A commensurate, inclusive vision is required. With the vision of Oneness alone, diversity can be accepted and one can live peacefully with the 'other' as the 'other' is not the 'other' but an extension of one's own self. Efforts to convert others to one's own way also cease. Thus all can live peacefully with one another as the expression of One. Swami Vivekananda said,
This idea of Oneness is the great lesson India has to give, and mark you, when this is understood; it changes the whole aspect of things, because you look at the world through other eyes than you have been doing before. And this world is no more a battlefield where each soul is born to struggle with every other soul and the strongest gets the victory and the weakest goes to death. It becomes a playground where the Lord is playing like a child, and we are His playmates, His fellow - workers. This is only a play, however terrible, hideous, and dangerous it may appear. (CWSV, vol. III, p. 160)
Thus there is a great opening for the Vedanta to do beneficent work both here and elsewhere. This wonderful idea of the sameness and omnipresence of the Supreme Soul has to be preached for the amelioration and elevation of the human race here as elsewhere. Wherever there is evil and wherever there is ignorance and want of knowledge, I have found out by experience that all evil comes, as our scriptures say, relying upon differences, and that all good comes from faith in equality, in the underlying Sameness and Oneness of things. This is the great Vedantic ideal. (CWSV, vol. III, p. 194)
This idea of Oneness is the great lesson India has to give, and mark you, when this is understood; it changes the whole aspect of things, because you look at the world through other eyes than you have been doing before. And this world is no more a battlefield where each soul is born to struggle with every other soul and the strongest gets the victory and the weakest goes to death. It becomes a playground where the Lord is playing like a child, and we are His playmates, His fellow - workers. This is only a play, however terrible, hideous, and dangerous it may appear. (CWSV, vol. III, p. 160)
Thus there is a great opening for the Vedanta to do beneficent work both here and elsewhere. This wonderful idea of the sameness and omnipresence of the Supreme Soul has to be preached for the amelioration and elevation of the human race here as elsewhere. Wherever there is evil and wherever there is ignorance and want of knowledge, I have found out by experience that all evil comes, as our scriptures say, relying upon differences, and that all good comes from faith in equality, in the underlying Sameness and Oneness of things. This is the great Vedantic ideal. (CWSV, vol. III, p. 194)
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