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Excerpts from talks By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

- Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

You may ask, “There is only one God, so how can there be so many Gods and Goddesses?” Yes, there is. Suppose you say rice. Rice means only one rice, but in rice there are so many varieties of rice. Recently, we had our agriculture seminar in India. A farmer who was sowing the seeds of various regions of India said he had collected 174 types of rice. They are all different. Basmati rice is different from the long dark brown rice; then there is black rice, and then there is the sticky rice of Japan, which is so different. The rice in Japan and Thailand is different from the rice from Indonesia and different from the rice in India. So, there are different varieties of rice. This universe is one of multiplicity and variety. Somewhere, people fail to understand this. If you say ‘wheat’, there is not just one type of wheat. If you say ‘banana’, there is not just one type of banana.

When the creator has created such diverse fauna and flora, would He like to express Himself in a single form? The spirit which loves diversity expresses itself in diverse forms. These diverse forms of that one spirit are the devas. Another example is that of white light. When this white light breaks up through a prism, seven major colours emit, then so many shades and mixtures of these seven colours bring out a multitude of colours. In the same way, one step higher than the yakshas are the devas and devatās, or devis. There are so many different types of devis, devatās. You can call them angels, all only benevolent.