It will help you, in doing this and in changing your desire, if you
realise that the great evolution of humanity goes on along two
paths—the Path of Forthgoing, and the Path of Return.
On the Path, or marga, of Pravritti—forthgoing on which are the vast
majority of human beings, desires are necessary and useful. On that
path, the more desire a man has, the better for his evolution. They are
the motives that prompt to activity. Without these the stagnates, he is
inert. Why should Isvara have filled the worlds with desirable objects
if He did not intend that desire should be an ingredient in evolution?
He deals with humanity as a sensible mother deals -with her child. She
does not give lectures to the child on the advantages of walking nor
explain to it learnedly the mechanism of the muscles of the leg. She
holds a bright glittering toy before the child, and says: “Come and get
it.” Desire awakens, and the child begins to crawl, and so it learns to
walk. So Isvara has put toys around us, but always just out of our
reach, and He says: “Come, children, take these. Here are love, money,
fame, social consideration; come and get them. Walk, make efforts for
them.” And we, like children, make great efforts and struggle along to
snatch these toys. When we seize the toy, it breaks into pieces and is
of no use. People fight and struggle and toil for wealth, and, when
they become multi-millionaires, they ask: “How shall we spend this
wealth?” I read of a millionaire in America, who was walking on foot
from city to city, in order to distribute the vast wealth which he
accumulated. He learned his lesson. Never in another life will that man
be induced to put forth efforts for the toy of wealth. Love of fame,
love of power, stimulate men to most strenuous effort. But when they
are grasped and held in the hand, weariness is the result. The mighty
statesman, the leader of the nation, the man idolised by
millions—follow him home, and there you will see the weariness of
power, the satiety that cloys passion. Does then God mock us with all
the objects? No. The object has been to bring out the power of the Self
to develop the capacity latent in man, and in the development of human
faculty, the result of the great lila may be seen. That is the way in
which we learn to unfold the God within us; that is the result of the
play of the divine Father with His children.
But sometimes the desire for objects is lost too early, and the lesson
is but half learned. That is one of the difficulties in the India of
today. You have a mighty spiritual philosophy, which was the natural
expression for the souls who were born centuries ago. They were ready
to throw away the fruit of action and to work for the Supreme to carry
out His Will.
But the lesson for India at the present time is to wake up the desire.
It may look like going back, but it is really a going forward. The
philosophy is true, but it belonged to those older souls who were ready
for it, and the younger souls now being born into the people are not
ready for that philosophy. They repeat it by rote, they are hypnotised
by it, and they sink down into inertia, because there is nothing they
desire enough to force them to exertion. The consequence is that the
nation as a whole is going downhill. The old lesson of putting
different objects before souls of different ages, is forgotten, and
every one is now nominally aiming at ideal perfection, which can only
be reached when the preliminary steps have been successfully mounted.
It is the same as with the “Sermon on the Mount” in Christian
countries, but there the practical common sense of the people bows to
it and—ignores it. No nation tries to live by the “Sermon on the Mount”
It is not meant for ordinary men and women, but for the saint. For all
those who are on the Path of Forthgoing, desire is necessary for
progress.
What is the Path of Nivritti? It is the Path of Return. There desire
must cease; and the Self-determined will must take its place. The last
object of desire in a person commencing the Path of Return is the
desire to work with the Will of the Supreme; he harmonises his will
with the Supreme Will, renounces all separate desires, and thus works
to turn the wheel of life as long as such turning is needed by the law
of Life. Desire on the Path of Forthgoing becomes will on the Path of
Return; the soul, in harmony with the Divine, works with the law.
Thought on the Path of Forthgoing is ever alert, flighty and changing;
it becomes reason on the Path of Return; the yoke of reason is placed
on the neck of the lower mind, and reason guides the bull. Work,
activity, on the Path of Forthgoing, is restless action by which the
ordinary man is bound; on the Path of Return work becomes sacrifice,
and thus its binding force is broken. These are, then, the
manifestations of three aspects, as shown on the Paths of Forthgoing
and Return.
Bliss manifested as desire is changed into will Wisdom manifested as
thought is changed into reason. Activity manifested as work is changed
into sacrifice.
People very often ask with regard to this: “Why is will placed in the
human being as the correspondence of bliss in the Divine?” The three
great Divine qualities are: chit or consciousness; ananda or bliss; sat
or existence. Now it is quite clear that the consciousness is reflected
in intelligence in man—the same quality, only in miniature. It is
equally clear that existence and activity belong to each other. You can
only exist as you act outwards. The very form of the word shows It
—“ex, out of”; it is manifested life. That leaves the third, bliss, to
correspond with will, and some people are rather puzzled with that, and
they ask: “What is the correspondence between bliss and will?” But if
you come down to desire, and the objects of desire, you will be able to
solve the riddle. The nature of the Self is bliss. Throw that nature
down into matter and what will be the expression of the bliss nature?
Desire for happiness, the seeking after desirable objects, which it
imagines will give it the happiness which is of its own essential
nature, and which it is continually seeking to realise amid the
obstacles of the world. Its nature being bliss, it seeks for happiness
and that desire for happiness is to be transmuted into will. All these
correspondences have a profound meaning if you will only look into
them, and that universal “will-to-live” translates itself as the
“desire for happiness” that you find in every man and woman, in every
sentient creature. Has it ever struck you how surely you are justifying
that analysis of your own nature by the way you accept happiness as
your right, and resent misery, and ask what you have done to deserve
it? You do not ask the same about happiness, which is the natural
result of your own nature. The thing that has to be explained is not
happiness but pain, the things that are against the nature of the Self
that is bliss. And so, looking into this, we see how desire and will
are both the determination to be happy. But the one is ignorant, drawn
out by outer objects; the other is self-conscious, initiated and ruled
from within. Desire is evoked and directed from outside; and when the
same aspect rules from within, it is will. There is no difference in
their nature. Hence desire on the Path of Forthgoing becomes will on
the Path of Return.
When desire, thought and work are changed into will, reason and
sacrifice, then the man is turning homewards, then he lives by
renunciation.
When a man has really renounced, a strange change takes place. On the
Path of Forthgoing, you must fight for everything you want to get; on
the Path of Return, nature pours her treasures at your feet. When a man
has ceased to desire them, then all treasures pour down upon him, for
he has become a channel through which all good gifts flow to those
around him. Seek the good, give up grasping, and then everything will
be yours. Cease to ask that your own little water tank may be filled,
and you will become a pipe, joined to the living source of all waters,
the source which never runs dry, the waters which spring up
unfailingly. Renunciation means the power of unceasing work for the
good of all, work which cannot fail, because wrought by the Supreme
Worker through His servant.
If you are engaged in any true work of charity, and your means are
limited and the wealth does not flow into your hands, what does it
mean? It means that you have not yet learnt the true renunciation. You
are clinging to the visible, to the fruit of action, and so the wealth
does not pour through your hands.