The knower of God sees sameness everywhere. The only problem is that all these also appear to have names and forms; they appear to be different. Swami Vivekananda says, ‘His eyes, his hands, his face, worship the living God.’ Behind it is always Being-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute – the same Reality, like the gold which is molded into different ornaments – rings, bracelets, necklaces – all different names and forms of the same substance.
Swami Vivekananda tells us to ‘Open your eyes and see Him.’ That is the Truth. We do not have to go somewhere else or do something else. It is present now, here before us. Once Swami Vivekananda was talking to a group of monastics and he said: ‘And where will you go to seek Brahman? He is immanent in all beings. Here, here is the visible Brahman! Shame on those who, disregarding the visible Brahman, set their minds on other things! Here is the Brahman before you as tangible as a fruit in your hand! Can’t you see! Here – here – here is the Brahman!’ He spoke these words in such a way that everyone there suddenly went into a meditative state. They stood still and quiet. Swami Premananda was on his way to the temple for worship after his bath in the Ganges. When he heard these words of Swami Vivekananda he fell into an ecstatic state and became motionless. After a quarter of an hour the swami said to him, ‘Now go for worship.’ I wish we had someone here now with Swami Vivekananda’s power, to tell us to see God in this way. That would finish everything off. There would be no need to talk about it!
Swami Ashokananda writes:
Yes, everything is God and not less than God, anywhere. Everything is Brahman, everything is Spirit. You can reach a state in which you look at things with these very eyes but you see something different from what you ordinarily see. The sense forms stand aside and the true Reality – the spiritual Reality which everything is - becomes at once self-evident, directly perceived. You will say, ‘You mean to say that if I change my ideas about a person, then instead of seeing that person I shall begin to see God?’ That is exactly what I mean. It can be done, it has to be done. Beyond this body and beyond this mind there is an unlimited consciousness. If I cannot give any limit to this consciousness, then it becomes the infinite conscious Being. Form is made up of body and mind. But beyond this form is the real Being, and that real Being is the Divine Being.