There is a still higher stage of our development, and that is the attitude of going forth and sympathizing with all we meet. This comes by understanding; the more understanding we have of human nature the more sympathetic we become. Even for those who do not deserve it we should have sympathy. In this way sympathy, which is symbolically like water, spreads in time; it will expand like the water of the ocean. It becomes an everlasting spring that rises and falls.

In order to teach this the wise of India turned the river Ganges and the river Yamuna into places of pilgrimage and called them sacred. These rivers rise in the same place on the top of the Himalayas, and from there they divide and descend, becoming larger streams; and the place where they join, near Allahabad, is a place of pilgrimage. Those who go there are purified from all sin.

Its symbology is this, that the water which rises from the top of the Himalayas is like a spring of love coming from the heart. That which rises from the heart is the first place of pilgrimage. Then it goes on like the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuna, and the place where these rivers meet is called Sangam, which means 'sympathy'; and where the river reaches the sea it is called the 'Unity with God'. It is a beautiful picture of life which one can observe in that symbolic form.

If interpreted rightly we could have the sacred pilgrimage to the Ganges here and everywhere; the sacred river is the sympathy coming out of our own heart, and the reaching towards God is the perfection, the spiritual attainment.