LOVE, KNOWLEDGE, POWER


God dwells in you,
It is He who fills your heart with love
And illumines your mind with Knowledge.
It is His power that works in you.
He pervades in every part of your being;
You are His embodiment.
Worlds are His forms:
There is none but He.
Realise this.

— Swami Ramdas

How I understand it:

This poem — written in free verse, as are most of Beloved Papa’s poems — exhorts the reader / devotee to realise the basic truth about God’s all-pervasiveness.

The poem starts with the statement: “God dwells in you”. This is to make us understand that the God we seek is not somewhere far away from us, but is ever dwelling within us and that we are the very embodiment of the Lord!

It is because of Him that our hearts experience Love, our minds are illumined through Knowledge and it is His Power that actuates our bodies to move. He is all-pervading. Therefore, we and the entire manifestation are His embodiment.

Saints often explain the all-pervading nature of the Absolute through the example of clay and pot: pots are made of clay. When we look at some pots, we may see each of the pots as individual pots, say a kettle, bowl, etc. However, at a subtle level, we are also aware of the substratum — clay — of which the pots are made.

The example of gold is also often used by Masters to bring home this point. Recently, Ramana Chanara Tirtha Nochur Sri Venkataramanji visited Anandashram and narrated the following: When we have some old gold ornaments like a nose ring with a chain which can be hooked to the hair, etc., we do not feel like wearing these sorts of old designs. We prefer to go for newer and more appealing designs of the golden ornaments. However, if a thief breaks into a house and he find the ornaments with the old and new designs, he will not sit and distinguish between good and bad, appealing or unappealing. He will simply see that the ornaments are made of gold and therefore are valuable. He takes them all, irrespective of their design.

Similarly, we are deceived by names and forms. We forget the substratum — God — in everyone and everything. Like the thief, we have to see the One in the many, and be aware that though the manifestation — sentient and insentient — appears as separate forms, is “none but He.”




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