8. Desire Is A Dynamic Energy

One of the major driving forces in human life is desire. If you look into your life, you can see most of the time we are driven by either desire or fear.

We have so many desires and often we feel we don't have energy to fulfill them. According to the Jain tradition, the Divine sends us with enough energy and capacity to fulfill all our desires. But most of us don't feel this way. Why?

There is a difference between our true desires and 'borrowed' desires. Our true desires are called our 'needs'. Borrowed desires are called our 'wants'. We have enough energy to fulfill our true desires or needs. What are our true desires?

During the Life Bliss Program Level 2 (THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program), we have a session where people are asked to make a list of their desires, needs and wants. Then they meditate on these desires. At the end of the meditation, I ask them to recollect from memory their list of desires. What they can recollect is usually a fraction of what they have written! It is as if they started with a large tree full of leaves, their desires, and during this meditation the tree sheds almost all its leaves, as if the leaves were dried and dead. What it retains glows like golden leaves. If you can understand which desire is innate and which is accumulated, spiritual growth happens automatically.

Whatever is left in their memories, those desires glow like gold. They are the ones that carry the energy for their fulfillment! These desires are the true desires. If the process is done with awareness, these desires are always selfless desires. They may benefit the individual, no doubt, but they always benefit humanity. Only such selfless desires carry the energy of the universe with them for fulfillment.

When our desires are our own true desires, when they reflect our real needs, when they express themselves in our inner energy, we don't feel any desperation about trying to achieve them. The realization comes that as a matter of the natural course of events, these desires will be fulfilled. We are not driven and we are not troubled. We accept that these will happen.

To truly love someone whom we spend our life with, to prevent familiarity from breeding contempt, we need to drop our feelings of 'I' and 'mine'. As long as we consider our spouse as a possession, what arises in our mind and heart is violence, not love. We feel we must control the other being and we feel we must prove that we are the owner. To even comprehend the meaning of true love, we need to drop the feeling that we possess.

This is how Khalil Gibran* speaks on love in his book, The Prophet, 'Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.'

When you have a headache, you are not comfortable with that state, because you know that it is not your true nature. Your true nature is having no headache. In the same way, when you have some desire, you immediately want to come out of it, because deep fulfillment is your very nature and desire causes an imbalance in that fulfillment.

Two important truths you need to understand:

1. Your whole life is a long chain of events performed towards the one goal of fulfillment. Whatever you may do, whether it is eating or drinking or having relationships, wealth or joy, it is all to experience fulfillment. You seek fulfillment in different directions instead of seeking it directly.

2. Fulfillment is within you, it is your very nature. That is why you are trying to come out of non-fulfillment.

The fact that you are searching for fulfillment means that fulfillment is known to you. Otherwise you would not search for it! In the instances in your life when you have felt some fulfillment, there is also a hope that you will experience it again. That is why you extend your life.

The desire that is pure and not directed towards any particular object or person is simply an overflowing energy that is called iccha shakti or the 'desire energy'.

From the navel, energy comes as pure energy. In the heart region, this energy gets converted to the power of desire. This further gets converted into words in the throat region. When this energy gets converted into words, it is called vak or

Khalil Gibran - Lebanese American poet best known for his 'The Prophet'.

the 'speech energy'. To give an analogy, the energy that comes from the navel is like loose cotton. The cotton becomes thread in the throat region. Or you can imagine it this way: the energy that comes from the navel is like molten iron. The throat is like a forge where the product is formed!

The speech energy moves further to the brain. There it stays as knowledge or gets converted into a command. In the brain, the energy could stay as the power of knowledge or gnana shakti. For example, the desire energy related to the body can become knowledge of the body.

The other option is, the words get converted to a command and get executed as well. The command goes to the entire body and moves you. This is called the power of action or kriya shakti. For example, the desire energy related to your body can express as the power of action like moving your body.

Pure iccha shakti or desire energy which comes from your being gets converted to gnana shakti or the power of knowledge and kriya shakti or the power of action.

