IIT-Delhi: Confusion arises from choice; choices from ignorance

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): Why is there confusion in the mind?

Acharya Prashant (AP): 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 the 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. The 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 battleground 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.

Do 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, one of them even succeeds in taking…