Someone said to a Brahmin, "0 Brahmin, how absurd it is for you to worship a God made of stone, an idol! The true God is the formless one, the one above all things of the world." The Brahmin replied, "Do you know the phenomenon of faith? If you have faith in the God of rock, you will get your answer, but if you have no faith in your formless God even He will not communicate with you."

Life seen from this point of view tells us that there is no place, no object which is not sacred, that even in a rock one sees the source and goal of all things in that particular form.

Many who are experienced in plant life know how responsive plants are to the sympathy of a man who loves nature and looks after them.

I was much interested in meeting a scientist in California [Luther Burbank] who devoted his life to research into plant life. How true it is that through whatever channel one pursues truth one arrives at an experience which shows truth. I was especially interested when he said, "I regard plants as really living beings. I work with them always feeling that they are living creatures, that they have their own trend of mind. They show obstinacy, they feel your sympathy, and if you learn to understand them you can manage to derive a great deal of benefit from them. All through my life I have talked to plants as I would talk to men."

Here again is the blood of the universe in circulation, in a higher grade than in the rock.

Another scientist, Professor Chandra Bose of Bengal, has devoted much time and thought to prove that plants breathe. If breath is to be found in plant life, certainly there is intelligence too.

I once happened to see a stone whose owner called it a magic stone. In reality it was quite ordinary, but it often changed its color; especially when in the hand of a particular person it showed a different color and shade. So a stone can respond to a person's mind, and this teaches that there is a great deal to explore in the mineral kingdom. This is not a discovery of today; it was known to the people of ancient times. We read in the Persian poems of Jelal-ud-Din Rumi that God slept in the mineral, dreamed in the vegetable, became conscious in the animal, and realized Himself in the human being.