Confusion arises from choice; choices from ignorance || Acharya Prashant at IIT-Delhi (2013)

Listener : Why is there confusion in the mind?

Speaker : What is confusion? Confusion is conflict. Confusion is the presence of many options and your inability to know. Confused, there are so many things and they are tangled together, they are fused together. That’s what confusion is.

We said that brain is nothing but external influences and remember that it is not only one external influence that enslaves the brain. The brain is a slave to a thousand masters. Brain is a highly fragmented entity and each fragment is ruled by a different influence. So there is one part of your brain which is ruled by family, papa and mummy, one by friends, one by media, one by teachers, one by religion, one by ideologies, one by corporations and so on and so forth. So your brain is a battle ground where all these influences are fighting with each other. It’s like a man who has been pulled in hundred different directions by hundred different influences. You see what confusion is? Where to go, which way to go? The tragedy is whichever way you go will not be your own way. There are ten people pulling me in ten different directions, even one of them succeeds in taking me in one direction, still it is not my direction, it is an external direction. In confusion you have ten choices in your mind, that’s what happens. The funny part is not even a single one of those choices is really your choice.

Listener : Then, what is our choice?

Speaker : You have to find that out. Your choice can be presently only described in the negativa which is, that your choice is that choice which is not anybody’s else’s choice. So, first find out how much of my life is dominated by others, that is the first step. You cannot start directly by asking what is my choice because you are already full of choices, others’ choices.