A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

352 BHAKTI OR DEVOTION.quake their lives out. Cast off all fear these horribleideas of God as a punisher or rewarder, though they mayhave their use in savage minds. Some men, even the iRostintellectual, are spiritual savages, and these ideas may helpthem. But to men who are spiritual, men who are approaching religion, in whom spiritual insight is awakened, suchideas are simply childish, simply foolish. Such men rejectall ideas of fear.The third is still a higher test. Love isalways thehighest ideal. "When one has passed through the first twostageswhen he has thrown off all shopkeeping, and castoff all fear he then begins to realize that love was alwaysthe highest ideal. How many times in this world we seethat the most beautiful woman loves the ugliest man. Howmany times we see one of the handsomest of men love a veryugly woman. Where is the attraction to them ? Those thatare standing aside see the ugly man, or the ugly woman, butnot the lover, to the lover they are the most beautiful beingsthat ever existed. How is it ? The woman who was lovingthe ugly man loved, as it were, the ideal of beauty which wasin her own brain, and projected it over this ugly man, andwhat she worshipped and loved was, not the ugly man buther own ideal. That man was, as it were, only the suggestion, and upon that suggestion she threw her own ideal,and covered it,and it became her object of worship. Now,this applies in every case where we love. Think how manyof us have very common looking brothers or sisters ; yetthe very idea of brother makes them to us the handsomestof men, and the very idea of sister makes them the handsomest of women.The philosophy in the backgroundis that each oneprojects his ideal and worships that. This external worldis only the world of suggestion. All that we see, we