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tension and discord. A religious teacher once said in jest, “The world is like a dog’s tail—you straighten it, and it curls back again.” It is necessary, therefore, to re ect more deeply upon this problem of promoting peace with the help of profound spiritual philosophy and enlightened teachings.
According to Yoga (Vedanta) philosophy, the world of time and space is a relative existence. It is not reality in the absolute sense. It is Maya (illusion). Even in the light of scienti c discoveries, the world is shown to be a phenomenon of relativity and appearance. With closer observation, it is clear that every individual sees the world in his own particular way. Though the physical world continues to hold a standard of reality for all human beings, the psychological world continues to differ from one individual to another. Your mental experiences are de ned by your likes and dislikes, your expectations and their ful llment, your relationships and identi cations. Therefore, the world is not the same for everyone. To a thief, the world seems to be lled with thieves; to a person overcome by sorrow, the radiant moon pours down a stream of agony; and for a person of mystic understanding, the world is experienced as a manifestation of the Divine Self, as a surging ocean of joy.
The world that constantly challenges you to struggle is not so much the outer, geographical