On a quiet hillside, a sage sat with a young student who had asked a very big question: "Teacher, where is God? I look and look, but I cannot see him anywhere."

The sage said nothing for a while. He simply pointed up at the sky.

It was a fine day, full of great white clouds drifting slowly by — some tall as mountains, some thin as feathers, some grey at the edges with coming rain.

"Tell me," said the sage. "What do you see up there?"

"Clouds," said the boy. "Lots of clouds."

"And where are the clouds?"

The boy thought. "In the sky."

"Yes," said the sage. "Every cloud floats in the sky. The sky holds them all — the big ones, the small ones, the dark ones, the bright ones. Not one of them could float without the open space of the sky to hold it. They rest in the sky completely."

The boy nodded.

"Now," said the sage, leaning closer, "answer me this. Is the sky stuck inside the clouds?"

The boy laughed. "No! The clouds come and go. They form and they disappear. But the sky stays. The sky is much bigger than any cloud. The sky isn't trapped in them — they're held in it."

"Exactly so," said the sage softly. "That is the great secret Krishna tells Arjuna. He is like the open sky. Everything that lives — every person, every bird, every tree, every star — floats and rests inside him, the way clouds rest in the sky. Nothing exists without him to hold it. And yet he is never stuck inside any of it. The clouds do not contain the sky. Beings do not contain God. He is far vaster than all of them, holding everything, held by nothing."

The boy looked up at the drifting clouds for a long, long time.

"So God is the unseen part," he said slowly. "Like the space I never notice because I'm only looking at the clouds."

"Now," said the sage, smiling, "you are beginning to see what cannot be seen."