If the energy is not processed and channeled properly, the knowledge and action become disconnected from the power of the pure desire energy. The knowledge and action should be in tune with the desire energy. Then it forms a virtuous circle of desire leading to better knowledge and action, which in turn leads to clearer desires!

Say you have a desire to make a million dollars. If it gets converted properly as knowledge, you will have a clear plan and do the right actions to become a millionaire. If the desire energy gets converted as too much knowledge and less action, then you will end up only thinking more and more, building castles in the air.

On the other hand, if the desire energy gets converted as too much action and less knowledge, then you will end up working blindly. For example, you may work really hard like driving a truck from Los Angeles to New York, but can you become a millionaire this way? There is action but not the right knowledge. So the proper conversion of the desire to knowledge and action has to happen. The reason why this conversion doesn't happen properly is lack of awareness.

When you are honest and integrated with the desire, there is no conflict and the conversion happens properly.

A small story:

Once a person went to the great saint Ramanuja and asked him, 'Master, I want to achieve enlightenment. Can you teach how?'

Ramanuja asked him, 'Have you ever experienced love? Have you really lost yourself in love?'The man was shocked at the question and said, 'What are you asking? I lead a pure life. I control my desires and do different spiritual practices. I came to you to realize god!'

Ramanuja replied, 'If you have not even experienced ordinary love, how can you experience god!'

Unless you experience ordinary love, you will not understand what happens when you are in love. Only when you understand what happens when you are in love with an object will you be able to turn your attention towards the experience. Turning your awareness towards the experience itself will naturally turn yourself towards you. That love will lead you towards your being. Love can lead you to the object or to the subject. It is a bridge and it can take you towards the subject. Whoever used the gate to enter into the subject became enlightened. They liberated themselves and liberated others.

A small story:

Two friends met in the street. One man looked sad. The other man said, 'What happened? It looks like your whole world has come to an end!'

The man replied, 'Three weeks ago, an uncle died and left me a million dollars.' The friend was surprised and said, 'Sorry to hear about your uncle. But he left you a good sum of money.'

The man continued, 'Two weeks ago, a cousin I never knew died and left me ninety thousand dollars.'

The friend replied, 'Then what is your problem!'

The man replied, 'This week, I didn't get anything!'

In this whole world there are only two kinds of people. One group of people experiences life once in a while in their life and the other group of people experiences life continuously. Whenever you think you are feeling joy, you are experiencing life in the world for those few moments. That is why you feel so alive. You feel as if everything is beautiful. You have a positive experience with the universe.

All your joy is positive experience with the universe, even if it is just eating a sweet. For those few moments you feel that life is great. You feel that life is really something you need, and you feel connected. You are in tune with that 'ever living presence'.

Understand that 'ever living presence' is what we call life, which is responsible for all activity. Either you experience that ever living presence at this moment or you hope you will experience it in the near future. That is why you are moving your body and still keeping yourself alive. You get out of your bed early morning, either to have some good experience or you hope that at least in the near future you will have some good experience. That desire to experience that 'ever living presence' is what drives you to get up from bed.

Every desire which drives you is nothing but the desire to experience that 'ever living presence'. Whenever your mind stops wandering and comes back, it tastes that 'ever living presence'. Any sweet, any joy, any ecstasy, any experience is important because it brings you back to that 'ever living presence'.

You might have even experienced some incidents like this in your life. A girl who is afraid to cross a busy street sees her child run across the road and just jumps onto the road to save the child without a thought about her own safety.

We should understand how she has lost her fear all of a sudden. The reason is that the love for her child has awakened the dimension of motherliness in her. It is the same thing with every relationship of love. If the feeling of love blossoms in somebody, immediately all the fear will leave the person's inner space.

You might have heard something like this in your life, 'We have brought up our daughter with so much care and affection. She does not even know much about the outside world, but suddenly she ran away with her boyfriend! We are not able to understand how it happened.'

