Part V — Stories and plays

This plant is man, this plant is God

There was once a seeker. For many years he had been looking for a Master, a Guru. Unfortunately he had not found one. He had been to many spiritual groups, but the teachers that he met were not to his taste. So he was still looking, looking for a spiritual Master. One day while he was walking along the street, he saw a spiritual Master with a few disciples. They were sitting on a lawn, a beautiful lawn, and some of the disciples were watering the grass.

This particular seeker approached the Master and said, "Master, all these disciples of yours listen to you no matter what you say. They believe in you and they are right when they listen to you. But I wish to say that I have something to tell you, even though you will not see eye to eye with me."

The Master said, "Truth is certainly not my sole monopoly. If you have discovered some truth, I will naturally accept your truth wholeheartedly. Now please tell me, what is the truth which you have discovered?"

So the seeker said, "My discovery is this: a worldly person cannot realise God so easily. I am a worldly human being, and I know that even to get a Master is simply impossible. I haven't found a spiritual teacher, for no spiritual teacher is satisfactory to me; so how will it be possible for me to realise God, which is infinitely more difficult? Just to get a Master is so difficult for me; to get realisation in this life is simply impossible. Do you agree with me?"

The Master replied, "Unfortunately, I do not agree with you. Others may think that what you say is right, but at this point I would like to say that it is not so difficult either to get a Master or to get God-realisation."

The seeker was surprised, and even the disciples were to some extent amazed at the Master's remark, because most of them knew how hard it had been for them to get a spiritual Master, and God-Realisation was still a far cry.

The Master said, "Now look here. Right now some of my disciples are watering the grass. There are tiny plants around here." The Master pointed out two plants, two very tiny plants. Then the Master took a gardening tool and dug up one of the plants. Taking both the root and the leaf, the whole plant, he went to another plant. There also he dug up the whole plant and replaced it with the first one. Then he took the second plant and replaced it where the first one had been.

Then the Master said, "Look here. This plant is man, and that plant is God. Now I am the Master. I came here and I touched this plant. It was a matter of a few minutes, just a couple of minutes. As soon as I touched it, immediately the plant gave me the divine response, and I took it and put it there where the plant called 'God' had been. Then I took the God-plant and got all His Compassion, Love, Joy and Delight, and put it over there where man the plant was. It was a matter only of a few minutes. I took man to God and brought God to man."

The new seeker said, "Master, I wish to be your disciple. Please initiate me."

"I shall initiate you shortly, my child," the Master said. Then he continued, "If you feel that it is next to impossible to realise God, it means that your idea of God is wrong, your idea of spirituality is wrong. You are attached to the world, but if you had the same attachment towards God then you would see that you can easily reach God. Now when I go to God, I knock at the door. Immediately He opens it and comes to me. I say, 'Please come with me.' He comes with His infinite Love, Joy, Blessings, and Compassion. Then I come and knock at your door, but when I knock at your door you don't open it. You keep your door closed, bolted. Naturally God and I go back. Then when I want to take you to God's Palace I say to you, 'You come with me.' When I knock at God's door again, God says that as you didn't open your door when I brought Him to you, He will not open His door to you. If you had opened your door when I brought God as the Guest and if you had allowed God to come in, naturally God would also have allowed you to come into His Palace. So if you keep your heart's door open, God can easily come in.

"But when I approach you, immediately you are disturbed. You think that you have fear, you have doubt, you have emotional problems, you have vital problems, you have jealousy and so forth. You don't want to expose yourself; you want to hide. But this plant that I moved, man the plant, showed no fear, no doubt, no shyness when I touched it — absolutely nothing. It was not at all afraid of its own ignorance. It was thrilled that somebody was taking it to another place which was God. So when I touch you, when a spiritual Master blesses you or meditates on you, at that time if you offer your ignorance and your imperfections along with your devoted qualities, then it is so easy for the Master to take you totally to God. If not, it is next to impossible for the Master to do anything to transform the consciousness of the disciples or even to purify their consciousness. It is only an exchange of two plants. This is what the Master does when he deals with his spiritual children. One plant is God, another plant is man."

Then the Master slowly walked away.

From:Sri Chinmoy,The Master and the disciple, Agni Press, 1985
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/md