The alpha and omega of Vedanta philosophy is to "give up the world", giving up the unreal and taking the real.

Those who are enamoured of the world may ask, "Why should we attempt to get out of it, to go back to the centre?"

"Suppose we have all come from God, but we find that this world is pleasurable and nice, then why should we not rather try to get more and more out of it? Why should we try to get out of it?"

They say, look at the wonderful improvements going on in the world everyday. How much luxury is being manufactured for it. This is very enjoyable. Why should we go away and strive for something which is not this?

The answer is that the world is certain to die, to be broken into pieces and that many times we have had the same enjoyments. All the forms which we are seeing now have been manifested again and again and the world in which we live has been here many times before. You will know that it must be so and the very words that you have been listening to now, you have heard many times before. And many more times it will be tha same.

Souls were never different, the bodies have been constantly dissolving and recurring. Secondly, these things periodically occur. Suppose here are three or four dice and when we throw them, one comes up five, another four, another three and another two. If you keep on throwing, there must come times when those same numbers must come again. It cannot be asserted in how many throws they will come again; this is the law of chance.

So with souls and their associations.

However distant may be the periods, the same combinations and dissolutions will happen again and again. The same birth, eating and drinking and then death come round again and again. Some never find anything higher than the enjoyments of the world, but those who want to soar higherfind that these enjoyments are never final; are only by the way.

Every form, let us say, beginning from the little worm and ending in man, is like one of the cars of the Chicago Ferris Wheel, which is in motion all the time, but the occupants change. A man goes into a car, moves with the wheel and comes out. The wheel goes on and on.

A soul enters one form, resides in it for some time, then leaves it and goes into another and quits that again for a third. Thus, the round goes on till it comes out of the wheel and becomes free.

Astonishing powers of reading the past and the future of a man's life have been known in every country and every age.

The explanation is that so long as the Atman is within the realm of causation, though its inherent freedom is not entirely lost and can assert itself, even to the extent of taking the soul out of the casual chain, as it does in the case of men who become free, its actions are greatly influenced by the causal law and thus make it possible for men, possessed with the insight to trace the sequence of effects, to tell the past and the future.

So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.

God cannot want anything. If He desires, He cannot be God. He will be imperfect. So all the talk about God desiring this and that and becoming angry and pleased by turns is babies' talk, but means nothing. Therefore, it has been taught by all teachers, "Desire nothing, give up all desires and be perfectly satisfied."

A child comes into the world crawling and without teeth and the old man gets out without teeth and crawling. The extremes are alike, but the one has no experience of the life before him, while the other has gone through it all.

When vibrations of ether are low, we do not see light, it is darkness; when very high, the result is also darkness. The extremes generally appear to be the same, though one is as distant from the other as the poles. The wall has no desires, so neither has the perfect man. But the wall is not sentiment enough to desire, while for the perfect man there is nothing to desire.

There are idiots who have no desires in this world, because their brain is imperfect. At the same time, the highest state is when we have no desires, but the two are opposite poles of the same existence. One is near the animal and the other near to God.