CHAPTER III

DESIRE (continued).

1. THE VEHICLE OF DESIRE.

WE shall have to return to the struggle in the Desire-nature, in order to add some useful details to that which has been already said; but it is first necessary to study the Vehicle of Desire, the Desire­-Body or Astral Body, as this study will enable us to understand the precise method in which we may work to subdue and get rid of the lower desires.

The Vehicle of Desire is made up of what is called astral matter, the matter of the plane above the physical. This matter, like the physical, exists in seven modifications, which relatively to each other are like the solid, liquid, gaseous, etc., sub-states of matter on the physical plane. As the physical body contains [327] within itself these various sub-states of physical matter, so does the astral body contain within itself the various sub-states of astral matter. Each of these sub-states has in it coarser and finer aggregations, and the work of astral, as of physical purification, consists in the substitution of the finer for the coarser.

Moreover, the lower sub-states of astral matter serve chiefly for the manifestation of the lower desires, while the higher sub­-states vibrate in answer to the desires which have changed, by the intermixture of mind, into emotions. The lower desires, grasping after objects of pleasure, find that the lower sub-states serve as medium for their attractive force, and the coarser and baser the desires, the coarser are the aggregations of matter that fitly express them. As the desire causes the corre­sponding material in the astral body to vibrate, that matter becomes strongly vitalised and attracts fresh similar matter from outside to itself, and thus increases the amount of such matter in the constitu­tion of the astral body. When the desires are gradually refined into emotions, [328] intellectual elements entering into them, and selfishness diminishing, the amount of finer matter similarly increases in the astral body, while the coarser matter, left un-­vitalised, loses energy and decreases in amount.

These facts, applied to practice, help us to weaken the enemy which is enthroned within us, for we can deprive him of his instruments. A traitor within the gates is more dangerous than a foe outside, and the desire-body acts as such a traitor, so long as it is composed of elements that answer to the temptations from without.

Desire, as it builds in the coarser materials, must be checked by the mind, the mind refusing to picture the passing pleasure which the possession of the object would entail, and picturing to itself the more lasting sorrow it would cause. As we get rid of the coarser matter which vibrates in answer to the baser attractions, those attractions lose all power to dis­turb us.

This vehicle of desire, then, must be taken in hand; according to its building will be the attractions that reach us from [329] without. We can work upon the form, change the elements of which the form is composed, and thus turn the enemy into a defender.

When a man is evolving in character, he is, however, confronted with a difficulty which often alarms and depresses him. He finds himself shaken by desires from which he shrinks, of which he is ashamed, and despite his strenuous efforts to shake them off, they none the less cling to and torment him. They are discordant with his efforts, his hopes, his aspirations, and yet, in some way, they seem to be his. This painful experience is due to the fact that the consciousness evolves more rapidly than the form can change, and the two are to some extent in conflict with each other. There is a considerable amount of the coarser aggregations still present in the astral body; but as the desires have become more refined, they no longer vivify these materials. Some of the old vitality none the less persists therein, and although these aggregations are decaying they are not wholly gone.

Now although the man’s Desire-nature [330] is no longer using these materials for self-expression, they may yet be thrown into temporary activity from outside, and thus take on a semblance of vitality as a galvanised corpse might do. The desires of other people - desire-elementals of an evil kind - may attach themselves to these disused elements in his astral body, and they may thus be stimulated and revivified, and cause him to feel as his own the promptings of desires he abhors. Where such experiences are undergone, let the bewildered combatant take courage; even in the inrush of these desires, let him repudiate them as none of his, and know that the elements in him they utilise are of the past, and are dying, and that the day of their death and of his freedom is at hand.

We may take an example from dream, to show this working of effete matter in the astral body. A man, in a former life, was a drunkard, and his after-death experiences had impressed deeply on him a repulsion for drink; on rebirth, the Ego in the new physical and astral bodies impressed on them this repulsion, but [331] there was none the less in the astral body some matter drawn thereinto by the vibrations caused in the permanent atom by the former drunkenness. This matter is not vivified in the present life by any craving for drink, nor any yielding to the drink-habit; on the contrary, in the waking life, the man is sober. But in dream, this matter in the astral body is stimulated into activity from without, and the control of the Ego being weak over the astral body[82], this matter responds to the drink-craving vibrations that reach it, and the man dreams that he drinks. Moreover, if there still be in the man a latent desire for drink, too weak to assert itself during waking consciousness, it may come up in the dream-state. For physical matter being comparatively heavy and hard to move, a weak desire has not energy enough to cause vibrations therein; but that same desire may move the much lighter astral matter, and so a man may be carried away in a dream by a desire [332] which has no power over him in his waking consciousness. Such dreams cause much distress, because not understood. The man should understand that the dream shows that the temptation is con­quered so far as he is concerned, and that he is only troubled by the corpse of past desires, vivified from outside on the astral plane, or if from within, then by a dying desire too weak to move him in his waking moments. The dream is a sign of a victory well-nigh complete. At the same time it is a warning; for it tells the man that there is still in his astral body some matter apt to be vivified by vibra­tions of the drink-craving, and that therefore he should not place himself during waking life under conditions where such vibrations may abound. Until such dreams have entirely ceased, the astral body is not free from matter that is a source of danger.

