“Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Bhagavad Gita
“Unity in variety is the plan of nature…The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized or thought of or stated through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols, so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for every one, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong…As the divine Lord Krishna has said, “I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there.” Vivekananda
“…It is not that certain peoples such as the old Japanese believed that individual ‘spirits’ or ‘souls’ inhabited stones and trees, but that the One and Only Being, manifesting both simultaneously and successively through an indefinite multiplicity of states, spiritual, psychic, and physical, aroused their awe and received their reverence in and through one of these manifold forms which Being apparently assumes. This does not involve pantheism, which falsely assumes a substantial identity between Creator and creatures, but an essential and non-dual identity between Being and beings. It could more justly have been described as ‘panentheistic,’ implying that while God is not in the world, the world is in God. In practice…it is one of henotheism, in which the particular form, mythological or material, to which (one) directs his veneration and awe, becomes the symbol of the Formless, the channel through which he communes with the Supreme Being. Like Hinduism and other Traditions of great antiquity, Shinto may wear the many-coloured robes of polytheism, but its undergarments are pure white: its eight million gods being but personifications of the Divine Names, the qualities and attributes of the One Reality.” Harold Stewart, from A Chime of Windbells, A Year of Japanese Haiku in English Verse.
“Jesus’ mother and brothers now arrived and, standing outside, sent in a message asking for him. A crowd was sitting round him at the time the message was passed to him. ‘Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for you.’ He replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking round at those sitting in a circle about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother.'” Gospel of Mark
“God with form is my Mother, the Formless is my Father. Which shall I blame? Which shall I praise? The two sides of the scale are equal.” Kabir
“We are all calling on the same God. Jealousy and malice need not be. Some say that God is formless, and some that God has form. I say, let one man meditate on God with form if he believes in form, and let another meditate on the formless Deity if he does not believe in form. What I mean is that dogmatism is not good. It is not good to feel that my religion alone is true and other religions are false…All doctrines are only so many paths, but a path is by no means God himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion. Suppose there are errors in the religion that one has accepted; if one is sincere and earnest, then God will correct those errors.” Ramakrishna
“Whenever we judge another, we hurt God…My religion is simply to love you.” Kabir Helminski
“All the world is the Veda, all creations the Koran. Why read paper scriptures, O Rajjab? Gather ever fresh wisdom from the Universe. The eternal wisdom shines within the concourse of the millions of Humanity.” Rajjab
“In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go Others will punctually come for ever and ever.” Walt Whitman
“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.” Marc Chagall
“Behold, Lucius, moved by your prayer I come to you–I, the natural mother of all life, the mistress of the elements, the first child of time, the supreme divinity, the queen of those in the underworld, the first of those in heaven, the uniform manifestation of all gods and goddesses–I who govern by my nod the crests of light in the sky, the purifying wafts of the ocean, and the lamentable silences of the underworld–I whose single godhead is venerated all over the earth under manifold forms, varying rites and changing names. Thus, the Phrygians that are the oldest human stock call me Pessinuntia, Mother of the Gods. The aboriginal races of Attica call me Cecropian Minerva. The Cyprians in their island-home call me Paphian Venus. The archer Cretans call me Diana Dictynna. The three-tongued Sicilians call me Stygian Proserpine. The Eleusinians call me the ancient goddess Ceres. Some call me Juno. Some call me Bellona. Some call me Hecate. Some call me Rhamnusia. But those who are enlightened by the earliest rays of that divinity the sun, the Ethiopians, the Arii, and the Egyptians who excel in antique lore, all worship me with their ancestral ceremonies and call me Queen Isis.” Apuleius of Madauros
“Many men wish to reject the word God as a legitimate usage, because it is so misused. It is indeed the most heavily laden of all words used by men. For that very reason it is the most imperishable and most indispensable. What does all mistaken talk about God’s being and works…matter in comparison with the one truth that all men who have addressed God had God himself in mind? For he who speaks the word God and really has “Thou” in mind (whatever the illusion by which he is held), addressed the true “Thou” of his life, which cannot be limited by another “Thou,” and to which he stands in a relation that gathers up and includes all others. But when he, too, who abhors the name, and believes himself to be godless, gives his whole being to addressing the “Thou” that cannot be limited by another, he addresses God.”…to eliminate or leave behind nothing at all, to include the whole world in the “Thou,” to give the world its due and its truth, to include nothing beside God but everything in him–this is full and complete revelation. Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find Him if they leave the world. He who goes out with his whole being to meet his “Thou” and carries to it all being that is in the world, finds Him who cannot be sought. Of course God is the “wholly Other” but He is also the wholly Same, the wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overthrows, but He is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my “I”. If you explore the life of things and of conditioned beings you come to the unfathomable, if you deny the life of things and of conditioned being you stand before nothingness, if you hallow this life you meet the living God.” Martin Buber
