What is the cause? Due to lack of discrimination (aviveka) between what is real and unreal, one has a passion (rāga) for the world, which arouses desires and fears, likes and dislikes, goals and wishes. This leaves traces in the subconscious or the causal body, and will have karmic consequences.

The desire in a human being, but also living beings, to assert oneself in the world, and thus to manifest, must bear fruit according to the law of karma and dharma. And all that because of individual ignorance that it is dependently real, not truly real.

Technically speaking, the cosmos would cease to exist, if all living beings were to realize themselves. Now, as far as micro-life, plants and animals are concerned, it is a foregone conclusion. They have no, barely or insufficiently developed buddhi (intellect). But given the global engine of world events, and the rarity of 'self-actualization', there is no reason to assume that saṃsāra is not infinite on a total scale (samaṣṭi). Only on an individual (vyaṣṭi) scale is saṃsāra finite.

Even if the night of brahman (pralaya, temporary dissolution of the world in itself) were to have come, a new day would still arise. This is the infinite cycle of saṃsāra.

Resolution: viveka (discrimination) and vairāgya (no passion for the world), by means of internalizing this knowledge.

Fortunately, it is all only mithyā (seemingly true). And existence itself, consciousness, truth is not affected one bit by it.