Q: Guruji, If we are insignificant, if we are nothing, how does it matter what we do?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: It does matter. When you are insignificant, you also do nothing, and then there is bliss. But the moment you do something, it is going to bring you the result. If you overeat, you may have to call a doctor. You have indigestion, and then you have to see a doctor. If you drive through red light, you will get a ticket. If you say, ‘how does it matter, I am hollow and empty, let me drive through. Red light or green light, doesn’t matter, it is all light anyway. Let me drive through.’ You drive through and no doubt you will get a ticket. And if you do it quite often you will lose your license. So, we must know that we live in two realities. One is the quantum physics, where everything is one. See, the panels are wood, roof is wood, chair is wood, sofa is wood and the floor is wood. But you can’t take the sofa for a door and the door for a sofa. I can’t go and sit on the door. But if you ask a carpenter, he’ll say, ‘it is all wood’. A very common example in India that is given is about gold. A goldsmith doesn’t see if it is a small ring or a big ring or a necklace or a bracelet. For a goldsmith, he puts everything and weighs, ‘oh this is fifty grams of gold’. That is what he thinks. But when you are wearing the gold, you can’t wear your earrings in your hand and your finger ring on your neck. There is a difference. In the same way, there is classical chemistry, the periodic table in which each atom is different, each molecule is different. That is one level. Another level is where it is all just wave function, all atoms; this is quantum physics. So there is quantum physics which is true and then there is the world of differences which is also true. Life is the art to balance both these and move.