God in Everything (Swami Vivekananda)

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Swami Vivekananda

GOD IN EVERYTHING (Delivered in London, 27th October 1896)

We have seen how the greater portion of our life must of necessity be filled

with evils, however we may resist, and that this mass of evil is practically

almost infinite for us. We have been struggling to remedy this since the

beginning of time, yet everything remains very much the same. The more we

discover remedies, the more we find ourselves beset by subtler evils. We have

also seen that all religions propose a God, as the one way of escaping these

difficulties. All religions tell us that if you take the world as it is, as the

most practical people would advise us to do in this age, then nothing would be

left to us but evil. They further assert that there is something beyond this

world. This life in the five senses, life in the material world, is not all; it

is only a small portion, and merely superficial. Behind and beyond is the

Infinite in which there is no more evil. Some people call it God, some Allah,

some Jehovah, Jove, and so on. The Vedantin calls It Brahman.

The first impression we get of the advice given by religions is that we had

better terminate our existence. To the question how to cure the evils of life,

the answer apparently is, to give up life. It reminds one of the old story: A

mosquito settled on the head of a man, and a friend, wishing to kill the

mosquito, gave it such a blow that he killed both man and mosquito. The remedy

of evil seems to suggest a similar course of action. Life is full of ills, the

world is full of evils; that is a fact no one who is old enough to know the

world can deny.

But what is remedy proposed by all the religions? That this world is nothing.

Beyond this world is something which is very real. Here comes the difficulty.

The remedy seems to destroy everything. How can that be a remedy? Is there no

way out then? The Vedanta says that what all the religions advance is perfectly

true, but it should be properly understood. Often it is misunderstood, because

the religions are not very clear in their meaning. What we really want is head

and heart combined. The heart is great indeed; it is through the heart that

come the great inspirations of life. I would a hundred times rather have a

little heart and no brain, than be all brains and no heart. Life is possible,

progress is possible for him who has heart, but he who has no heart and only

brains dies of dryness.

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."

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.

We all understand that desires are wrong, but what is meant by giving up

desires? How could life go on? It would be suicidal advice, killing the desire

and the man too. The solution is this. Not that you should not have property,

not that you should not have things which are necessary and things which are

even luxuries. Have all that you want, and more, only know the truth and

realise it. Wealth does not belong to anybody. Have no idea of proprietorship,

possessorship. You are nobody, nor am I, nor anyone else. All belongs to the

Lord, because the opening verse told us to put the Lord in everything. God is

in the wealth that you enjoy. He is in the desire that rises in your mind. He

is in the things you buy to satisfy your desire; He is in your beautiful

attire, in your beautiful ornaments. This is the line of thought. All will be

metamorphosed as soon as you begin to see things in that light. If you put God

in your every movement, in your conversation, in your form, in everything, the

whole scene changes, and the world, instead of appearing as one of woe and

misery, will become a heaven.

"The kingdom of heaven is within you," says Jesus; so says the Vedanta, and

every great teacher. "He that hath eyes to see, let him see, and he that hath

ears to hear, let him hear." The Vedanta proves that the truth for which we

have been searching all this time is present, and was all the time with us. In

our ignorance, we thought we had lost it, and went about the world crying and

weeping, struggling to find the truth, while all along it was dwelling in our

own hearts. There alone can we find it.

If we understand the giving up of the world in its old, crude sense, then it

would come to this: that we must not work, that we must be idle, sitting like

lumps of earth, neither thinking nor doing anything, but must become fatalists,

driven about by every circumstance, ordered about by the laws of nature,

drifting from place to place. That would be the result. But that is not what is

meant. We must work. Ordinary mankind, driven everywhere by false desire, what

do they know of work? The man propelled by his own feelings and his own senses,

what does he know about work? He works, who is not propelled by his own desires,

by any selfishness whatsoever. He works, who has no ulterior motive in view. He

works, who has nothing to gain from work.

