Young babies have an innate sense of unity with their suroundings. One crying baby can make other babies in the room cry as each instinctively feels the pain and discomfort of another. This sense of oneness, of shared joy and sorrow, is our natural state. It is only our learnt notions, our innate mental conflicts, the vanity of our self image, the limitations of our understanding, the absurdity of our thinking, physical illusion, mental delusion and intellectual confusion that gives us a sense of a separate existence, removed from the rest of humanity or from cerrtain "others". Yet, once this notion has been accepted, has been learnt and taught, the seeds of fragmentation, of fear, of conflict and hatred, have been planted in the mind.

Once the mind actually believes in separation, then it follows that it can inflict thoughtless acts of violence and untold suffering on what it perceives as the "other". Since there is a fundamental sense of alienation in the mind, there is a spontaneous violence and hatred born of fear. Thus, there is fragmentation, fear and as a reaction, violence and hatred. The suffering to the "other" is seen as an achievement and an act of heroism. Strange are the complexities of the human mind. Stranger are the guises under which cowardice masquerades as courage and weakness as strength. This as much a reflection on our civilisations and societies as a whole as on particular individuals. For, a violent man comes to power only because many people support that violence, that hatred, that conflict not only by their actions but also, primarily, within their own minds.

We are under a spell of separation cast by nature and nurture. This is often extremely difficult to cast off even for the best among us. Bodily, we are separate from birth to death. We perceive our own bodies immediately but perceive others as separate in space and time as we perceive other people and objects through the medium of our senses. This creates a persistent illusion of separation and fragmentation, "I" and "not I". One's own body is seen as "I",all others are seen as "not I". Yet, all human bodies will bite the dust and become fertiliser for plants and maybe food for animals. In death there is no separation, nor in birth. In birth, every human being is born of a mother's womb, experiencing a complete sense of unity with its environment in the womb. Neither in conception nor in death does separation exist.Yet, our individual existence begins with the separation of our body from the mother's and the force of this natural event along with the limitation of our senses, creates the stubborn illusion of a separate existence. In an everyday sense, each person is separate - yet, in a fundamental and final sense, separation is a myth created by the ego. It is ironic how one notion of a primarily separate identity(ego), then selectively identifies itself and divides the world into "we" and "they". In this maze of notions, in these internally generated perceptions of separation and reactions of violence, hatred and conflict, man becomes incredibly cruel to his own fellowman. Extraordinary suffering is inflicted upon millions to uphold mere beliefs, figments of one's imagination. Often, ideals and ideologies become sophisticated forms of escapism.

The only way to heal the conflict in the world, in society, is to heal it in our own minds, to tear the veil of separation, to terminate this mental delusion. Nature, birth, death, common sense, reason, scriptural authority, all point to the oneness of life on earth. Yet, to understand and assimilate these insights calls for love and patience, first and most of all, with and within ourselves. We have to become utterly still and observe the conflicts, the subtle prejudices and hatred, the double standards in our own mind. In this observation, this direct perception of our minds as they are, a complete understanding, our consciousness will be transformed. It is only a fundamental transformation of our own consciousness that can end man's cruelty towards man.