“The great Tao flows everywhere, to the left and to the right. All things depend upon it to exist, and it does not abandon them. To its accomplishments it lays no claim. It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them.” Lao-Tse
“Recently a Native American friend said, ‘We are all carriers of water now. Carriers in the desert. We cannot drop even a drop. We must share what we have with everyone. This is the challenge beyond measure.’ In reaching out through the universality of myth, we should hope to turn hate into love. It is time to stop separating and begin incorporating. Myths and legends, like mountains and rivers, are not things that ought ever to be bought and sold. Nor can they be owned. For as an eighteenth-century elder once said, ‘The blanket is for all to sit upon.’ And as another elder said, ‘If the Great Spirit is always listening, so, my brothers, might we.’ …As carriers of water in the desert, we have a great and immeasurable task ahead of us. Let us, each and all, do the carrying well, and not argue about whose hands are on the water jar.” Gerald Hausman
“Our union with a Being whose activity is world-wide and who dwells in the heart of humanity cannot be a passive one. In order to be united with Him we have to divest our work of selfishness and become “the world-worker;” we must work for all. When I use the words “for all,” I do not mean for a countless number of individuals. All work that is good, however small in extent, is universal in character…In order to be one with the “Great Soul,” one must cultivate the greatness of soul which identifies itself with the soul of all peoples and not merely with that of one’s own.” Rabindranath Tagore
“Do not deceive each other, do not despise anybody anywhere, never in anger wish anyone to suffer through your body, words or thoughts. Like a mother maintaining her only son with her own life, keep thy immeasurable loving thought for all creatures. Above thee, below thee, on all sides of thee, keep on all the world thy sympathy and immeasurable loving thought which is without obstruction, without any wish to injure, without enmity. To be dwelling in such contemplation while standing, walking, sitting or lying down, until sleep overcomes thee, is called living in Brahma.” Buddha
“Just how far can we implement this planetal awareness? We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The inter-relatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather–for I believe the heart is infinite–modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry…My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds. I cannot marry all of them, or bear them all as children, or care for them all as I would my parents in illness or old age. Our grandmothers, and even–with some scrambling–our mothers, lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds. We were brought up in a tradition that has now become impossible, for we have extended our circle throughout space and time. Faced with this dilemma what can we do?…The here, the now, and the individual have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet, and–from time immemorial–the woman. In the small circle of the home she has never quite forgotten the particular uniqueness of each member of the family, the spontaneity of now, the vividness of here. This is the basic substance of life. These are the individual elements that form the bigger entities like mass, future, world…They are the drops that make up the stream…When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“Beloved ones of God, you may belong to any race, cast, creed, or nation, still you are all impartially beloved by God. You may be a believer or an unbeliever in the supreme Being, but He cares not. His mercy and grace flow through all His powers, without distinction of friend or foe. …Though the form and teachings of the several religions appear so unlike, their source is one and the same. But from the very beginning the differences have created prejudice, envy, and antagonism between men…As water in a fountain flows in one stream but falls in many drops, divided by time and space, so are the revelations of the one stream of truth.” Hazrat Inayat Khan
“A great poet does not express his or her self, he expresses all of our selves. And to express all of our selves you have to go beyond your own self. Like Dogen, the Zen master, said, “We study the self to forget the self. And when you forget the self, you become one with all things.” Gary Snyder
“…we are all one, indivisible. Nothing that any of us does but affects us all.” Frank Waters
“In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened, through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment–the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth–until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.” Dag Hammarskjold
“See the Essence behind the essence, and you will become free of fear and evil. Then you will be at peace with yourself.” Taoism: The Tao Te Ching
“All beings long to return to the source of their origin, where perfect unity abides.” Buddhism. The Surangama Sutra
“When you unify both halves of yourself, you will become as you were originally created. Then if you say to the mountain, ‘move,’ it will move.” Christianity. The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas
“The Self, which is God, dwells in every being, but only those with wisdom and perception—having the ability to hold the mind steady—will recognize this. When the senses obey the mind, God will be revealed.” Hinduism. The Katha Upanishad
