Ramakrishna: Of course it will exist; otherwise where will it go? I see that wherever I remain, I am in the kingdom of God. [The kingdom of God is everywhere.] Verily I say unto you, this world is the kingdom of God. Ramachandra, the Divine Incarnation and the Hero of the epic Ramayana, said to his father that he would renounce the world and go to a spiritual Guru in order to attain spiritual wisdom. The father summoned the great sage Vashishta to reason with his son. Vashishta saw that Rama had intense dispassion for the world; he then said to him. "O Rama, first discriminate with me, then renounce the world." By right discrimination Rama realized that God manifests Himself in the form of Jiva, or the individual soul and the world. Everything lives and exists

in and through His Being. Then Rama kept silent.

Some time ago Vaishnava Charan said that perfect knowledge of God is attained when one perceives Him in all human beings. I have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and manifesting Himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when I meet different people, I say to myself: "God in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the unrighteous and God in the form of the righteous." He who has attained to such realization goes beyond good and evil, above virtue and vice, and realizes that the Divine will is working everywhere.

[Parable of the monk and the Zemindar.] There was a Hindu monastery in a certain village. The monks of the monastery went out every day with begging bowls to gather food. One day, a monk, passing by, saw a Zemindar severely beating a poor man. The holy man, being very kind-hearted, entreated the Zemindar to stop beating the man. The Zemindar, blind with rage, immediately turned on the monk and poured upon him the venom of his anger. He

beat him until he was knocked unconscious on the ground. Another man, seeing his condition, went to the monastery and told what had happened. His brother monks ran to the spot where the holy man was lying. They lifted him and brought him to the monastery and laid , him in a room; but the holy man still remained unconscious for a long time. Sorrowful and anxious, his brothers fanned him, bathed his face, put milk into his mouth and tried to nurse him back to life. Gradually they brought him back to consciousness. The holy man opened his eyes and looked at his fellow-brethren. One of them, desiring to know whether he could recognize his friends, asked him in a loud voice: "Maharaj, dost thou recognize him who is feeding thee with milk?" The holy man answered in a feeble voice: "Brother, he who beat me is now feeding me." And Ramakrishna added: But one cannot realize this oneness of the Spirit unless one has reached God-consciousness.