Well, it takes away your quietude, that is the first effect. It makes you agitated, nervous, impatient and dissatisfied when you don't immediately obtain what you have asked for, and usually as vehement in your despair and dissatisfaction, with a strong sense of your helplessness.
Desire is altogether something else. Desire is something which acts completely horizontally. [old p. 337]
In your ordinary consciousness you want something; you do not have the least idea of aspiring for some existing thing or some progress or a higher knowledge or greater realisation. You see [new p. 337]an object in a shop and want it. That's it. Or it crosses your mind that it would be good to eat a certain thing, and you want it. These are desires; they concern things on the same plane as you. Moreover, in desires also some people are obstinate, vehement, and some have fugitive and weak desires. There are both types.
Desire is altogether something else. Desire is something which acts completely horizontally. [old p. 337]
In your ordinary consciousness you want something; you do not have the least idea of aspiring for some existing thing or some progress or a higher knowledge or greater realisation. You see [new p. 337]an object in a shop and want it. That's it. Or it crosses your mind that it would be good to eat a certain thing, and you want it. These are desires; they concern things on the same plane as you. Moreover, in desires also some people are obstinate, vehement, and some have fugitive and weak desires. There are both types.
...
And to tell the truth, very few people have a very pure aspiration. An aspiration, a will to progress, just that; it stops there. Because one aspires for progress and then, there we are, let us not go farther. We want progress. But usually there get mixed up with it all kinds of desires for the results of this progress. And so desire comes in, you see; this brings exactly what he says, a consciousness which is impure and muddy, and inside this nothing higher can come. This must be completely eliminated to begin with. If one looks at [old p. 338]himself very sincerely, very straightforwardly and very severely, he very quickly perceives that very few things, very few movements of consciousness are free from being mixed with desires.
Even in what you take for a higher movement, there is always... no, [new p. 338]happily not always, but most often there is a desire mixed. The desire of the sense of one's importance, if only this, that kind of self-satisfaction, the satisfaction of being someone superior.
Even in what you take for a higher movement, there is always... no, [new p. 338]happily not always, but most often there is a desire mixed. The desire of the sense of one's importance, if only this, that kind of self-satisfaction, the satisfaction of being someone superior.
* WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust
Pure aspiration
22 September 1954
“...the thirst for progress, the thirst for knowledge, the thirst for transformation and, above all, the thirst for Love and Truth...Truly a thirst, a need, All the rest has s no importance; it is that one has need of.
To cling to something one believes that one knows, to cling to something that one feels, to cling to something that one's loves, to cling to one's habits, to cling to the world as it is, is that which binds you. you must undo all, that, one thing after another. Undo all the ties.... No more bond-free, Always ready to change everything, except one thing:
to aspire, this thirst.... [for] the 'Something' one is in need of, the Love one is in need of, the Truth one is in need of, the supreme Perfection one is in need of and that is all.... a need, which the Thing alone can satisfy nothing else, no half-measure, only that. And then, you go!"
To cling to something one believes that one knows, to cling to something that one feels, to cling to something that one's loves, to cling to one's habits, to cling to the world as it is, is that which binds you. you must undo all, that, one thing after another. Undo all the ties.... No more bond-free, Always ready to change everything, except one thing:
to aspire, this thirst.... [for] the 'Something' one is in need of, the Love one is in need of, the Truth one is in need of, the supreme Perfection one is in need of and that is all.... a need, which the Thing alone can satisfy nothing else, no half-measure, only that. And then, you go!"
*M C W Vol. 11, p. 6
Flower Name: Tectona grandis
Teak, Indian oak, Saga, Saigun
Significance: Renunciation of DesiresTeak, Indian oak, Saga, Saigun
The essential condition for realisation.
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