Acharya Prashant (AP): The Ego wants to hedge its bets. Because it is born in insecurity and gains its sustenance from insecurity, therefore insecurity is its very life-stuff. Now look what happens, if insecurity is the life-stuff of the Ego then what kind of security will it seek? It becomes necessary for the Ego to seek false security. True security would be life-threatening to the Ego.
So, we find two processes always and concurrently at work in the domain of the Ego. One, the Ego says, "It feels insecure", so it is constantly seeking vistas of security, that's the first thing. And secondly, all the securities that the Ego arranges for itself are necessarily false; not by chance but by design, such is the nature of the Ego. On the one hand, it says, "I want security", on the other hand, it deliberately arranges only false security for itself.
Why false security? Because true security would be the end of the Ego. It tells itself, “Oh, I do not like the situation I am in, unsafe, insecure, I don’t like it. I want to be carefree, I want to be fearless.” On the other hand, it will purposefully avoid doing that which will give it true fearlessness. The position of the Ego is unenviable.
With insecurity, it is uncomfortable. Without insecurity, it is dead. That's what you get as the Ego, either discomfort or death. Choose! So obviously, you choose discomfort over death, right? What does that mean? That you consciously - to the extent the word consciously can be applied to the Ego - that you consciously arrange false comfort for yourself. You dare not tell yourself that you are arranging discomfort for yourself, that would make you appear a lunatic in your own eyes. So, what do you do? You convince yourself that you are arranging comfort and security and safety for yourself and you go out and fetch false versions of each of these, or false substitutes of each of these.
