Acharya Prashant: You live for the sake of contentment. You are desperately looking around for contentment. You don't get it here, so you move to the next place. You don't get it there you move to the next place; you move to the next place; you move to the next place and continuous movement has created this infinite universe. You get now why the universe is infinite? Because your thirst is infinite.
Assume the universe were finite, were the universe finite, how would you survive? Let’s say the universe had just space enough to contain only ten objects. We are assuming a finite universe with just enough space to hold ten objects. Ten objects besides you. You go to the first one, what do you get? You get dissatisfaction. You go to the second one, dissatisfaction. And soon you find that you are testing the tenth one and what do you get here as well? Dissatisfaction. What will you do now? How will you live? You require an infinite number of objects just to survive, in a psychic way, in a psychic way so that you can console yourself that there is something else left to be tried. Had the universe not been infinite, how would your hope have survived for so long? For your false hope to survive, you'll have to project an infinitely large and false universe. Do you get this?
That's why the more your inner dissatisfaction grows, the more becomes the importance of diverse objects in your life and vice-versa, mind you. The more the prevalence and production and consumption of objects will grow, the more the dissatisfaction in your life will grow. Now, do you see why neurosis has become so pandemic in the last hundred years? Can you relate it to the exponential rise in man's ability to produce and consume objects? The more is our ability to produce and consume objects, the more terribly dissatisfied we grow within. And hence mental illness.
Remaining what man is if he would someday come to a point of technological attainment where he could colonize and exploit the entire universe that would be his last day? Because that would be the day the falseness of his hope-based existence would be brutally and undeniably be revealed to him. Now everything is available for consumption, no scope left for any future. There is nothing that you can keep suspended for the future. All is immediately available. Pick what you may and horror! you find that even this infinite abundance of choice fails to quench your thirst. You will collapse. Mind you, in a psychic way; in a bodily way, you may still continue to move about as most people do.
Were our bodies to reflect accurately and honestly, the state of our minds none of us would have been able to walk firmly even for a distance of ten meters. Our legs would have shown up as cut, wounded, bruised, fractured; the way exactly the way our mind is. Unfortunately for us, our bodies do not reflect the condition of our mind. The mind is in deep trauma; mind is fractured and lacerated, cut upon cut, and yet the body looks so healthy. The skin is glowing and that keeps us in the illusion that things are almost alright. Are you getting this?
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