Shutting yourself in a room and offering incense and flowers to a picture or image of God, and singing or reciting His glory are very poor substitutes for the discipline that will liberate you from ignorance. All beings are images of God; all men are His pictures; then, why shut yourselves in? All creation is marching on a pilgrimage to Him; why then behave as if you are trekking it alone? You believe that the time spent in church or temple or the domestic shrine in adoration and in ritual worship is devoted to God and the rest is spent for other purposes. But you cannot demarcate and delimit the realms of God and man like that. God is ever with you everywhere. Vasudheva sarvamidham - All this is God. Society is the school where this lesson is taught to those who earnestly seek.

- Divine Discourse, Apr 1973.