Jivas are imprisoned

Bhavanath: "M. says: "As long as I have not seen the elephant, how can I know whether it can pass through the eye of a needle? I do not know God; how can I understand through reason whether or not He can incarnate Himself as a man?"”

Master: "Everything is possible for God. It is He, who casts the spell. The magician swallows the knife and takes it out again; he swallows stones and bricks.

Everyone is under the spell of this world-bewitching Maya. When God assumes a human body, He too comes under the spell. Rama wandered about, weeping for Sita. "Brahman weeps, entangled in the snare of the five elements". But you must remember this: God, by His mere will, can liberate Himself from this snare”.

Bhavanath: "The guard of the railway train shuts himself of his own will in a carriage; but he can get out whenever he wants to”.

Master: “The Ishvarakotis - the Divine Incarnations, for instance - can liberate themselves whenever they want to; but the jivakotis cannot. Jivas are imprisoned by "lust and gold". When the doors and windows of a room are fastened with screws, how can a man get out?”

Bhavanath (smiling): "Ordinary men are like the third-class passengers on a railway train. When the doors of their compartments are locked, they have no way to get out”.

Girish: "If a man is so strongly tied hand and foot, then what is his way?”

Master: "He has nothing to fear, if God Himself, as the Guru, cuts the chain of Maya".

(Swami Chetanananda "They Lived With God", pp. 422-3)