Man is not complete; he is yet to be. In what he _is_ he is small, and if we could conceive him stopping there for eternity we should have an idea of the most awful hell that man can imagine. In his _to be_ he is infinite, there is his heaven, his deliverance. His _is_ is occupied every moment with what it can get and have done with; his _to be_ is hungering for something which is more than can be got, which he never can lose because he never has possessed. The finite pole of our existence has its place in the world of necessity. There man goes about searching for food to live, clothing to get warmth. In this region--the region of nature--it is his function to get things. The natural man is occupied with enlarging his possessions. But this act of getting is partial. It is limited to man's necessities. We can have a thing only to the extent of our requirements, just as a vessel can contain water only to the extent of its emptiness. Our relation to food is only in feeding, our relation to a house is only in habitation. We call it a benefit when a thing is fitted only to some particular want of ours. Thus to get is always to get partially, and it never can be otherwise. So this craving for acquisition belongs to our finite self. But that side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy. There the reign of necessity ceases, and there our function is not to get but to be. To be what? To be one with Brahma. For the region of the infinite is the region of unity. Therefore the Upanishads say: _If man apprehends God he becomes true._ Here it is becoming, it is not having more. Words do no gather bulk when you know their meaning; they become true by being one with the idea. Though the West has accepted as its teacher him who boldly proclaimed his oneness with his Father, and who exhorted his followers to be perfect as God, it has never been reconciled to this idea of our unity with the infinite being. It condemns, as a piece of blasphemy, any implication of man's becoming God. This is certainly not the idea that Christ preached, nor perhaps the idea of the Christian mystics, but this seems to be the idea that has become popular in the Christian west. But the highest wisdom in the East holds that it is not the function of our soul to _gain_ God, to utilise him for any special material purpose. All that we can ever aspire to is to become more and more one with God. In the region of nature, which is the region of diversity, we grow by acquisition; in the spiritual world, which is the region of unity, we grow by losing ourselves, by uniting. Gaining a thing, as we have said, is by its nature partial, it is limited only to a particular want; but _being_ is complete, it belongs to our wholeness, it springs not from any necessity but from our affinity with the infinite, which is the principle of perfection that we have in our soul.