Once
upon a time, there was an ashram in the Himalayas where a great sage and his
disciples lived. They all respected their Guru not only for his knowledge, but
also for his love and kindness towards all.
Because of his kind nature he often
accepted disciples who were spiritually immature. This
resulted in silly misunderstandings and quarrels among some of his disciples
breaking the peace and tranquility of the hermitage.
One day the Guru was very disturbed to see their immature
behavior even after his repeated advice. It saddened his good heart to see
his disciples turning into slaves of jealousy and anger. His compassion did not
let him throw anyone out of his hermitage. Instead, he sincerely prayed to God
to give him a solution. He fasted for many days, and spent the days
by himself in meditation and prayer.
After some days of fasting and intense prayers, he had a vision of the Lord. In
the vision, God asked him why he was sad. He explained everything and requested
Him to come to the ashram and free their minds of jealousy,
anger, and desire for power. To his surprise, the Lord immediately agreed and
told him that He would come to the ashram on one condition: He would
come in disguise as one of the disciples, and nobody would know who was God in
disguise. The Guru announced to his disciples about his vision and
Bhagavan's kind decision to come as one of his disciples.
The disciples were very happy when they heard about
Bhagavan's plan to come and live with them in disguise. But they did not know
who was Bhagavan and everybody was very gentle and considerate to each other
thinking that the other disciple might be Bhagavan Himself in
disguise. When they lived like that for a few months, peace and
tranquility filled their hearts as well as the hermitage.
In their pure minds, they felt the Lord's blissful presence and they started
treating each other, and thinking of each other, as none other than Bhagavan
Himself in disguise! The whole ashram was reverberating with blissful positive
vibrations emanating from everyone! This great sage and his disciples told
their experience to others and inspired them also to respect each other
and to pranam to the divinity in every one.
Since then, everybody started greeting each other saying
"namaste" with folded hands : namah + te, meaning
"I bow to That (Divinity) inherent in you."
May the Lord help us also to see His divinity in
everybody! Namaste!
