The mind suffers because of the choices that it makes, thinking of one object as superior than the other object. “All is one” is not an objective statement. “All is one” refers, not to the objects, but to the subject and the relationship that the subject strikes with the various objects. As long as one thing appears more desirable than the other things, how can “All is one” be true to you? Have you, in your inner journey, come to a point where you do not see anything as excessively desirable and anything as too repugnant?
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Acharya Prashant: You look at the world, you look at two or twenty things, and then you discriminate between them. You pick one of them, thinking that this one element, object, or option is better than the rest. That's how the mind operates. The mind looks at diversity. It keeps looking at diversity, and diversity is what bewitches it. Here is one thing, and there is another thing. I like this, I dislike that. I have to go after that thing but I have dropped that. This thing is higher than that. Hence, I need to go for the next attainment. That's how the mind operates and that's what makes the mind suffer—the choices that it makes, thinking of one object as superior than the other object.
At this point, we have to remind ourselves that freedom from suffering is the objective of the Upanishads. The rishi is speaking not just to becalm the mind, but to bring the mind to a point of wisdom where it can, for itself, see its follies. It looks at its processes and realizes how it is misled or flawed. So, one suffers when one sees distinctiveness or variety. One feels incomplete because there is something more to be had. One feels insecure because there is the threat of the attained objects being lost, and all of that is because the world that we perceive through our senses is perceived as a world of diversity. The world is nothing but the diversity that you see.
