A man may see a great deal of difference between grass and a little tree, but if

you mount very high, the grass and the biggest tree will appear much the same. So,
from the standpoint of the highest ideal, the lowest animal and the highest man are
the same. If you believe there is a God, the animals and the highest creatures must
be the same. A God who is partial to his children called men, and cruel to his
children called brute beasts, is worse than a demon. I would rather die a hundred
times than worship such a God. My whole life would be a fight with such a God But
there is no difference, and those who say there is, are irresponsible, heartless
people who do not know. Here is a case of the word practical used in a wrong sense.
I myself may not be a very strict vegetarian, but I understand the ideal. When I
eat meat I know it is wrong. Even if I am bound to eat it under certain
circumstances, I know it is cruel. I must not drag my ideal down to the actual and
apologise for my weak conduct in this way. The ideal is not to eat flesh, not to
injure any being, for all animals are my brothers. If you can think of them as your
brothers, you have made a little headway towards the brotherhood of all souls, not
to speak of the brotherhood of man! That is child's play. You generally find that
this is not very acceptable to many, because it teaches them to give up the actual,
and go higher up to the ideal. But if you bring out a theory which is reconciled
with their present conduct, they regard it as entirely practical. There is this
strongly conservative tendency in human nature: we do not like to move one step
forward. I think of mankind just as I read of persons who become frozen in snow;
all such, they say, want to go to sleep, and if you try to drag them up, they say,
"Let me sleep; it is so beautiful to sleep in the snow", and they die there in that
sleep. So is our nature. That is what we are doing all our life, getting frozen
from the feet upwards, and yet wanting to sleep. Therefore you must struggle
towards the ideal, and if a man comes who wants to bring that ideal down to your
level, and teach a religion that does not carry that highest ideal, do not listen
to him. To me that is an impracticable religion. But if a man teaches a religion
which presents the highest ideal, I am ready for him. Beware when anyone is trying
to apologise for sense vanities and sense weaknesses. If anyone wants to preach
that way to us, poor, sense-bound clods of earth as we have made ourselves by
following that teaching, we shall never progress. I have seen many of these things,
have had some experience of the world, and my country is the land where religious
sects grow like mushrooms. Every year new sects arise. But one thing I have marked,
that it is only those that never want to reconcile the man of flesh with the man of
truth that make progress. Wherever there is this false idea of reconciling fleshly
vanities with the highest ideals, of dragging down God to the level of man, there
comes decay. Man should not be degraded to worldly slavery, but should be raised up
to God. At the same time, there is another side to the question. We must not look
down with contempt on others. All of us are going towards the same goal. The
difference
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Practical Vedanta

between weakness and strength is one of degree; the difference between virtue and
vice is one of degree, the difference between heaven and hell is one of degree, the
difference between life and death is one of degree, all differences in this world
are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything. All is
One, which manifests Itself, either as thought, or life, or soul, or body, and the
difference is only in degree. As such, we have no right to look down with contempt
upon those who are not developed exactly in the same degree as we are. Condemn
none; if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands,
bless your brothers, and let them go their own way. Dragging down and condemning is
not the way to work. Never is work accomplished in that way. We spend our energies
in condemning others. Criticism and condemnation is a vain way of spending our
energies, for in the long run we come to learn that all are seeing the same thing,
are more or less approaching the same ideal, and that most of our differences are
merely differences of expression. Take the idea of sin. I was telling you just now
the Vedantic idea of it, and the