In plain words
takes place in every country. One person turns his face east to pray; another turns west; but the substance of the prayer is one and the same — this is firmly established in Bharat. Whatever doctrines each person's own religious scriptures teach, they hold to them. At a time like this, one may well reflect on just how great the distinctiveness is in what Bharatiyas say, as against what people of other faiths say. In Bharat people address God informally, in the singular — 'Won't you come, won't you save me, why won't you hear my cry?' — the way one speaks to someone close. People of other religions do not address God this way. But whoever conceives of God in whatever manner, they themselves come to be shaped by that very conception. If a man says, 'I am God,' God regards him as God indeed; but if he says, 'I am the king,' the king of that country regards him as a madman — or has him beheaded. God does not act this way. This, indeed, is the final doctrine of Bharatiya wisdom.
Doctrines reached by an inquiry into some matter conducted with the intellect alone can never be complete truths. Every object has six facets, and an unrefined intellect can see only one side of it. But an intellect that has been well refined through the performance of Vedic-enjoined rites learns to see both sides. An unrefined intellect's vision stays bound within material limits; the doctrines such an intellect arrives at and states must therefore remain only partial truths. A refined intellect's vision attains completeness, and to such a vision the essence of any object stands undivided. The doctrines of other religions are confined within the limits of the intellect alone, so each calls only its own doctrine the truth. It is the Bharatiya doctrines that point to the limit the human intellect can reach on its own, and reveal, as scripture, the divine lamps that mark that limit.
The world is the brahmāṇḍa, and within it the jīva is a piṇḍa. The one root-truth underlying both of these is one and the same. If one is able to see this root-truth as a truth unconnected with anything else at all, that truth is what is called Brahman. In the context of the world,