The Master ( Sri Swami Sivananda) saw God in women. He saw the Divine Mother Goddess Durga in every female form. On a Vijaya Dashami Day (a day considered auspicious by Hindus) the Master felt an urge to worship the visible manifestations of the Divine Mother. Instantly he sent somebody to the market to fetch fruits and flowers to worship them. And who were going to be worshipped? The girl children aged three to ten (whom he considered as the manifestations of the Divine Mother). They were seated in a row on a mat and the tall, burly Master bent down before each little girl and offered worship with flower. Then he served them with fruits.

He saw God in enemies, in dacoits. On January 8, 1950, a disgruntled (discontented) resident of the Sivananda Ashram, Govindan by name, aimed three blows at the Master’s head with an axe. But in the dim light he missed his mark and hit the door and the wall instead. Only the wooden handle struck on the heavily turbaned head of the Master. The assailant was caught. The police were called in but the Master would not let Govindan be prosecuted or punished. “Do you mean to say,” he argued, “that anything would happen without God’s Will behind it? He prompted Govindan to do what he did. Does not the same omnipresent God indwell all? No, no I will not let the police charge Govindan.” The next morning he gave Govindan books, offered him spiritual instructions and also fruits, clothes and a blanket. He then sent him to his home town Salem.

Exactly ten years later. January 8, 1960. Evening time again. A wounded man, virtually unconscious, was brought on a stretcher to the Ashram hospital accompanied by two policemen. They told how the wounded man had been waylaying persons and robbing them and how he was caught after a chase during which he fell into a deep pit and got injured.

Curiosity-mongers came from every direction to see him. Some took pity on him, some scoffed at him and said that he deserved it.

It was now dark. The Master came out of his kutir (residence). He was told about the injured man. He went near the man’s bedside and stood still for a while. Then he chanted a Mantra (a word or phase repeated during prayer or meditation) for his recovery. He called for a biscuit tin and placed it on a bedside stool. And he instructed the attendants,“God has come in this form. Give him biscuits in the morning with tea or milk.”

The Master saw God in animals, nay, even in inanimate things. He bowed mentally to ants and asses, stones, tree and rivers, the sky, the sun and the moon, chairs and tables, pillars and posts. He talked to them. Once he explained why he spent much time in the toilet every morning. He told one of his intimate disciples, “First I bow to the Ganges through the window, then I salute the Himalayas, the door, the windows, the commode.” He recited hymn after hymn saying that all those hymns he recited while in the toilet.

There was in him, in the early ears, a lingering feeling of caste superiority (stet. the Brahmins were a superior caste). He erased this subtle feeling by prostrating to sweepers and treating them as equals. For years he let himself be served by disciples not belonging to the Brahmin caste. And, consequently, the Master began to see God in people of every caste.