The thought-provoking ideas contain the energy needed to push our thinking in a new direction, in a direction leading toward peace for mankind. According the Swami Veda, there are forces beside human ones that are the fountainhead from which all urge to worship proceeds, and which further teach all 'chosen peoples' in all centuries and all nations even the way to worship. It is their presence that is the unifying stream among all our religions. It is because of this common source in the Divine Forces that so many symbols, forms, rituals, and verbal or art forms are shared among religions. It is well known that in pluralistic societies the common people, being exposed to the experience of each other's belief system and practices, often manage to merge them.
People begin sharing experiences and practices out of neighborly courtesy.
This they manage to do without infringing their own basic belief systems. They accommodate the divergent only to the extent that no major infringement of their own faith might occur. The songs sung in rituals may be adapted from one religion to fill a need in another. And often an accommodation is found to insert the traditions and forms of an older religion into the new religion of a conqueror, or of one who evangelizes a local population. An example is the continuity of the Christmas tree tradition in Christianity, even though Odin and Thor have been abandoned and Jesus has replaced them.