Is there a difference between God and a Saint?
Narad ji, a descension of God, is the supreme master of devotion. He says that there is no difference between God and a Saint. Both are one and the same. Krishn has said in the Bhagwatam, “You should not think of a Spiritual Master only as a Saint. You should think of him as Me. I have come to you in the form of your Spiritual Master.” There is no difference. Meaning, all the scriptures consider God and Saints to be equal. However, there is one difference.
According to Kripaluji Maharaj, God has eight main Divine qualities. God gives these eight Divine qualities to a Saint after God realization. God has these eight qualities and the God realized Saint also has them. They both are equal now. “Then what is the difference between these two?” There is one difference. A Saint does not create the world. God does not give power of creation to a Saint. A Saint does not maintain and eventually cause the world to enter into dissolution. He does not keep an account of every thought from every moment of uncountable lifetimes for uncountable souls who live in every village of every county of every country of every planetary system of this universe.
God does not give this task to a Saint. The Brahm Sutra says that God give His Bliss, Divine knowledge, and His eight Divine qualities to a Saint, but not the power to create. That is why there is a difference. We do not have any concern with this difference. So God does not give the task of creation and recording of all the actions of the souls to a Saint. These powers are useless for a Saint.
Souls do not perform good actions or have good thoughts. We always think about bad things. God has to note all these thoughts. How dirty is this work? The Saints say to God, “Dear Lord, you have Graced us by not giving us this power. It would have given us lots of tension. How could we have done devotion and serviceto You?” This is the only difference. So it is said that with respect to your spiritual upliftment, a Spiritual Master is greater than God.
Ved Vyas ji says that among all kinds of devotion, rajas(selfish) is better than tamas(impure). And sattvic(devotion to celestial gods) is better than rajas. Devotion to brahm (impersonal God) is better than to the celestial gods. Better than that is to parmatma, and the best is devotion to Bhagwan(personal form of God). to Radha-Krishn is the highest among all the personal forms of God. Doing to a Saint is even higher than doing to Radha-Krishn. God gets satisfied quickly when one does a Saint as compared to when one does devotion directly to God.
Ved Vyas has declared this at hundreds of places in the scriptures and Krishn says, “I am immediately pleased when a soul does the devotion of My true Devotee Saints.” One may do the devotionof Krishn and the Guru together. One can receive the same results by doing of only the Guru. However, one cannot receive anything by doing direct to God. One cannot do direct to God anyway. When one can’t even intellectually understand the definition of , how then one do ?