Vivekananda Mailing List-9/26/03

[Guest guest]

By our present constitution we are limited and bound to see God as man.

If, for instance the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in

keeping with their own nature, see Him as a huge buffalo; if a fish

wants to worship God, it will have to form an Idea of Him as a big

fish, and man has to think of Him as man. And these various conceptions

are not due to morbidly active imagination. Man, the buffalo, and the

fish all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels, so to

say. All these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water,

each according to its own shape and capacity; in the man the water

takes the shape of man, in the buffalo, the shape of a buffalo and in

the fish, the shape of a fish. In each of these vessels there is the

same water of the sea of God. When men see Him, they see Him as man,

and the animals, if they have any conception of God at all, must see

Him as animal each according to its own ideal. So we cannot help seeing

God as man, and, therefore, we are bound to worship Him as man. There

is no other way.