Love has tremendous power and so does lust. If you have a lot of energy in your muladhara chakra, it will override the other chakras immediately. There will not be any fear in your swadhishthana chakra and there will not be any worries in your manipuraka chakra. These higher chakras will not work when the muladhara chakra has the full power.

Muladhara chakra – Subtle energy center at the root of the spine, related to the emotions of greed and lust. Manipuraka chakra – Subtle energy center located near the navel region, related to the emotion of worry.

Without the person's knowledge, it will unleash the latent unknown potential in him. It will spread his potential to the outer world too.

That is why, from time immemorial, somebody who is in love has enormous power to even oppose the whole society that hinders him. Take the example of Romeo and Juliet. Once in love, they had the courage beyond their intellectual thinking to oppose the society that stood in the way of their love.

There are many such stories in history where the lovers go beyond what they could have done had they not been in love. They see a different dimension in their being and in their feeling.

Thus different people activate different dimensions inside you. If you have a lover, the feeling of love will be awakened in you. If you have a son or daughter, then the dimension of motherliness will be awakened in you. If your mind is ready to receive the experience of different dimensions, those dimensions will blossom in you.

So the deeper truth is that after the feeling of love happens between lovers, the very feeling will make them sacrifice a lot for each other. The depth of the feeling will lead to that level of sacrifices.

If you are completely open-minded, every person you meet in your life will cause you to blossom further. But if you are egoistic, even your spouse or your lover cannot cause you to blossom. Please understand, you have a great responsibility to create an open and non-egoistic mind before entering into a relationship such as between husband and wife or between lovers. Then the very feeling will transform you eternally. If this eternal transformation does not happen, you miss a major dimension of your life.

If a husband and wife are unable to create that kind of feeling of being without ego, the relationship cannot be called a relationship. It is similar to the physical relationship in animals. A true relationship is nothing but creating the transformational impact on the being or at the feeling level with each other.

Why are we not able to feel true love? It is because of our samskaras, our emotional attachment to the past memories. For example, your computer has a certain amount of memory. Now if it is filled with too many high-resolution pictures, which means that your emotional attachment is to too many things, all your memory space will be occupied.

You don't have enough energy because all your emotional energy is taken away by the past incidents or the people who are in your memory, either as attachment or anger or guilt. Your whole energy, your inner space, is occupied and you will not be able to directly feel connected and fall in love with Existence. All your fear, all your greed, all your guilt, and all these emotions are just because your energy is taken away by past memories. These 'high-resolution pictures' come up again and again in your inner space. That is why you are not able to completely relate with the present moment with the pure consciousness, with the pure being. Anybody whose inner space is not filled with high-resolution pictures, meaning too much emotional attachment, will be able to feel connected to anything.

Your inner space is filled with too many things related to the past. So your inner space is not available to the present moment. You can only love or feel connected to the people or objects falling in tune with the past memories you loved. If you can drop the emotional attachments to the past, suddenly you will see you have so much of inner space available to you. You can then directly open up to anybody who is in front of you without asking for his or her past.

Lust is a primal emotion provided by nature for continuation of the species. To go beyond lust is the first major step in realizing the ultimate potential of human life.

Humans are forever confused between love and lust. They think only animals are lustful. Actually only animals are capable of pure lust when they mate! Humans, with their rationalization, can neither be lustful nor loving. That is why they feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

When a desire is fully experienced it leaves your system. In ancient times, lust and sex left the householder around the age of forty because they had enjoyed these fully.

Physical relationship is used to verify whether the other person is still loving or not, whether you are still loved or not. It is only the doubt that creates bondage.

Sex is carbon, love is diamond. Sex is mud and love is the lotus that blooms in the mud. It is the same substance, only you should know how to process it. Just drop your expectations, and you will find a tremendous upsurge of energy.

