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The imaginary fear of death || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Acharya Prashant
4.1K views
6 years ago
Death
Fear
Brain
Insecurity
Time and Space
Annihilation
Memory
Physical Being
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that the human brain is inherently insecure because it possesses nothing of its own; everything it contains is acquired from external sources through time and space. Since the brain's identities and sense of self are derived from the outside, it lives in constant apprehension that these elements can be taken away. Fear is fundamentally the anxiety that something will be lost, and the greatest fear is the annihilation of the self. Because the brain identifies solely as a physical being that came into existence through a random event rather than free will, it lives in a perpetual state of fear regarding its own extinction. Furthermore, Acharya Prashant highlights the irrationality of the fear of death, noting that while everyone is afraid of it, no one has actually experienced or known it. The brain is terrified of death precisely because it is new and unknown, and the brain is naturally resistant to anything that does not originate from its past memories or patterns. It prefers the continuity of the past and fears the new because it lacks understanding of it. He questions the intelligence of being afraid of something one has no personal contact with or understanding of, concluding that the brain's fear is a reaction to the absolute novelty that death represents.