SPIRITUAL UNITY — Man's Greatest Need

SPIRITUAL UNITY M AN’S greatest need today is to be shown the path of spiritual unity. There is no other way to eliminate the disharmony existing in present-day society which has resulted in so many intractable problems. It is generally said that in present times, the world has assumed the form of a global village. But this is only half the truth. Modern technology and communications have, of course, greatly reduced distances across the world. But the closeness thus produced is of a purely physical nature. Modern technology may have bridged certain gaps, bringing the external world closer together, but the task of bringing unity into the internal world of humanity has yet to be accomplished. What is spiritual unity? Let us take a very simple example. When you live in a crowded settlement, the walls all around give you a sense of limitation. You experience the friction of living in close contact with others and you suffer from mental tension. Later, when you emerge from that dense human settlement into open, natural surroundings you immediately feel that your tension has evaporated and you have once again become serene. You feel that you have joined a limitless universality. The feeling of separateness is replaced by an all-pervasive feeling of unity. You immediately become part of a world where there are no boundaries. A sense of universality prevails. Without spiritual unity, there is little hope of creating peace and harmony throughout the world. We have all had this experience at one time or another. It shows us what spiritual unity is. It is, in fact, the raising of one’s existence to a higher plane. The moment you achieve this, you feel you are emerging from a limited world to become a citizen of an unlimited world. Disunity now disappears, giving way to unity all around. Although physically, all human beings appear to be different, spiritually they are one. It is as if spiritual unity between human beings already exists, and that it does not have to be externally imposed. We have only to make people aware of its existence. Once the outer, artificial veils are removed, what remains will be pure spirituality.