God in Everything

[Guest guest]

We have to cover everything with the Lord Himself, not by a false

sort of optimism, not by blinding our eyes to the evil, but by really

seeing God in everything. Thus we have to give up the world, and when

the world is given up, what remains? God. What is meant? You can have

your wife; it does not mean that you are to abandon her, but that you

are to see God in the wife. Give up your children; what does that

mean? To turn them out of doors, as some human brutes do in every

country? Certainly not. That is diabolism; it is not religion. But

see God in your children. So, in everything. In life and in death, in

happiness and in misery, the Lord is equally present. The whole world

is full of the Lord. Open your eyes and see Him. This is what Vedanta

teaches. Give up the world which you have conjectured, because your

conjecture was based upon a very partial experience, upon very poor

reasoning, and upon your own weakness.

 

Give it up; the world we have been thinking of so long, the world to

which we have been clinging so long, is a false world of our own

creation. Give that up; open your eyes and see that as such it never

existed; it was a dream, Maya. What existed was the Lord Himself. It

is He who is in the child, in the wife, and in the husband; it is He

who is in the good and in the bad; He is in the sin and in the

sinner; He is in life and in death.

 

A tremendous assertion indeed! Yet that is the theme which the

Vedanta wants to demonstrate, to teach, and to preach. This is just

the opening theme.

 

Thus we avoid the dangers of life and its evils. Do not desire

anything. What makes us miserable? The cause of all miseries from

which we suffer is desire. You desire something and the desire is not

fulfilled; the result is distress. If there is no desire, there is no

suffering. But here, too, there is the danger of my being

misunderstood. So it is necessary to explain what I mean by giving up

desire and becoming free from all misery. The walls have no desire

and they never suffer. True, but they never evolve. This chair has no

desires, it never suffers; but it is always a chair. There is a glory

in happiness, there is a glory in suffering. If I may dare to say so,

there is a utility in evil too. The great lesson in misery we all

know. There are hundreds of things we have done in our lives which we

wish we had never done, but which, at the same time, have been great

teachers. As for me, I am glad I have done something good and many

things bad; glad I have done something right, and glad I have

committed many errors, because every one of them has been a great

lesson. I, as I am now, am the resultant of all I have done, all I

have thought. Every action and thought have had their effect, and

these effects are the sum total of my progress.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued