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. . . . 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 sentient 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.
—Swami Vivekananda
