The Three Root Desires : 8.

You require certain things from the world outside in order to compensate for the finitude that you feel in your own self. You feel small before the big world and, in a sense, you are little—one individual. The physical body requires its own security and sustenance. It cannot itself manufacture all the things that it requires. There are a hundred things that it needs every day. You know very well that these needs are available only in the world outside; they cannot come out from the body. The food that you eat, the water that you drink and the many other needs of the body do not crop up from the body itself. They come from a secondary source, which is the world outside.

So for physical sustenance and security—to see that the body continues to exist safely—you have to see that certain appurtenances from outside are associated with it continuously, and those associations should be made one's own. They should not be precarious. "Tomorrow I may get; tomorrow I may not get." The body does not want this kind of thing. It should be permanently assured that it will get what it wants. For that, there is a struggle; day in and day out you struggle to see that these associations are maintained. Otherwise, if it is only a promise of a possibility and may not actually materialise after some time, anxiety crops up: For how long will I get it? So you make investments, and so on, for the future.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...