Why is the world in such conflict?
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There is nothing that one group, one community or one person experiences that the other has never experienced or is not experiencing even to the slightest degree. Fundamentally we are all one.
As human beings, we all perceive the world through our senses, we all operate through language, we all think and our basic tendencies are all the same.
The same urge to have security, the same urge to find love, the same repulsion from the feeling of termination, of disappearance, the same attachments and the same kinds of identifications. We’re all very much one and the oneness becomes more and more apparent as we go deeper into our psyche — the mind. As we go deeper into the mind, the similarities become very apparent.
You see you take one mother here in Netherlands and you take another mother somewhere in Africa, if you just superficially look at them, you will only see differences. You will see differences in name, you will see differences in physique, you will see differences in diet; you will see a lot of differences. Then you look at their relationship with their kids, here again superficially you will only see differences. The rituals will be different; the way they bring up their kids might appear initially different but the deeper you probe into the relationship you will find that more and more similarities are emerging.
If it’s the mother and the kid, then the mother wishes the kid well. The mother has a certain attachment for the kid. The mother also feels insecure about the kid. The more you keep the names and the forms behind you will come to feel as if these two mothers are just the same. The same for the kids as well, ditto.
So when we say, ‘Why is the world harsh or violent or why is the world in conflict’, we’re essentially talking of ourselves because the world means an aggregation of people and their relationships, a totality of people and the way people relate to each other.
If we can understand why one man or one woman is in conflict, we will be able to understand why the entire world is in conflict.
Do we understand this?
One person is a microcosm. One person is a miniature representation of the entire world. Are we getting this? In different ways, obviously! I do not…