The truth of Vedanta being the fruits of discovery in the laboratories of our Soul, Vedanta urges keeping the mind open to accept the revelation of truth from other lands---the genuine expressions of man's highest spiritual experience.

Vedanta claims to be as much a revelation as the other religions of the world. It goes even a step further, and contends that it is a continuous revelation. According to Vedanta, that truth has not been revealed once and for all. Vedanta encourages freedom of thought. Infinite Truth has to express itself in infinite ways and in infinite time. It cannot be a sealed book. This catholic outlook and scientific temper, coupled with a sincere passion for various facets of the truth, have kept Vedanta a living philosophy. Vedanta accepts diversity and therefore does not become oppressive and monotonous, static and insipid, and does not seek to pigeonhole all into a single creed. It recommends different helpful disciplines for growth in different persons. Hence, wide latitude is granted for people to have their personal religion. That is why, within Hinduism, we find a bewildering variety of religious expression in sects and rituals, in beliefs and in forms of worship. This attitude toward the spiritual struggle to experience truth rather than adopt religion externally, has saved Hinduism from the vice of éitism. 'The emphasis on the goal of spiritual life bound together worshippers of many different types and saved the Hindus from spiritual snobbery.' (S. Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religion and Western Thought [London: Allen and Unwini], p. 322.)

Among Hindus, tolerance is a policy; it is an article of faith. Harmony and positive fellowship based on understanding, sympathy and reverence for the views of others prevail. Vedanta is accommodative. It respects all faiths, all scriptures and all prophets. The Hindu truly believes that there is a single eternal path and that path is reflected in all religions. Hinduism does not proclaim that the acceptance of one faith is indispensable for salvation, nor that the rejection thereof is an unpardonable sin. It teaches not only tolerance; it teaches universal acceptance. Swami Vivekananda says:

Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, 'Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the star; the lightning cannot express Him. nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine.' But he does not abuse anyone's idol or call its worship sin. He recognizes in it a necessary stage of life. 'The child is father of the man.' Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?
If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error? To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him, all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun. (Complete Works, I, p. 15.)

Thus, rational in its outlook, accommodative in spirit, scientific in temperament, putting emphasis on intuitive experience, practising peaceful coexistence down through the ages, Vedanta has attracted the loving attention of the thinking mind of the world. It does not expect people to submit themselves to the authority of anybody---prophet, or teacher, or book.

Vedanta gives a spiritual interpretation of nature, as opposed to the mechanistic and materialistic one. Nature is not a self-evolving, self-preserving and self-destroying entity. God is the invisible support and essence of all that exists and therefore God is involved in the whole process. Spiritually sensitive persons of the Vedic Age deified the beneficial and bounteous earth. To them Mother Nature was a living presence revealing the majesty of God. We read in the Upanisads: 'From Him come all the oceans and the mountains; from Him flow rivers in every kind; from Him have come as well, all plants and all flavours' God is likened in Vedanta to a spider that spins its web from its own silk, moves upon it, and finally withdraws it to itself. Created objects have also been compared to the sparks of blazing fire, or the waves of the ocean-all of the same nature and stuff as their origin. He pervades nature as fragrance pervades the flowers, or the lustre a gem, or wetness water.

One Supreme Reality is the sole support and substance of the manifold. This Reality is called Brahman, out of which the world has originated. The universe is sustained by Brahman and is ultimately dissolved in Brahman; the objective universe cannot have emerged from dull insentient matter, nor can life and consciousness have originated out of matter devoid of consciousness. Brahman is the very essence of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. It is by the light of Brahman's consciousness that we become aware of everything. This is deification of the world: The whole world is full of the Lord, or, nature is the revelation of God. If we think in either of these ways, we can make spiritual progress.

Brahman is All-pervading and nothing can exist independent of It. While Brahman is immanent, It is also transcendent at the same time. When seen through time, space and causality, Brahman is immanent. Brahman is one undivided whole. Brahman is not confined to this universe, but is above and beyond it. It transcends the entire range of cause and effect. This is transcendental Brahman and can be experienced only in deep samadhi.

Non-dual Brahman cannot function as a world-cause. The totality of God's power is called maya. The term mays is applicable to God's creation as well as to His creative powers. Brahman is the material as well as the efficient cause of the universe. He is not only the Creator but also the created. In the Vedantic view, there cannot be creation out of nothing, for existence cannot come out of non-existence. There cannot be anything outside of God. According to Vedanta, the conception of an extra-cosmic God is native. Brahman associated with mays is the origin, support, and goal of the universe. This is Saguna Brahman or Brahman with attributes, who is immanent in the universe as the Supreme Self and acts as God the Almighty Lord of the universe. He controls the universe from within. God is the Absolute in the world context. He is the logical highest. Brahman is the intuitive highest.

Brahman is the philosophical ideal, God is the religious goal.