Understanding Desire and the Absence of Desire

When seekers take up the spiritual path, they try to follow the guideline to reject desire. They will frequently say “I don’t desire anything”. In many cases, however, this is an obfuscation by the vital nature manipulating the mind to accept something which is not entirely accurate. Let’s break this down:

One thing that may occur is that the individual actually is having his needs met, one way or the other, and need not seek out or choose anything as it is already there for him. The desire, in such a case, could only be seen if the circumstances would be changed and the various items or people providing the support were removed from the picture. Would the individual still say they have no desires when the ‘abundance’ is no longer there providing it to them without a lot of thought or effort?

Another thing that occurs is that the seeker tries to “offload” the desire and its fulfillment to someone else and, knowing how things generally work out, he is able to accept the result.

Another is simply that the desire is there, but the vital nature is telling the mind that it is not ‘really’ a desire, but something else! As long as the mind is willing to go along with that, things continue as they were and the vital has its desires met.

Even our prayers reveal the desires lurking in our being. When the prayers are “conditional” such that our love, support and action are based on having our wishes met, we are projecting desires onto our relationship to the Divine. When we pray for a specific wish to be fulfilled, money, relationship, recognition, etc. we are expressing desires, albeit in a prayerful way!

When the psychic being comes forward, it changes from a ‘demand’ type of prayer to a ‘self-giving’ type of prayer. ‘Thy will be done’ aligns more with the psychic approach, than any request for a specific result. Similarly when the separation of the witness consciousness from the exte
al nature occurs, the seeker who identifies with that witness consciousness will find that he harbors no desires, he observes, as the bird who acts as the observer, the exte
al nature which “eats the sweet fruit of the tree” in the colorful language of the Upanishad.

There is an apocryphal tale that bears repeating. The divine singer Narada is traveling through the world and comes across a yogi practicing austere penances for many years. The yogi asks Narada how much longer until he obtains liberation. Narada replies ‘4 more lifetimes’. The yogi is disconsolate that after all that effort, he has to undergo such a long additional period of austerity to fulfill his desire for liberation. His expectation for early liberation and the desire that fueled his efforts have been frustrated. Narada continues on his way and comes across a devotee singing and dancing with ecstatic abandon under a tree. This devotee asks the same question, ‘when will i achieve liberation’. Narada replies, ‘as many leaves as there are on this tree, that is how many lifetimes you will have to undergo before achieving liberation’. Hearing this, the devotee sheds tears of joy and in an ecstatic feeling declares that he is blessed to have the divine near him as he works through the process for however long it takes. A voice comes down out of heaven and advises him, ‘You are liberated this moment.” We see here the difference between desire and absence of desire.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Everything which it hankers after is desirable to the vital — but the desire has to be rejected. ‘I won’t desire’ is quite the right thing to say, even if ‘I don’t desire’ cannot yet be said by the vital. Still there is something in the being that can even say ‘I don’t desire’ and refuse to recognise the vital desire as part of the true being. It is that consciousness which the peace and power bring that has to be recognised as the true ‘I’ and made permanent in front.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 155