Quote from Raja Yoga

Now the question arises, is going back to God the higher state, or not? The philosophers of the Yoga school emphatically answer that it is. They say that man’s present state is a degeneration; there is not one religion on the face of the earth which says man is an improvement. The idea is that his beginning is perfect and pure, then he degenerates until he cannot degenerate further, and finally there must come a time when he shoots upward again to complete the circle; the circle must be described. However low he may go, he must ultimately take the upward curve and go back to the original source, which is God.

Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God. This is the way of putting it in the dualistic form. The monistic form is that man *is* God and becomes God again. If our present state is the higher one, then why is there so much horror and misery, and why is there an end to it? If this is the higher state, why does it end? That which corrupts and degenerates cannot be the highest state. Why should it be so diabolical, so unsatisfying? It is only excusable inasmuch as, through it, we are able to reach a higher stage; we have to pass through it in order to regenerate. Put a seed into the ground and it disintegrates, dissolves, after a time; and out of that dissolution comes a splendid tree. Every soul must disintegrate so that it may become God.

So it follows that the sooner we get out of this state we call manhood, the better for us. Is it by committing suicide that we get out of this state? Not at all. That would be making it worse. Torturing ourselves or condemning the world is not the way to get out. We have to pass through the Slough of Despond (swamp of despair), and the sooner we are through, the better. It must always be remembered that manhood is not the highest state.

Raja-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda