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Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 18 God and I are one >>
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| Then this is a god one. Once at the hermitage of a venerated mayavadi guru a disciple became enlightened after years of penance and instruction at his masters feet. “Oh, master,” he said, “I realize now what you have been saying all along. God and I are one. Only by the power of illusion have I been making distinction between myself and God. But now by your kindness I am awakened. I am in union with the formless, limitless and infinite Supreme.” When the guru indicated that because the disciple had now understood he should go now and make pilgrimage. Then the disciple left and on his way he was walking through the middle of the streets, thinking about his realizations. After sometime he heard an elephant driver shouting from the top of his elephant: “Make way for the elephant. Move out of the road.” He saw ahead of him all the people they were running to either side of the road and he could see a big elephant coming with the driver on his back. The man thought: “Why should I move out of the way for an elephant? That would be against my new realization. I am God now. The elephant should stand aside for me. When the elephant came up to him the man didn’t move, he stood there holding his danda. The elephant grabbed him by his nose and threw him and he crashed into some vegetable stand and potatoes and tomatoes went everywhere. And this man’s arm was broken and he bruised very severely. The next day he returned to his spiritual master’s hermitage and he was limping, he was holding his broken arm and he told his spiritual master the whole story and then asked: “Oh, master, just yesterday I thought that I completely understood your teachings, but look what happened when I applied them. How could such a misfortune happen to me and on the very day when I realized your instructions?” The master replied: “Yes, you said that you realized that God is one, so did you not hear God on top of the elephant telling you to move out of the way?”
| | This story demonstrates one of the severe flaws in the philosophy of monism which states that there is absolute oneness without differentiation of all beings including God. As the story shows, if everyone is elevated to the status of God, only calamity can result from the confusion right away, because conflict of interest arises.
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