Discover the man and woman inside you

Today, we know biologically that no man is 100% man, and no woman is 100% woman. A man may be 51% man and 49% woman. Likewise, a woman may be 51% woman, and 49% man; just a small difference.

You have taken birth from the energies of your father and mother. Then, how can you be only male or only female? Whether we accept it or not, we are an embodiment of both male and female energies. We are whole, not divided.

To be whole, we should be able to accept and express both the masculine and feminine aspects of our nature. But does it really happen? Are we allowed to express both aspects?

Right from the moment of birth, society labels you as either male or female. And it expects you to start behaving accordingly. Society simply does not allow boys to express their feminine side, or girls to express their masculine side. Right from a very young age, one half of our being is suppressed.

Until the age of seven, before the social conditioning has taken a deep root inside, the child is not conscious of being male or female. That is why a very young child has a sense of completeness. He is centered and secure. He is so beautiful and joyful to look at! By around seven, the child comes under society's control.

But now, such strong conditioning goes into the child that the child begins to suppress that part of himself which is not approved by society. We don't realize it, but this period is traumatic for the child. He suddenly feels uprooted and cut off from one half of his being. He starts searching for this suppressed half outside.

Man's inherent nature is fulfillment. So he begins, unconsciously, to search for the lost half, the suppressed half. He starts looking to the outside world for a substitute for his own lost half. The male child starts searching for a female presence, and the female child for a male presence. This is where the whole idea of sex starts. This is how the idea of sex takes root.

In the period from seven to fourteen years, the child is closest to his parents. From them, the child collects images about how the ideal woman or ideal man should be. In the case of the male child, the suppressed half of his own personality is replaced with his mother's image and in the girl child, the suppressed part of her personality is replaced with her father's image.

That is why every boy's first heroine is his mother, and every girl's first hero is her father. This is the unwritten law! This deep-rooted search is what lies behind the so-called Oedipus and Electra complexes of Freudian psychology. A boy expects care from his wife like the care he received from his mother and a girl expects the security and assurance from her husband that she enjoyed with her father.

At fourteen, the child attains physical maturity. His activities become diversified and the child or teenager doesn't spend as much time with his parents. The child now begins to collect images from outsiders and media. The media are perfectly aware of this. That is why you will see that all advertisements always have sexual undertones – an attractive woman or man will be modeling for the product, even if the product has nothing to do with them.

Almost all motorbike ads show women, but how many women ride motorbikes! Whatever the product may be, you will find a smiling woman recommending it. When you go to the market, you promptly pick up that product, forgetting that the woman does not come with it! This is the media's way of cashing in on your suppressed desires.

If you are alert and aware, advertisements can never fool you. Of course, by seeing them, you can always be aware of the latest things on the market, no doubt, but they will not deceive you.

You see, while on one side the media feed your imagination, on the other society tries to suppress you. The more society tries to suppress your imagination and desires, the more they grow, because society aims at suppressing the symptoms without getting down to the root cause. You collect ideas from all sorts of media and build up an image of the perfect woman or man. From each person, you collect the best nose, the best eyes, the best personality, and create your own 'ideal person'. You follow a 'cut and paste' method like you do in your computers!

This stage lasts for around seven years, until we are about twenty one. By then the identification with media wears off, but the ideas are already deep-rooted in our minds. Then a fresh search begins, to find that ideal person in our real life. This is the search with the idea of how our 'wouldbe' should be. This is where expectations start.

A small story:

One ninty year old man used to sit every day at the beach from morning to evening, watching people going by. Another man who noticed this went up to him and asked him, 'What do you actually do sitting here everyday?'

The old man replied, 'I am searching for a woman to be my wife.' The man was simply shocked at this reply and asked him, 'Why did you not search in your youth?'

The old man replied, 'I have been searching since I was thirty years old.' The man was astonished and asked him, 'What sort of a woman are you searching for?' He replied, 'I am searching for a perfect woman.' 'The man asked, 'You haven't found one yet?'