Who enjoys the picture, the seller or the seer? The seller is busy with his

accounts, computing what his gain will be, how much profit he will realise on

the picture. His brain is full of that. He is looking at the hammer, and

watching the bids. He is intent on hearing how fast the bids are rising. That

man is enjoying the picture who has gone there without any intention of buying

or selling. He looks at the picture and enjoys it. So this whole universe is a

picture, and when these desires have vanished, men will enjoy the world, and

then this buying and selling and these foolish ideas of possession will be

ended. The money-lender gone, the buyer gone, the seller gone, this world

remains the picture, a beautiful painting. I never read of any more beautiful

conception of God than the following: "He is the Great Poet, the Ancient Poet;

the whole universe is His poem, coming in verses and rhymes and rhythms,

written in infinite bliss." When we have given up desires, then alone shall we

be able to read and enjoy this universe of God. Then everything will become

deified. Nooks and corners, by-ways and shady places, which we thought dark and

unholy, will be all deified. They will all reveal their true nature, and we

shall smile at ourselves and think that all this weeping and crying has been

but child's play, and we were only standing by, watching.

So do your work, says the Vedanta. It first advises us how to work--by giving up

the apparent, illusive world. What is meant by that? Seeing God everywhere. Thus

do you work. Desire to live a hundred years, have all earthly desires, if you

wish, only deify them, convert them into heaven. Have the desire to live a long

life of helpfulness, of blissfulness and activity on this earth. Thus working,

you will find the way out. There is no other way. If a man plunges headlong

into foolish luxuries of the world without knowing the truth, he has missed his

footing, he cannot reach the goal. And if a man curses the world, goes into a

forest, mortifies his flesh, and kills himself little by little by starvation,

makes his heart a barren waste, kills out all feelings, and becomes harsh,

stern, and dried-up, that man also has missed the way. These are the two

extremes, the two mistakes at either end. Both have lost the way, both have

missed the goal.

So work, says the Vedanta, putting God in everything, and knowing Him to be in

everything. Work incessantly, holding life as something deified, as God

Himself, and knowing that this is all we have to do, this is all we should ask

for. God is in everything, where else shall we go to find Him? He is already in

every work, in every thought, in every feeling. Thus knowing, we must work--this

is the only way, there is no other. Thus the effects of work will not bind us.

We have seen how false desires are the cause of all the misery and evil we

suffer, but when they are thus deified, purified, through God, they bring no

evil, they bring no misery. Those who have not learnt this secret will have to

live in a demoniacal world until they discover it. Many do not know what an

infinite mine of bliss is in them, around them, everywhere; they have not yet

discovered it. What is a demoniacal world? The Vedanta says, ignorance.

We are dying of thirst sitting on the banks of the mightiest river. We are dying

of hunger sitting near heaps of food. Here is the blissful universe, yet we do

not find it. We are in it all the time, and we are always mistaking it.

Religion proposes to find this out for us.

The longing for this blissful universe is in all hearts. It has been the search

of all nations, it is the one goal of religion, and this ideal is expressed in

various languages in different religions. It is only the difference of language

that makes all these apparent divergences. One expresses a thought in one way,

another a little differently, yet perhaps each is meaning exactly what the

other is expressing in a different language.

More questions arise in connection with this. It is very easy to talk. From my

childhood I have heard of seeing God everywhere and in everything, and then I

can really enjoy the world, but as soon as I mix with the world, and get a few

blows from it, the idea vanishes. I am walking in a street thinking that God is

in every man, and a strong man comes along and gives me a push and I fall flat

on the footpath. Then I rise up quickly with a clenched fist, and the blood has

rushed to my head, and the reflection goes. Immediately I have become mad.

Everything is forgotten; instead of encountering God I see the devil. Ever

since we were born we have been told to see God in all. Every religion reaches

that--see God in everything and everywhere. Do you not remember in the New

Testament how Christ says so? We have all been taught that; but it is when we

come to the practical side, that the difficulty begins. You all remember how in

Aesop's Fables a fine stag is looking at his form reflected in a lake and is

saying to his young one, "How powerful I am, look at my splendid head, look at

my limbs, how strong and muscular they are; and how swiftly I can run." In the

meantime he hears the barking of dogs in the distance, and immediately takes to

his heels, and after he has run several miles, he comes back panting. The young

one says, "You just told me how strong you were, how was it that when the dog

barked, you ran away?Yes, my son; but when the dogs bark all my confidence

vanishes." Such is the case with us. We think highly of humanity, we feel

ourselves strong and valiant, we make grand resolves; but when the "dogs" of

trial and temptation bark, we are like the stag in the fable. Then, if such is

the case, what is the use of teaching all these things? There is the greatest

use. The use is this, that perseverance will finally conquer. Nothing can be

done in a day.

