Seeing God in Everything

 

Photo Credit:QuoteFancy | Mechthild of Magdeburg

Seeing God in Everything

Swami Vivekananda gave a lecture series on Jnana Yoga in London in 1896 – in this he speaks about the obvious suffering of mankind and the evils which humans perpetrate to establish their superiority. Even today, 125 years later the world has not progressed much, in fact the suffering and man’s inhumanity to both man and nature has gone up manifold. The impact of both is clearly visible in terms of the degradation in both nature and man’s behaviour.

The only solution to get out of the rut that mankind seems to be falling into is by trying to understand one’s Self and thereby trying to see God in everything and everywhere. For this to happen we need to awaken the humanity within us, we need to rise way above our religion and grasp and live with humanity as our religion. All religious scriptures have one basic lesson ‘love everybody and everything’ – so Love is at the root of humanity, because ‘to love’ is man’s basic nature. “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,” says Swami Vivekananda.

The mind is very powerful – it is the creator of thoughts – it is best if we start listening to the Self, then think about the Self and then meditate upon it. We are fortunate that we have Swamiji to guide us, but think about those billions of people, the vast majority who are groping through this dark life without any ideal, without any goal. Get this ideal of seeing God in everything into our hearts, into our brains, into our veins, until it tingles in every dop of our blood and permeates every pore, atom and sub atom in our body – then we must meditate upon it.

"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, you can go on and on. There is infinite life before the soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end."