GOD IS NOWHERE.
There were some devout elderly ladies coming to him for treatment who were horrified by his philosophy. They would say, “How can you say there is no God?”
He would answer, “I am telling you the truth. If you feel that there is a God, then you can go to another dentist instead of bothering me!”
What could the poor elderly ladies do? They were suffering from tooth pain and needed treatment. Inwardly they were furious with him, but outwardly they needed his help.
One day a woman brought her little daughter to this dentist. This little girl was suffering from a very bad toothache. The woman had been telling her daughter that God is everywhere and that He is all Kindness, all Compassion and all Forgiveness. So she was afraid that when her daughter read the sign saying that God is nowhere, her daughter would be so upset that she would leave the dental clinic and not allow the dentist to treat her.
Mother and daughter arrived at the clinic and sat down in the waiting room. The little girl stared at the dentist’s famous sign. Then she very loudly read out:
GOD IS NOW HERE.
The mother was overwhelmed with joy that the child had misread the sign. Even the other patients in the waiting room were happy and amused. Nobody corrected the girl or told her that she was stupid. They did not want to destroy her happiness.
Then the little girl said, “Mother, you told me that God is everywhere, but you never told me where God actually is. The sign says that God is now here. That means that the dentist is God. Since God is here, please take me to a flower shop so that I can get flowers for God. You told me that if I see God, immediately I should give Him flowers. So you have to take me to a flower shop!”
The mother took her daughter to a nearby flower shop, and the daughter got beautiful flowers for the dentist.
When the girl gave the dentist the flowers, he said to himself, “I do not believe in God, but this little girl has made me into God Himself. For once in my life I have made someone truly happy. If I can make this little girl so happy, then I must try to make other God-believers happy also. I do not have to become another God, but at least I can become a God-believer!”
So the dentist separated the letters on the word ‘nowhere’ so that the sign really did say:
GOD IS NOW HERE.
Then something entered into his mind and he was afraid and embarrassed that his patients would think that he was claiming to be God. “They will say that I am going from one extreme to the other and laugh at me.”
Finally he decided, “It is better for people to laugh at me than to be angry with me. Let them laugh at me to their heart’s content because I am claiming to be God.”
Then he took a picture of the little girl and put it alongside his own picture. Underneath he wrote: “This little girl says I am God.”
People were very amused by the little girl’s realisation. But, as a matter of fact, nobody thought ill of the dentist or inwardly mocked him. They felt that it is better to take yourself as God than not to believe in God at all. People who were very spiritual even felt, “If the dentist wants to say that God is now here, we will not mind. God is in everyone.”
In this way, everybody was happy. And who made them happy? The little girl and her discovery!From:Sri Chinmoy,Amusement I enjoy, enlightenment I study, part 8, Agni Press, 1999
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/aie_8