Doctrine of Oneness

The spiritual thoughts have their practical effects, too, on the world and mankind. Spiritual thoughts teach the doctrine of sameness in all things, and in all beings, because the same God is in all. 'Since seeing the Lord equally existent everywhere, he injures not Self by self, and so goes to the highest goal.'

If large numbers of persons realize this ideal, all conflicts in the world will die of themselves and there will be peace on earth. The world develops a sense of inequality in human minds, but real religion teaches equality of all. As a man of God represents the highest ideal of equality in his life, he becomes a power of good to mankind. Hence the utility of true religion.

True religion is universal. It cannot be denominational. True religion is seeing the Divinity in all. God is one. As such the God of the Hindus is the God of the Christians, and the God of the Christians cannot be different from the God of the Mohammedans. The Light is one, though the lamps are many. The differences are man-made artificialities and illogical. Once Swami Vivekananda wrote in great anguish,

'My Master used to say that these names . .. Hindu, Christian, etc., stand as great bars to all brotherly feelings between man and man. We must try to break them down first. They have lost all their good powers and now only stand as baneful influences under whose black magic even the best of us behave like demons.'