“When you have a dream, your mind creates all the people and events in it. They have no reality apart from you, and their creation takes nothing from you and their re-absorption adds nothing to you; you are the same after as before. It is something like that with the manifestation of the universe.
You cannot be outside the Spirit or other than it, because there is no other. If you discover the real self of you behind all thoughts and feelings, it is Spirit, the Self of all; whether you discover it or not, only the Self is.
Why, then, should one trouble to discover It? Because by breaking through illusion of a separate individuality and discovering the One Self, suffering and frustration is avoided and strife replaced by a vibrant Peace, sorrow by a luminous Bliss.
The Oneness of Being is the ultimate truth all religions and all occultism and esoterism, although some may have lost sight of it. It is known in Hinduism as ‘Advaita’, Non-Duality. The three Western religions and some schools of Hinduism have veiled it behind the less direct teachings of a Personal God who creates and rewards and punishes. Their teaching is true but not the ultimate Truth. So long as the ego persists in the illusion of its own reality, the Self is the God who creates it. The Self drawing it back is the Love of God for his creature. The law of karma, that is of cause and effect (‘They shall be paid back to the uttermost farthing’) is the reward and punishment of God. The mind can be in a state of consciousness that is heaven or that is hell according to its past thoughts and deeds. Therefore no exponent of Advaita denies the truth of the religion of a Personal God; only for those who are willing to understand he explains that this is not the ultimate truth.”
— Arthur Osbourne on the Teachings of Ramana Maharshi