Pleading with you in this way, the day will come when all words dry up. By your compassionate thunder-stroke, the towering mountain of the sense of “me and mine” will crumble to dust. On that day, my throat will carry no speech; my tongue will be unable to form words. My speech (vaak), having passed beyond the stages of vaikhari (spoken expression), madhyama (mental or subtle utterance), and pashyanti (intuitive or causal articulation), will reach para (the supreme spiritual sound of Brahman) and come to rest in tranquillity.

Until that day comes, I have no other means than to keep pleading with you. That’s why I speak – I shall speak again: O Lord! Oh, rescuer of the penurious! O scion of the Raghu race! Oh Lord of Braj! O Lord of my life! O eternally-bliss-filled Mother! Please condescend and bless me! With your kind yet firm blow, demolish the high peaks of the sense of ‘me and mine’ in this being.

It is this sense of ‘I, me or mine’ that keeps me away from you. Please screen everything that I have tainted with this egoism and stand in front of it, putting it out of sight. You are an unbroken whole, I have split you into parts; you are identical oneness, but with the toxin of my sense of egoism, I am intoxicated, and cannot partake of your oneness. Come, O Lord of my life! Come, my heart’s mainstay! Pervade all my chakras, muladhara, svadhisthana, manipura, anahata, vishuddha and sahasrara and stand there integrating them within me. Let me contemplate you exclusively in the depths of my being and forget myself. O embodiment of oneness! Just once stand there pervading the fourteen lokas – atal, vital, sutal, talatal, mahatal, rasatal, patal and bhu, bhuvaha, swaha, maha, jana, tapa, satya – and reveal to me your integrated personality. Let me see you, the fourteen abodes disappearing and only you remaining in front of me, pervading them all. Well, how can I say this? If the fourteen lokas cease to exist, where am I going to be? Let it go… let this psychic point of egoism dissolve into you.

I have heard the devotees say that it is better to be sweet than to eat sweets. But then does one have a choice? Whoever you make sweet becomes sweet and whoever you cause to be a partaker of sweets; he becomes that verily – everything is a matter of your will.

O Divine Mechanic, I am a lowliest of the low insects. What power can I command, O Lord! I cannot even lift a blade of grass, all the same, like a fool I endlessly keep saying ‘I the doer’, ‘I will do’, isn’t that so daft? This talk about doership reminds me of a tale from the Upanishads.

It appears that in the heavens there was a battle between the gods and the demons of yore, and the demons were overthrown. The gods got victory and patted themselves on their backs and exclaimed, “Oh, we have got victory! Oh, we have got victory! Oh, we have got victory!” The Great Being, God Almighty, thought, “These fellows, these gods, are thinking that they have got victory and all the strength comes from them. Let me teach them a lesson.”

This Great Being appeared as some frightening spectre and sat on the top of a tree, near the abode of the gods. The gods just beheld it. “What is this peculiarly structured spectre?” they wondered.

All the gods went to Indra and said, “Sir, something frightening is sitting on the top of a tree.”

Indra called one of his emissaries, the god Agni, and said, “Go and find out what it is.”

Agni is the god of fire – what power! He can burn the whole earth, everything to ashes. Agni went and looked at this spectre, and it asked, “Who are you?”

“I am Agni, the god of fire.” “Oh, I see. What can you do?”

“I can burn anything to ashes. I can reduce the whole earth to ashes,” replied Agni.

“I see,” said the spectre. It placed a little piece of grass in front of Agni and said, “Burn this.”

It was an insult to Agni. “You are asking me to burn a piece of grass!”

Agni ran with great speed to burn it to ashes, but he could not even move it, let alone burn it. He tried again and again, and he failed in the attempt to burn the blade of grass though he had the strength to burn the whole earth. He could not understand what had happened. He went back and told Indra, “I cannot understand who it is. Send another person.” He did not say he was defeated. He only said, “I do not understand.”

Then Indra sent Vayu, the god of wind.

“Go and find out what is the matter,” Indra told Vayu. Vayu went and the spectre asked, “Who are you?”

“I am the wind god,” Vayu replied. “What can you do?” asked the spectre.

“I can blow away the whole earth,” said Vayu.

“Now, blow away this,” the spectre said, and it put a little blade of grass in front of Vayu.

Vayu was insulted. “You ask me to blow a blade of grass!” And Vayu blew, but nothing happened. The grass would not move. He was also defeated, and returned to Indra.

Vayu told Indra, “I do not understand anything. You can go yourself and find out.”

When Indra went, what he saw was not the spectre, but something else. Uma-Haimavati was visible there. The Devi – Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Uma-Haimavati, the Shakti of the universe, the Power of the cosmos, God’s Energy – was there in the form of a divine enchanting medium and told Indra, “What you saw was the Supreme Creator Himself. You were under the impression – very, very wrong indeed, Indra – that you got victory over the demons, these rakshasas. What strength do you have? You cannot lift even a blade of grass. All the strength came from that Being. He was operating through you, and you felt that you did the work. In order to subdue your ego, the Creator came in this form and taught you a lesson.” Having said this, Uma Haimavati vanished from that place.