Today morning, on July 6, as I was leaving Delhi to catch a flight to Mumbai, I was in the car talking on the phone with a devotee who was helping me with my new book. He was rapidly listing one point after another without giving me enough time to address them. So I finally said, “Slow down, slow down.”

To my surprise, the devotee driving the car started slowing down and then pulled over to the side of the road.

We were already only just likely to reach the airport on time.

Concerned, I asked, “Why are you stopping?”

He replied, “You told me to slow down.”

I smiled, shook my head, and explained that I had been speaking to the devotee on the phone.

It struck me that in Indian English, “slow down” is used primarily for physical movement—for reducing the speed of a vehicle or of a person. In American and British English, however, it is often used for the pace of a conversation—not just the speed of speech, but also the rate at which ideas are presented.

That usage came naturally to me because, for more than a decade, I have spent over half of every year traveling in the West and trying to share Krishna’s wisdom there. But what seemed perfectly natural to me was not at all the natural meaning for the Indians around me.

We were using the same words, but understanding them from different worlds.

During the flight, as I reflected on this incident, it struck me that something similar happened in the Bhagavad Gita. Toward the end of the second chapter, Krishna repeatedly speaks of shanti—the inner peace that arises from spiritual wisdom and detachment (2.70–71). But Arjuna is still thinking primarily about the external war before him. From his perspective, peace means the absence of fighting. Naturally, he becomes confused (3.1–2) and asks, in effect, “If peace is the goal, why do you want me to fight this terrible war?” Krishna has taken the conversation to the philosophical and spiritual level, whereas Arjuna is still hearing it from the physical world of the battlefield.

Sometimes, when we can’t understand why others can’t understand us even though our words seem perfectly clear to us, the reason may simply be that they are hearing those words from a different mental world.

Misunderstandings are resolved not merely by explaining our words, but by understanding the worlds that those words need to cross.

***

02.70 A person who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of desires – that enter like rivers into the ocean, which is ever being filled but is always still – can alone achieve peace, and not the man who strives to satisfy such desires.