Like you, I want certainty. Like you, I want to be sure. Like you, I want to understand how the world works.
Why? Because we are coming from a personal world view that Life is dangerous. Or something to that effect.
Osho has a theory that when you are born and have to suddenly and without preparation leave the safety and luxury of the womb, your first emotional response is fear. Especially if you are born in a delivery room with glaring lights, lots of noise, and someone holding you upside down and slapping your bottom to make you breathe.
L. Ron Hubbard (of Dianetics fame) adds that people talk in the delivery room, and you absorb all of it as if it were the truth about you. One of my students had a hard time getting through the birth canal, and was stuck for a while. “She is stuck…” the doctor said, and she’s been stuck ever since.
Another student of mine (probably) heard in the delivery room “I can’t feel anything” and lo and behold, he can’t feel anything. Hunger, anger, love… none of it.
Now, whether that is the reason, or it is cultural, it is immaterial. You live in a world where the mood is: The world is dangerous, mistakes are bad, you need to know, and therefore you are incessantly looking for a safer way to live.
In that environment, you “buy” anything that sounds like an explanation to all the strange things you hear or feel. You follow anyone “who has the answer.” You follow religions, gurus, teachers, you become vegetarian, fruitarian, anything to avoid the uncertainty of life, i.e. life itself.
You are like the ostrich that hides his head in the sand to avoid confronting life.