'I found one woman who matched what I had in mind but it didn't work out well with her,' replied the old man. The man asked why.

The old man replied, 'She was searching for a perfect man!'

This is what happens when we try to get a perfect match for the image that we carry inside us.

After a long search, we suddenly find a person who seems to match our mental image but from a distance. The picture in our mind is green, and the image that we see also seems to be green. A match seems to be found!

What happens at this point is what is called 'falling in love'. This is the science behind falling in love. Note that it is always 'falling' in love, never 'rising' in love! Because of our own strong needs and expectations, we see things as we want to see them. We project our mental image upon the other. Now, the world becomes filled with greenery and music and life becomes poetry. This is the stage at which we begin to write poetry, make paintings of each other and what not.

As long as this distance is maintained, things go on smoothly. We continue to project our imagination upon each other. But as the person slowly comes closer we then feel that what we saw as green was not so green but only a pale green. We feel it is alright and move on. After a while, we come still closer and feel that it is not even pale green but actually a sort of yellow.

But at this stage, we don't want to accept that our imagination has turned out to be a lie, so we start making excuses for the situation. We say to ourselves, 'This is life! Everything can't be perfect!' and so on. It requires tremendous courage, tremendous intelligence to live with reality. So we use these excuses instead, as a buffer system, to shield ourselves from reality.

Finally, when we get close enough we find that it is not even yellow, it is just white! What is inside us is green and what is outside is white. Fantasy and reality are totally different.

A small story:

A man fell down from the third floor of the building onto the road. A passerby ran up to him and asked, 'The falling must've hurt you.'

The man replied, 'No. The falling did not hurt me. Only the sudden stopping hurt me!'

As long as we float and flirt in love, as long as we keep our distances and time short, we are fine. We are in a fantasy world. It is only when the floating stops and the real relationship starts, when the distances reduce and time increases that the problem starts!

The fewer fantasies you collect, the fewer the number of things there are to compare with and lesser the trouble. If you don't have any fantasy or imagination, you will immediately meet your soul mate. If you don't have fantasies, anyone you marry will become your soul mate.

We need to understand that no living person can live up to the image we carry in our minds simply because the image is not built from reality! No image can be matched with reality because at the end of the day, it is only an image, a fantasy!

The ultimate alchemy

What is alchemy? The process of changing a lower level metal such as copper or iron into gold is alchemy. In the same way, when our being is ripe the base feeling of lust transforms to love, the highest emotion we are capable of.

Alchemy involves removing the impurities, adding some pure elements and then processing to change the base metal to gold. In the same way, remove the impurity of your fantasies, add the purity of friendliness in your relationship and process this with your patience. In the beginning, people may not be able to understand the change in you. Just continue with belief and confidence in yourself. Your sincerity and strength has no way but to touch others around you positively.

When we do not accept ourselves fully and copy someone else artificially, we can be beautiful at best, but never graceful. Grace comes from within. Accept yourself as you are and your partner just the way he or she is.

Add friendliness to love. As of now, our lust is deep-rooted violence to possess the other person. Add friendliness to the relationship. Welcome the partner as he or she is, do not just accept him or her. Welcome and accept the mind, body and being as it is. Then you can see lust turns to love and your being is in eternal bliss.

Patanjali says, 'To whatever your mind is attracted, just meditate on that object.' You may say, 'But my mind goes to all kinds of dirty things.' Don't bother. Do not give the title 'dirty'. Just beautifully meditate with a deep sacred feeling. Anything can become sacred, when you

are respectful and feeling connected. The lust will become love the moment you add sanctity and respect to it.

Love adds life even to the person. With love the person is a spirit, life! Without love the person is reduced to a thing, utility! Without love, when you look at a beautiful man or woman and plan for what you can get out of that person, you reduce him or her to a thing. Only when you look at that person with love, the person is a spirit, a living being.

