We are constantly shown things that are disturbing to our psyche. It used to be that our world was our village, and our villages were pretty small. And to travel from one village to another was a major event.
I remember, when I was growing up, and I grew up on a farm, that to go to the big city was the same as me going to Europe now. It was a major event. But now our world has expanded. Everybody has a box in their house that shows them pictures of the whole world, and we have news stations that are on for twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week. But not just one news station, many news stations. And their whole business is to produce ratings which means to give you things that make you interested, and to keep you glued because what they’re saying is so important that you have to be aware of it, cognizant of it, and spend your time glued to this box that makes pictures.
There are sects in America of orthodox religious people who don’t have televisions, who don’t go to the movies, and who are intent on living simple lives outside of the influence of the mass culture, or the world culture. This is all in an attempt to be less influenced by the world and the chaos of the world.
Of course, no matter how small your society, even if it’s only two people, there’s the opportunity for chaos. How many marriages with only two people are chaotic, where the parties within the marriage can’t get along yet there are only two people involved?
So the question is not so much how many people, the question is more what is your state, and how can you in your state stay in a quiet, stable position within the context of the chaotic illusion that surrounds you. And this is the dilemma that everyone faces, and everyone has different reactions to it. Depending on the amount of expectation that you have from the illusory world, it sets forth your inner temperament and your inner condition.
So if you need things, but really need them in the world, and they don’t seem to be coming to you, they produce anxiety, they produce fear, they produce a state that loses its equilibrium because it can’t have what it wants. And not only does it want it, or you want it, the belief system says you have to have it, and if you don’t have it, you are somehow less than those who do have it.
So we are constantly bombarded with a system that tells us we need things, we have to have things, and if we don’t have these things we are less. So the things that we have to have are almost all material, they’re elemental, they’re made out of the elements in the world, and we believe that in order to be successful we need to have them.
The most severe, or one of the severe, diseases that’s noticeable is hoarding; people collect things, and they believe that within those things they have created a life for themselves and they have created importance…
