The Desire within

The desire within us is also confusion. It is not a desire for an object. What we ask for is not a thing of the world. It is something different, but we are not able to understand what it is actually. The understanding is muddled. There is a complete overturning of the cart, as it were, when the intelligence in the individual begins to operate through the senses demanding objects. The real asking of the individual is for permanent satisfaction and freedom. There is a piety and holiness, if you say, so involved in the activity of the individual. But the instruments used are inadequate for the purpose. The senses cannot contact the object for which their deepest desires are. What we ask for is infinity of possession and infinity of satisfaction and a freedom. Such a thing cannot be communicated to us through the senses because they are externalised agents.

We have bad friends in the senses, so they mislead us. They take us to objects and tell us, ‘Here is what you wanted.’ But that is not really what you wanted. Just as we can be taken along by lanes by misleading guides in a big city, the senses put us off the scent. And then, due to a misconceived longing for an appearance rather than for a reality, which we begin to really believe in, there is a perpetual effort on the part of the mind, through its will, to maintain the duration of the contact with the object for as long as possible. Now the object changes colour like a chameleon and reveal its incapacity to satisfy us at different intervals of time.

We get caught in a confusion of circumstance with which we die. The body perishes. Our life is very short. We have not got enough time to experiment with everything in the world. By the time we get fed up with even a few, the body also goes. But the desire has not gone. And the confused desire, which has not been enlightened as to the true nature of what it asks for, remains in that condition even at the time of death. The actions which were performed earlier due to this misconception, having produced results correspondingly, bind the soul once again, so that the body which was shed has gone, but a new body comes. This is the psychology or philosophy of rebirth, the whole difficulty being a misconstruing of the ultimate cause of desire that arises in our minds.

‘Attached to the sense objects, longing for things of sense, the individual sheds the body, casts off this mortal coil, takes nothing with itself.’ When we leave this world, we take nothing with us. All the associations, physical and social, are cast aside as if they do not belong to us.

We go singly, independently, alone and un-befriended without any association, any appendage whatsoever. But we take something with us. Like an encrustation that has grown upon us, the forces of Karma cling to our subtle body which alone departs when the physical body is shed. Lingam mano yatra nisaktam asya: ‘The mind which is the ruling principle in the subtle body carries with it the result of its actions, the Karma-Phala,’ which clings to it like a leech. It will not leave it, wherever it goes.

In some other Upanishad it is said that a calf finds its own mother even in the midst of a thousand cows by moving hither and thither in the herd; as it goes to its own mother though the cows may be thousands in number, likewise our Karma will find us wherever we are. We may go to the highest heaven, but the Karma is not going to leave us. We may go to the nether regions; it is not going to leave us. We may go to any corner of creation, but this is not going to leave us. It will find us.

Even as the laws of the government which has long arms try to catch us wherever we are, the laws of the cosmos catch that individual who has been responsible for the particular action. ‘Attached, the soul leaves this body; and together with the Karma, it goes.’ Where does it go? ‘Where the mind has found its habitation, there it goes.’ Where is the habitation or the location of the mind? ‘Those features of the world, those conditions or that type of atmosphere where its unfulfilled desires can be fulfilled, there the Linga-Sarira, or the Suksma-Sarira, or the subtle body, gravitates.’ Like a rocket the subtle body moves and finds its place. The cosmic law operates in such a just and inexorable manner that the subtle body is taken to the exact spot where it can fulfill all its wishes. Then what happens further?

‘Those Karmas which have to be exhausted by experience in that particular place find their completion through experience. Whatever we have done here, the result of it we experience there’

Then, what happens again? -‘From that world you come again’.

To which place do you come? -‘To this world you come for the purpose of further actions’.

Why do you do further actions?- For further bondage!

You engage again in action because your desires have not been fulfilled and the residue of the Karmas has to be further undergone by experience.

The desires get enhanced in their intensity the more they are fulfilled. The fulfillment of a desire is not the way to freedom from desire. On the other hand, the reverse is the case. Desires become, fire-like, more and more strong. They are in fact said to be the fuel of satisfaction.

Fire is never satisfied by any amount of clarified butter that you pour over it. It can swallow numerous quintals of clarified butter. The more butter you pour on it, the more ferocious does the fire become. So is desire.

‘This is the fate of the one that desires’. This is the destiny of the individual who desires and longs for things or the objects of sense.

The Upanishad shifts its emphasis to another subject. If a person does not desire, then what happens? Athakamayamanah: one who has no desire’ for objects of sense.

‘A person who does not desire, who is freed from desires, whose desires have gone, whose desires have been fully satisfied, whose desire is only for the Self’, what happens to such a person? Now, this gradation mentioned here is very interesting. Only if your desire is for the Self will your desires be fulfilled, not otherwise. You can become Apta-Kama only if you are Atma-Kama, not otherwise. Desire cannot be satisfied unless it is directed to the Self and to nothing else whatsoever. If your desire is for anything other than the Self, it is not going to be fulfilled because you are asking for that which is not there. Naturally you will not get what is not there. So, it is an Atma-Kama only who becomes Apta-Kama; the Apta-Kama in turn becomes Niskama; the Niskama becomes Akama and Akama becomes Akamayamana.

So, one who has desire centered in the Universal Self is one whose desires are all fulfilled at one stroke, which in other words means that all desires have left him. Why have all desires left that person? Because all desires have been fulfilled, the reason being that the desire itself has become merged in the Universal Self. Desires leave that person whose desires have been completely satisfied on account of their being centered in the Atman. Such a person has no desires because they have gone. Such a person is designated as Akamayamana, one who does not desire. If a person is to shed his physical body in that circumstance, without any desire remaining except for the desire of the Universal Being, what happens is that his Pranas do not move hither and thither in search of a new location; they do not move. The subtle body does not depart in space and in time; on the contrary they, the Pranas, and the senses dissolve like bubbles in the ocean then and there - na tasya prana ukramanti. Brahmaiva san brahmapyati: ‘He has been contemplating throughout his life on the Absolute Self. He gets identified with the Absolute Self then and there’. This is called in the terminology of the Upanishads and the Vedanta philosophy Sadyamukti, instantaneous liberation. It is an immediate salvation of the soul, which is attained on account of freedom from desire that has arisen on account of desire for the Atman. This is the glorious destination of the spiritual adept who spends his life in contemplation on the Universal Being.