Perpetual Improvement

One feature of the material body I’m becoming more and more aware of is the Total Entropy feature.

Total Entropy insures that whatever you do, however much you improve yourself in body and mind during the course of your life, it will all deteriorate to the point that all hardware and software will become totally unusable. Then you die.

When you’re still in a youngster’s body, Total Entropy seems like something that happens to other people only, as if people in older bodies were an entirely different species, one that you’re lucky to not belong to.

Computers also have a Total Entropy feature. You don’t think about it much when you first buy your computer, because it’s new. It works great. It’s fast, it’s powerful, there’s so much you can do with it.

Time goes on and your software requires updates. But you also get other software to help you get more varieties of stuff done. You download it all, install it, and learn it. You feel wise and powerful.

More time passes. Your computer doesn’t work as fast as it used to. You begin to notice other people buying new computers, while you’re still busy trying to optimize your old one. People begin to look at your computer as if it was a joke, and you were a different species.

Finally things get to the point when it seems everyone has a new computer except you, when trying to do anything on your computer is about as fast and fun as trying to melt a frozen pizza by breathing on it.

Computers are one thing. Bodies are another.

When something happens to a computer, it’s easier to think, “Oh, that stinks, but I can walk away from my computer and go do something else entirely.” With bodies, you’re stuck inside. If your memory fails, you’re stuck. If your hardware breaks, you’re stuck. Upgrades become prohibitively expensive.

Sooner than anyone thinks, all the skills we worked so hard to learn, all the ways we tried to improve ourselves during our life, all evaporate. Our lungs stop working. We can’t digest things like we used to. We can’t recall facts as quickly. Software and hardware become too old to even support any new updates.

The good news is that there’s a way around Total Entropy. Total Entropy only happens if you’re in a material body. There’s no need for it in spiritual reality. The real self is permanent, so whatever improvements one makes are also permanent. We can go on getting better and better, forever.

Hare Krishna.