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CHAPTER III.
GOD.
"He who knoweth his own self knoweth God."-Sayings of Mahomed.
"Thou canst not see the seer of seeing, thou canst not hear the hearer of hearing, thou canst not comprehend the comprehender of comprehending, thou canst not know the knower of knowing."Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 3. 4. 2.
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to illustrate the difficulty of God-knowledge by likening God to an infinite mountain of sugar and the sages to ants, who could not be imagined as eating up the whole mountain. "Sukhdeva and other holy sages were at best ants of the largest sort. If we say that they were able to eat up eight or ten particles of the sugar, we have said enough in their favour. It is just as absurd to say that God the absolute has been known and comprehended by anybody, as it is to say that a mountain of sugar has been carried home by some ants to be eaten up."
The Hindus have always maintained that God, being the knower, cannot himself be known, because the knowing subject can never become the object of knowledge. But while it is true that God cannot be subjected to the microscope, the scalpel and other similar instruments of investigation in the phenomenal world, it is not beyond the human understanding to get a * See Max Muller's Philosophy of Vedanta,' pages 61-71.
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