Swami Dayananda Saraswati presents the relationship between the individual and the divine through the classical vision of Advaita Vedānta, in which the apparent duality between the individual self (ātman or jīva) and the ultimate reality (Brahman or Īśvara) is finally resolved in identity. The individual is, in essence, not a fragment or product of the divine, but none other than that very limitless reality appearing as a particular person. What creates the sense of distance is ignorance (avidyā), supported by māyā, which makes the self seem confined to body, mind, and circumstances. From this standpoint, the individual feels small, vulnerable, and separate, and naturally relates to the divine as to an all-knowing, all-powerful Lord. Yet this dualistic experience is regarded as provisional, a necessary starting point rather than the final truth.

Within this vision, devotion and worship have an important but preparatory role. As long as the individual takes themselves to be a limited seeker, a personal relationship with Īśvara—as creator, sustainer, and moral order—helps to refine and purify the mind. Prayer, surrender, and reverence orient the person to something larger than their own ego, making the mind more subtle and receptive. When such a mind is exposed to the systematic teaching of the Upaniṣads, it becomes capable of assimilating the central recognition: the worshipper and the worshipped are, in reality, non-different. The wave–ocean image captures this insight well: the wave seems distinct, yet at no point is it anything other than ocean-water.

For Swami Dayananda Saraswati, liberation does not consist in becoming divine or attaining some new status, but in clear self-knowledge (ātma-jñāna) that removes ignorance about what has always been the case. The individual does not move toward Brahman or merge into Brahman; rather, through proper inquiry and teaching, it is understood that there was never a real separation to begin with. From this standpoint, even the language of “relationship” ultimately breaks down, because relationship presupposes two entities. What remains is the recognition that the conscious being taken to be a finite individual is already one with the whole, and that the apparent gap between human and divine was only a product of misunderstanding.