This is the primary value from which all other values follow. Why? Because there is only consciousness. I exist, and I am conscious so I have to be that (tat). So there is nothing but me, the whole. If I hurt someone, I hurt myself.

So for the jñānī (the knower of his svarūpa, his or her true self), nonviolence is a self-evident quality. Why be in conflict with something, when I can also be in peace and quiet. To this jñānī, ahiṃsā is self-evident, because for him or her there is no other, and the self does not cause itself suffering.

For an ordinary mortal, ahiṃsā is difficult, because survival feels like a struggle, and appropriating things that belong to someone else is part of it (mā gṛdhaḥ kasya sviddhanam, īśopaniṣad 1, do not appropriate anything that belongs to someone else; esoteric message: Everything belongs to īśvara).

Ahiṃsā is a value from the thirteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gītā, and is also called the value of values, because the saying goes: do not do to others what you do not want to be done to you.

The logic behind this is the non-dual truth, that if someone hurts someone else, he hurts himself too. A person feels this unconsciously, or at least is confronted with the karmic consequences. In general, this is a gnawing feeling of guilt, which we are used to denying.