God in Everything

[Guest guest]

At the same time we know that he who is carried along by his heart

alone has to undergo many ills, for now and then he is liable to

tumble into pitfalls. The combination of heart and head is what we

want. I do not mean that a man should compromise his heart for his

brain or vice versa, but let everyone have an infinite amount of

heart and feeling, and at the same time an infinite amount of reason.

Is there any limit to what we want in this world? Is not the world

infinite? There is room for an infinite amount of feeling, and so

also for an infinite amount of culture and reason. Let them come

together without limit, let them be running together, as it were, in

parallel lines each with the other.

 

Most of the religions understand the fact, but the error into which

they all seem to fall is the same; they are carried away by the

heart, the feelings. There is evil in the world, give up the world;

that is the great teaching, and the only teaching, no doubt. Give up

the world. There cannot be two opinions that to understand the truth

everyone of us has to give up error. There cannot be two opinions

that everyone of us in order to have good must give up evil; there

cannot be two opinions that everyone of us to have life must give up

what is death.

 

And yet, what remains to us, if this theory involves giving up the

life of the senses, the life as we know it? And what else do we mean

by life? If we give this up, what remains?

 

We shall understand this better, when, later on, we come to the more

philosophical portions of the Vedanta. But for the present I beg to

state that in Vedanta alone we find a rational solution of the

problem. Here I can only lay before you what the Vedanta seeks to

teach, and that is the deification of the world. The Vedanta does not

in reality denounce the world. The ideal of renunciation nowhere

attains such a height as in the teachings of the Vedanta. But, at the

same time, dry suicidal advice is not intended; it really means

deification of the world--giving up the world as we think of it, as

we know it, as it appears to us--and to know what it really is. Deify

it; it is God alone. We read at the commencement of one of the oldest

of the Upanishads, " Whatever exists in this universe is to be covered

with the Lord. "

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued