We've consumed till it seems highly unlikely more consumption will fill the various holes in our lives. It's the century of the Holocaust, of widespread environmental degradation and mass extinctions, world wars, and nuclear weapons. It's the century of exploding economic and population growth and the rise of consumer culture. Between unprecedented technological, social, and environmental changes, it's no wonder that humans are deeply troubled. The constant pressure of bodily requirements, the agitation of an ever more hurried life, the noise and excitement of amusements of all kinds serve to dull the soul's aspirations, but they do not eliminate them.
Nothing can take their place.
And often there remains only an obscure feeling of pain, an almost unconscious sense of lack, of want and deficiency. Sometimes this bursts out with immense force as a great longing or inner need, even if there is no clear knowledge of what it is that is missing. The Thirteen Petalled Rose Our pain and suffering as a species can in part be linked to lingering scientific concepts now largely discarded by the scientific community in favor of systems thinking. Our grasping after an inner ground is the essence of ego-self and is the cause of continuous frustration . . . . This grasping after an inner ground is itself a moment in a larger pattern of grasping that includes our clinging to an outer ground in the form of the idea of a pregiven and independent world.