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What is the common ground of all religions?

Bhagavan: That one point where all religions meet is the realisation, in no mystical sense, but in the most worldly and everyday sense -- and the more worldly and everyday and practical the better -- the fact is that 'God is everything and everything is God'.

From this point the work of the practice of this mental comprehension begins, and all it amounts to is the breaking of a habit. One has to cease calling things 'things' and to call them God; and instead of thinking them to be things, to know them to be God; instead of imagining 'existence' to be the only thing possible, to realise that existence is only the creation of the mind (for if there were not existence the mind could not see anything) and that non-existence is a necessity if you are going to postulate existence. The knowledge of things only shows the existence of an organ to cognize. There are no sounds to the deaf, nothing to see for the blind, and the mind is merely an organ of conception or of appreciation of certain sides of God.

God is infinite, and therefore existence and non-existence are merely component parts. Not that I wish to say God is made up of definite component parts. It is hard to be comprehensible when talking of God ... True knowledge comes from within and not from without. And true knowledge is not "knowing" but seeing.

D: How can one worship God best?

B: How can you best worship God? Why, by not trying to worship him, by giving up your whole self to him, and showing that every thought, every action, is only a working of that One Life (God).

~ from A Practical Guide to Know Yourself, Conversations with Sri Ramana Maharshi, compiled and edited by Sri A. R. Natarajan

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