the bliss of learning, "is God, the Infinite, pure and real, boundless and beyond the pairs of opposites, devoid of differentiating qualities and limiting listinctions. That is the final meaning of all the teachings of our holy wisdom."
The pupil understood. "God," he responded, “is the sole reality. That Divine One may be found in everything, unaffected by suffering or any fault. Every You and I is Its abode, every form an obscuring liguration within which that unique, unacting Activator dwells.” He was elate: a wave of fceling swept through him tremendously, and he felt luminous and immense, like a cloud which, increasing, has come to fill the firmament. When he walked, now, it was nimbly and without weight.
Sublime, like the only cloud, in all-pervading solitude, he was walking, keeping to the middle of the road, when a huge elephant came from the opposite direction. The mahout, or driver, riding on the neck, shouted, “Clear the way,” and the numerous tinkling bells of the net-covering of the great animal rang with a silvery peal to the rhythm of its soft inaudible tread. The selfexalted student of the science of Vedānta, though full of divine feeling, yet heard and saw the coming of the elephant. And he said to himself, "Why should I make way for that elephant? I am God. The elephant is God. Should God be afraid of God?” And so, fearlessly and with faith, he continued in the middle of the road. But when God came to God, the elephant swung its trunk around the waist of the thinker and tossed him out of the
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