That is why whenever people look at you with lustful eyes, you feel repelled, it looks ugly, and you just want to move out of that place. Whenever somebody looks at you with a deep love, you just feel like being around that person continuously.

Celibacy

Celibacy is nothing but not craving for the suppressed half that is inside you, that's all. If you are a male, you need to experience such fulfillment unto yourself that you no longer miss the suppressed half or female inside you. If you are a female, you are so enough unto yourself that you don't look outside to experience this fulfillment.

Once you have achieved this state, you can live with or without the female in the outside world. If this is not achieved, even if you get married, you will continue to be under the torture of your hormones. Your hormonal torture is nothing but a yearning for the fulfillment that you are actually supposed to get from within, not without.

When you achieve this fulfillment, whether you are married or not, there will be peace in your mind. It is then that you can be celibate even in married life! This is true celibacy.

1. Beyond the object to the attitude

Changing the object is never a solution. Changing the attitude is the solution.

Make a list of things you feel attached to or things you feel greedy about. It might be a habit, perhaps a particular pleasure or object or person.

Include anything or anyone on the list that makes you feel possessive, greedy or lustful.

Then just sit and meditate with a deep and sacred feeling. Anything can become sacred when you are respectful and feeling connected to it. Bring in respect towards the object, or person.

With a lustful attitude, you will make even a person into an object because you try to possess the person. With an attitude of love and respect, you will make even an object into a living being! Lust will become love the moment you add sanctity and respect to it. Promote each object or person, elevate them to the level of a being. Suddenly you will see that the lust has transformed into love. The passion has become compassion. Then every relationship is such an ecstasy, and you experience real love.

2. Dukkha Harana meditation

Total duration: 30 minutes

This meditation technique will bring out all the suppressed emotions in you.

Breathing is very closely related to the mind. If your thinking is calm, your breath will be relaxed. If your thinking is aggressive, your breathing will also be aggressive.

You may practice this technique on an empty stomach, preferably in the morning. Twenty one days of Dukkha Harana will transform your being and bring a glow to your face and body. This is like taking a psychological bath. You will be able to experience the silence in you.

Step 1: 10 minutes

Stand with your eyes closed. In the first part of this meditation, your mental system is made fully alive by deep breathing and the increased intake of oxygen. Your cells

will get more energy and will create more bioelectricity or bio-energy. This energy will melt all the repressed emotions like melting ice. It is like fanning the muladhara chakra.

Breathe deeply and chaotically from the depths of your body, always through your nose with your mouth closed. Move your hands, flex your knees and bend to a

semi-squatting position and then rise up. Move as if you are a bird in flight, up and down, knees moving up and down, arms moving up and down, in line with your breathing.

Do the movements gently and synchronize your inhalation with the upward movement and exhalation with the downward movement. If you have a heart problem, do only as much as you can. Similarly, pregnant women and others with physical ailments, do only as much as you can.

Step 2: 10 minutes

Keep your eyes closed and tense each part of your body, part by part, limb by limb, then let it relax. Tense and relax one limb and then move to the next. Start with your feet; then move to legs; then move to thighs; next to the hips; then to stomach and lower back; then to chest and upper back; then to your arms from finger tips to shoulder; next to the neck and shoulders; next to your face, and finally to the top of the head. Relax each part of your entire body before you move to the next part. At the end of these ten minutes, you will become vacant inside; you will become cool, calm and composed.

Step 3: 10 minutes

Sit down keeping your eyes closed and chant the 'hoo' kara sound, just the word 'hoo'. There is no need to chant it deeply and loudly. Just chant it in a relaxed manner. As you chant, simply witness whatever happens inside or outside your being.

The first two parts of this technique are actually a preparation for the third part that is the actual meditation. When you come to the third part, you will see that the mind becomes silent effortlessly, by itself. Silence cannot be forced upon you; it can only happen by itself.

Remain in this relaxed state with a smiling face and blissful mood. During this time, there may be many experiences. Just watch them as you would watch the television. Watch your mind thought by thought.