1. Swami Vivekananda, the Prophet of New India, as Romain Rolland hailed him, presents the basic teachings of Vedanta in the following observations that he made in the course of his aforementioned lecture in San Francisco: "Vedanta teaches the God that is in everyone, has become everyone and everything.... The kingdom of heaven went from Vedanta hundreds of years ago. It is concerned only with spirituality.... God is spirit and He should be worshipped in spirit and in truth.... These are what the system has not to give. No book. No man to be singled out from the rest of mankind--- 'You are worms, and we are the Lord God!' ...none of that. If you are the Lord God, I also am the Lord God. So Vedanta knows no sin. There are mistakes but no sin; and in the long run everything is going to be all right.... No God to be afraid of. He is the one being of whom we shall never be afraid, because He is our own Self.... No book, no person, no Personal God. All these must go. Again, the senses must go. We cannot be bound to the senses. At present we are tied down---like persons dying of cold in the glaciers. They feel such a strong desire to sleep, and when their friends try to wake them, warning them of death, they say, 'Let me die, I want to sleep.' We all cling to the little things of the senses, even if we are ruined thereby; we forget there are much greater things.... What does Vedanta teach us? In the first place, it teaches that you need not even go out of yourself to know the truth. All the past and all the future are here in the present.... All is here right now. One moment in infinite time is quite as complete and all-inclusive as every other moment.... Therefore the Vedanta formulates, not a universal brotherhood, but universal oneness. I am the same as any other man, as any other animal--- good, bad, anything. It is one body, one mind, one soul throughout. Spirit never dies. There is no death anywhere, not even for the body. Not even the mind dies. How can even the body die? One leaf may fall--- does the tree die? The universe is my body. See how it continues. All minds are mine. With all feet I walk. Through all mouths I speak. In every body I reside."

2. Ekam sat vipra bahuda vadanti say the Vedas. That is, the One Truth is called by different names by various learned men. So, as we know, some call It Allah, others Bhagwan, yet others God, etc. Hence, the implication is that the wise will never quarrel over these different approaches to the same ultimate Reality. It is, therefore, in a way, the earliest statement of religious pluralism, inculcating tolerance. The selfsame sacred books also induce people to ultimately see and realise the spiritual unity informing the plethora of diversity in the universe, including the diversity of faiths. This, they confess, can only be done on an experiential, not just academic, level, transcending the 'lower' Vedic teachings themselves, namely, those not pertaining to the final indescribable Truth, beyond name and form. Hence, for the realised souls, say these holy books, 'the Vedas become inconsequential---vedoveda bhavati.