It is said you are what your desires are. No matter how evolved you think you are, your desires will reveal exactly what you are. The change of desires from the physical to the subtle, and from the self to entire creation is a sign of personal evolution. Reading scriptures or lecturing on them with a thought of “how much name, fame or money would I get” is a clear sign of being only at a basic level of evolution. Knowing nothing but desiring only the divine is a highly evolved state.
Desire is basically made of: I want something. ‘I’ means the desire of the soul through the physical (the ego) or the instrument. ‘Want’ means to possess something and to possess because one knows that one doesn’t have it. ‘That’ is the energy manifested in the physical. Through the elements, the soul wants to possess this energy. This can be understood better by traveling a little into the past.
When we were in our previous bodies, in our last life, we had experienced a lack of ‘something’ in life. After death, when we left the body, this desire stayed on like a genetic code and entered the new body when we took birth again. This desire awakens at sometime or the other and then becomes an obsession. For example, when a child is born and is young, he may have the desire to become the prime minister, although he would not really be able to understand or to explain it to anyone. But for the child, this desire is its main attraction.
Desires will awaken at every stage in life. There is nothing wrong with desires. You should never suppress them; because if you do, then they will come back to you, in this life or another and haunt you preventing you from taking fully to the spiritual path. At that time, you would have only two choices: you can transcend the desire or let the desires take over you, prompting you to deviate from your path.
When a person leaves his or her body, the next life begins from the point of departure — there is no escape. Our ancestors knew this. They understood that though they have been born thanks to the compulsions of their desires, once these are fulfilled, they have to leave them and go beyond, as all this is just an illusion.
Leaving does not mean that you give up everything and are left with nothing. Leaving means, if you stop running after physical pleasures you will gain something better in return. The pleasures and satisfactions then become deeper and more profound. One should make an all-out effort to fulfill a particular desire, but that again does not mean that one should get lost in the spiral of desires. This is where the role of a Guru comes. A Guru will help you consciously understand each and every desire of yours. Try to understand the three elements that comprise a desire ‘I’ ‘WANT’ ‘THAT’. Once you have understood, a guru will help you transcend it, and not to suppress it.
The ultimate aim of a sadhak is to be detached from each and every energy: even the desire to do sadhna. Only then will he or she be able to go over the level of creation. The entire process of creation took place because of desire. Today we are what we are and do what we do, driven only by our desires. Our very existence in this physical world is thanks to our desires of this life or of the previous ones.
If we let go of all our desires, we will be free. This freedom will take us closer to what we actually are. But we neither think of it, nor do we know it. Yog and Sanatan Kriya in the sannidhya of a guru helps one get over these desires and move towards self-realisation.
Yogi Ashwini is the spiritual head of Dhyan Ashram. Email: dhyan@dhyanfoundation.com