A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"""That"You"GOD IN EVERYTHING. 335powerful I am, look at my splendid head, look at mylimbs, how strong and muscular they are ;how swiftlyI ^n and in the meantime he hears therun," barkingof dogs in the distance, and immediately takes to hisheels, and after he has run several miles he comes backpanting. The child says, have just told me howstrong you are, how is it that when the dogs barkedyou ran away ?is it, my son ;when the dogs bark,everythingvanishes." So are we all our lives. We areall thinking highly of poor humanity, but as soon as a dogbarks we are off, and we run like a mad stag. Then whatis the use, if such is the case, of teaching all these things ?There is the greatest use. The use is this, that nothingisto be done in a day.This Self is first to belieard, then to be thought upon,and then meditated upon." Everyone can see the sky,as soon as heeven the very worm crawling upon the earth,looks up, sees the blue sky, but how very far away it is.The mind goes everywhere, but the poor body takes a longtime to crawl on the surface of the earth. So it is withall our ideals. The ideals are far away, and we are here farbelow. At the same time, we know that we must have anideal. We must even have the highest ideal. And weknow that unfortunately in this life the vast majority ofpersons are groping through this dark life of ours withoutany ideal at all. If a man with an ideal makes a thousandmistakes, I am sure, the man without an ideal makes fiftythousand mistakes.Therefore, it is better to have an ideal.And this ideal we must hear as much as we can, hear tillit enters into our hearts, enters into our brains, hear till itenters into our very blood circulation, till the ideals tinglewith every drop of our blood, till it fillsevery pore in ourbody. We must hear it. Out of the fulness of the