Image courtesy: finding-serenity.com
How will desires change? How does desire play out?
What is the fundamental machinery of desire?
Why do the great one’s declare it to be a problem?
1) We basically want to achieve ‘union’ with the object of our desire.
When we desire a thing, a person or a state, we are actually trying to unite with it; meld with it to make it a part of our own selves. Hence at the most fundamental level we desire ‘union’.
2) Union with any external object is not long lasting, it is a temporary phenomenon.
Say you get your what you desired; the job, the person, the experience. It gave you an emotional high. It satisfies and fulfills you for sometime, but the pleasure soon wanes off. No? Haven’t we all felt that? That sense of union with the external object is short-lived and suffering follows, unavoidably. That brilliant, sensory high of perfect union cannot maintain itself for a long time. The high from that coveted job wears off, the blissful bubble of romantic perfection bursts as unfulfilled expectations raise their hydra-heads. The pleasures of a new social class lose their sheen as fresh problems of its maintenance arise.
3) The pleasure of union converts to the pain of separation in time.
The pleasure from union with our coveted objects changes to pain in time. The pain of separation and loss, or of disappointment and unfulfilled expectations. No matter what, it ends in suffering. “This is not as good as I thought it would be”, this thought runs rampant in all of our minds, doesn’t it? “Why is it not as perfect as I thought it would be? I must try more, try again”, we tell ourselves. Then we invest some more and we expect some more.
Sadly, it is the nature of such a union to be temporary. I am not being pessimistic or cynical, no. I am simply stating the law of life, of Yoga. It is temporary because you are incompatible with all external things. Yes, you and your object of desire, they are not made of the same material. You, the real you. You cannot hold it for long because it is not possible to do so.
Can you hold water or sand in your hands for long? No.
Can you eat soup with a fork? No.
Try as hard as you can.
Its simple. Your hands are not meant to hold water and sand. You cannot eat soup with a fork. They are incompatible.
You are not meant to possess those ‘things’. You are meant to possess something else. Something far greater in value and pleasure. You will see.
4) The pleasure of the union leaves behind positive impressions in the psyche-mind unit, along with the negative impressions of pain of separation.
Those sensory highs, that pleasure and sense of fulfilment, even though temporary, leaves behind positive residues or impressions in our mind. Positive residues with a positive emotional charge. Also, the consequent pain of separation, disappointment and loss leaves behind negative residues in our psyche-minds. Negative residues with a negative emotional charge. Pleasure follows pain. Necessarily, compulsorily. The strength of the positive or negative emotional charges decides which samskaras are stronger. Depending on the strength of the positive or negative charge, you wish for a re-experience or you fear it and want to avoid it.
5) The greats have called desire as the root of our suffering not because of desire per se, but because of the compulsory pain which arises from the eventual separation.
6) Desire is the fuel, the propellant of human existence, you cannot avoid it. We must transcend it by re-directing it. Re-routing it in a different direction. For a different kind of union, one which is not temporary. Also, one which will not carry compulsory pain.
Is there such a union, one which will not end in separation, loss and disappointment? Yes, absolutely. In fact, this union is the goal of human existence. It is a union not with any external object/person/phenomena. It is unmarred by pain from loss and disappointment. This union is not temporary; once you achieve it, it stays. A union independent of anything outside yourself, things which forever risk disappointing, being lost, being lesser than imagined. Because they are not compatible with you.
A union which produces pleasures of unimaginable, unfelt, unprecedented magnitude.
7) A desire for interiorization will have to replace the desire for external phenomena in the first place. You cannot force the process, it must follow a rational, systematic, self -evolving model.
You must feel the need to become that way.
We cannot force extroverts to become more introverted. More so in our modern world which richly rewards extroversion. Sadly even those with introverted tendencies must constantly engage with the outer world, to thrive or even survive. But for true happiness, there is no other way.
You must turn inward, but only when the Yogic process compels you to.
8) Following the yogic technology, in its serious unfolding, desire for externals falls off, involuntarily.
9) In the consummate, peak states of ‘samadhi’ or absorption, you will experience a new kind of union. This union produces feelings of extraordinary bliss. It also gives birth to extra ordinary understanding, extra ordinary knowledge.