"This Self is first to be heard, then to be thought upon, and then meditated

upon." Everyone can see the sky, even the very worm crawling upon the earth

sees the blue sky, but how very far away it is! So it is with our ideal. It is

far away, no doubt, but at the same time, we know that we must have it. We must

even have the highest ideal. Unfortunately in this life, the vast majority of

persons are groping through this dark life without any ideal at all. If a man

with an ideal makes a thousand mistakes, I am sure that the man without an

ideal makes fifty thousand. Therefore, it is better to have an ideal. And this

ideal we must hear about as much as we can, till it enters into our hearts,

into our brains, into our very veins, until it tingles in every drop of our

blood and permeates every pore in our body. We must meditate upon it. "Out of

the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and out of the fullness of the

heart the hand works too.

It is thought which is the propelling force in us. Fill the mind with the

highest thoughts, hear them day after day, think them month after month. Never

mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these

failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it

were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the

struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a

cow--never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold

the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt

once more. The ideal of man is to see God in everything. But if you cannot see

Him in everything, see Him in one thing, in that thing which you like best, and

then see Him in another. So on you can go. There is infinite life before the

soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end.

"He, the One, who vibrates more quickly than mind, who attains to more speed

than mind can ever do, whom even the gods reach not, nor thought grasps, He

moving, everything moves. In Him all exists. He is moving. He is also

immovable. He is near and He is far. He is inside everything. He is outside

everything, interpenetrating everything. Whoever sees in every being that same

Atman, and whoever sees everything in that Atman, he never goes far from that

Atman. When all life and the whole universe are seen in this Atman, then alone

man has attained the secret. There is no more delusion for him. Where is any

more misery for him who sees this Oneness in the universe?"

This is another great theme of the Vedanta, this Oneness of life, this Oneness

of everything. We shall see how it demonstrates that all our misery comes

through ignorance, and this ignorance is the idea of manifoldness, this

separation between man and man, between nation and nation, between earth and

moon, between moon and sun. Out of this idea of separation between atom and

atom comes all misery. But the Vedanta says this separation does not exist, it

is not real. It is merely apparent, on the surface. In the heart of things

there is Unity still. If you go below the surface, you find that Unity between

man and man, between races and races, high and low, rich and poor, gods and

men, and men and animals. If you go deep enough, all will be seen as only

variations of the One, and he who has attained to this conception of Oneness

has no more delusion. What can delude him? He knows the reality of everything,

the secret of everything. Where is there any more misery for him? What does he

desire? He has traced the reality of everything to the Lord, the Centre, the

Unity of everything, and that is Eternal Existence, Eternal Knowledge, Eternal

Bliss. Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow, nor misery, nor discontent is

there. All is Perfect Union and Perfect Bliss. For whom should he mourn then?

In the Reality, there is no death, there is no misery; in the Reality, there is

no one to mourn for, no one to be sorry for. He has penetrated everything, the

Pure One, the Formless, the Bodiless, the Stainless. He is the Knower, He the

Great Poet, the Self-Existent, He who is giving to everyone what he deserves.

They grope in darkness who worship this ignorant world, the world that is

produced out of ignorance, thinking of it as Existence, and those who live

their whole lives in this world, and never find anything better or higher, are

groping in still greater darkness. But he who knows the secret of nature,

seeing That which is beyond nature through the help of nature, he crosses

death, and through the help of That which is beyond nature, he enjoys Eternal

Bliss. "Thou sun, who hast covered the Truth with thy golden disc, do thou

remove the veil, so that I may see the Truth that is within thee. I have known

the Truth that is within thee, I have known what is the real meaning of thy

rays and thy glory and have seen That which shines in thee; the Truth in thee I

see, and That which is within thee is within me, and I am That."

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