He is the fire and the sun, and the moon
And the stars. He is the air and the sea,
And the creator Prajapati.

He is this boy, he is that girl; he is
This man, he is that woman, and he is
This old man, too, tottering on his staff.
His face is seen everywhere.

He is the blue bird; he is the green bird
With red eyes; he is the thundercloud, and
He is the seasons and the seas; he has
No beginning, he has no end. He is
The source from whom all the worlds evolve.

From his divine power of maya comes
Forth this magical show of name and form,
Of you and me, which casts the spell of pain
And pleasure. When we piece through the magic,
We see the One who appears as many.

The Shvetashvatara Upanishad is dedicated to Shiva who represents God as the bestower of immortality.

This except from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad extolls the omnipresence of God. As the source of all, God is within everyone and everything – from the stars to the green bird with red eyes to you and I.

It is ironic, then, that we should so often feel a profound sense of isolation, out of touch with life and with who we are. We are not seeing rightly. If we could but see the face of God beneath the masks (maya) he wears in his divine game of hide and seek, we would never be lonely or afraid.

I am reminded of the passage in the Bible in which Christ says, “Having eyes, see you not? and having ears, hear you not? neither do you remember” (Mark 8:18), and “For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in…” (Matthew 23:35).

Modern science is peeling back layer after layer of materiality, deconstructing the atom, the particle, the quark, to discover what it is that lies within. What is the source of life? What came before the Big Bang? In their search to understand the material, they may discover the divine.

The face of God shines within all. It is for us to raise the shutters from the windows of our eyes. When we learn to see ourselves in everyone and everything our time of isolation will be over.