‘Samadhi’ is an altered state of the pschye-mind, where all vrittis (fluctuations) stop. All functions of the mind come to a standstill. You do not think (the right or wrong thoughts), remember, conceptualise or sleep. Your mind flat lines. You do not interact or engage with the world of phenomena, objects and people. There are no inputs to the mind from the senses of seeing, feeling, touching, as even the senses totally shut off. Your mind and senses go into the standby mode. In ordinary sleep, conscious mental processes may have shut down, but the psyche is active and produces dreams. None of that in the samadhi state. The machinery of the psyche-mind has stopped, and you are down to the foundations of this machine, to its engine room. You are now among the subtle, hidden samskaras. The samskaras cannot withstand the firepower of samadhi, they burn off, the weeds decimated from their roots.
The hydra headed giant dies, stabbed in its heart, one absorption at a time.
As you take repeated dips into the oceans of samadhi, the samskaras scuttle away like terrified fishes! The harmful ones, along with the beneficial ones, they die off. Never to create a ripple in the now undisturbed waters of a new psyche-mind. You could not even call it the psyche-mind now because that fake building has crumbled away. Its illusory firmness has given way to wispy smoke. Its foundations have disappeared.
10) The extraordinary bliss you will experience is ultra -sensory, as the senses do not take part in its experience. They have shut down, remember? There is no sensory stimulus and so it is not a response to any stimulus at all. Imagine sweet honey, a dense, viscous nectar flowing through your nerves, into your limbs. It drenches you so fully that you feel you are made of it. It is sweet to the point of being unbearable. No tame feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, none of that. Not abstract, not psychological. You embody this pleasure; you feel it in every crevice of your body. It is a deep well-spring of overwhelming, unbearably exciting, unmatched ecstasy. It is enthralling beyond words. It threatens to explode you into a million pieces; the overwhelm, the force, this hyper- physical yogic bliss. Yes it is hyper-physical! Like an orgasm, but yet unlike it. Many times more blissful and forceful. No sensory experiences match it, they pale in comparison.
That is yogic bliss. Ferociously embodied. Uncaused, beyond sensory interactions. Unprecedented, you will have felt nothing like it. Supra-bliss. Supra because no other experience can replicate it. No other thing/phenomenon in the outer world can match it, I guarantee you that.
Once you have drunk from this holy grail of bliss, you will never want to leave.
11) This extraordinary knowing is ultra-cognitive, as it is not a mental function. Your mind has shut off, remember? You are not thinking, analysing, conceptualising, remembering. You are not sleeping nor dreaming. None of that. In fact your mind is not working at all. Here you know in a flash; completely all at once. You do not perceive or de-code in a piecemeal step-by-step process as you do ordinarily. You know instantaneously, everything at once. An idea just falls into your blank mind, whole, complete, with no time gap.
You feel and experience this knowledge. You do not think it.
Let me present a simple example this kind of yogic knowing. Suppose you are an advanced yogi who wants to know the properties of a metallic cup. You want to know its constituents, its composition and nature. You would meditate on the cup to achieve a state of ‘union’ with the cup in ‘samadhi’. Meaning, you would ‘feel’ the cup as yourself and yourself as the cup. The boundaries and demarcations between you and the cup will dissolve. Now remember, this is a subtle process, and there is no gross melding happening. The union is extra-sensory and extra-cognitive. Beyond the senses and the mind.
This state of union is called ‘Samyama’ in yogic language. You will know the composition of the cup in a flash, as you have become it. Sounds spooky, does it not? Yes, it does, even as I write, but it is the truth yogic technology. Of yogic experimentation and science.
How I wish more and more people would try. How speedily our knowledge of the world and universe would advance! The scientists want it most, don’t they, to decode the universe through experiments? I invite them to undertake Yogic experiments. I urge them to study the Yogic science. I wish they would utilise the Yogic technology. The world would be a much more advanced place with it. Far more than now.
Anyway, union with objects is a lower state of union and there is higher knowing too. Knowledge which you could not have obtained in any external, sensory way. Knowledge which demands the senses and the mind to shut off, to die.
You have to feel this ultra-sensory bliss and ultra-cognitive knowledge to know it. I use the word ‘feel’ despite saying that your senses will shut down. That’s because words fail to describe this kind of ‘feeling’. There is no vocabulary for it.
Those unknown, unimagined, magnificent gilded doors open only when the worn-out, over -used, rusting old doors of your senses and mind shut down. When you redirect the energy you spend to run your ordinary senses and psyche-mind, only then will you sense and know this extra ordinariness. When your senses and mind stop working only then will you feel and know it.
The true treasures of the fortress we live in open only when the gates at its boundary close.
This is the way of the human system, of the yogic process, of this extraordinary technology of nature.