2. THE CONFLICT OF DESIRE AND THOUGHT,

We must now return to the struggle in the Desire-nature, to which reference [333] has already been made, in order to add some necessary details.

This conflict belongs to what may be called the middle stage of evolution, that long stage which intervenes between the state of the man entirely ruled by Desire, grasping all he wants, unchecked by conscience, undisturbed by remorse, and the state of the highly evolved spiritual man, in whom Will, Wisdom and Activity work in co-ordinated har­mony. The conflict arises between Desire and Thought - Thought beginning to understand the relation of itself to the Not-Self and to other separated selves, and Desire, influenced by the objects around it, moving by attractions and repulsions, drawn hither and thither by objects that allure.

We must study the stage of evolution in which the accumulated memories of past experiences, stored in the mind, set themselves against the gratification of desires which have been proved to lead to pain; or, to speak more accurately, in which the conclusion drawn by the Thinker from these accumulated [334] experiences asserts itself in face of a demand from the Desire-nature for the object which has been stamped as dangerous.

The habit of grasping and enjoying has been established for hundreds of lives, and is strong, while the habit of resisting a present pleasure in order to avoid a future pain is only in course of establish­ment, and is consequently very weak. Hence the conflicts between the Thinker and the Desire-nature end for a long time in a series of defeats. The young Mind struggling with the mature Desire-body finds itself constantly vanquished. But every victory of the Desire-nature, being followed by a brief pleasure and a long pain, gives birth to a new force hostile to itself that recruits the strength of its opponent. Each defeat of the Thinker thus sows the seeds of his future victory, and his strength daily grows while the strength of the Desire-nature diminishes.

When this is clearly understood, we grieve no longer over our own falls and the falls of those we love; for we know that these falls are making sure the secure footing of the future, and that in [335] the womb of pain is maturing the future conqueror.

Our knowledge of right and wrong grows out of experience, and is elabor­ated only by trial. The sense of right and wrong, now innate in the civilised man, has been developed by innumerable experiences. In the early days of the separated Self all experiences were useful in his evolution, and brought him the lessons needful for his growth. Gradually he learned that the yielding to desires which, in the course of their gratification injured others, brought him pain out of proportion to the temporary pleasure derived from their satisfaction. He began to attach the word “wrong” to the desires the yielding to which brought a predominance of pain, and this the more quickly because the Teachers who guided his early growth placed on the objects which attracted such desires the ban of Their disapproval. When he had disobeyed Them and suffering followed, the impression made on the Thinker was the more powerful for the previous fore­telling, and conscience - the Will to do [336] the right and abstain from the wrong­ - was proportionately strengthened.

In this connexion we can readily see the value of admonition, reproof, and good counsel. All these are stored up in the mind, and are forces added to the accumulating memories which oppose the gratification of wrong desire. Granted that the person warned may again yield when the temptation assails him; that only means that the balance of strength is still in the wrong desire; when the foretold suffering arrives, the mind will recall all the memories of warnings and admonitions, and will engrave the more deeply in its substance the decision: “This desire is wrong”. The doing of the wrong act merely means that the memory of past pain is not yet sufficiently strong to over­bear the attraction of eagerly anticipated and immediate pleasure. The lesson needs to be repeated yet a few times more, to strengthen the memory of the past, and when that is done, victory is sure. The suffering is a necessary element in the growth of the soul, and has the promise of that growth within it. Everywhere [337] around us, if we see aright, is growing good; nowhere is there hopeless evil.

This struggle is expressed in the sad cry: “What I would, that I do not; what I would not, that I do”. “When I would do good, evil is present with me.” The wrong that we do, when the wish is against the doing, is done by the habit of the past. The weak Will is over­powered by the strong desire.

Now the Thinker in his conflict with the Desire-nature calls to his aid that very nature, and strives to awaken in it a desire which shall be opposed to the desires against which he is waging war. As the attraction of a weak magnet may be overpowered by that of a stronger one, so may one desire be strengthened for the overcoming of another, a right desire may be aroused to combat a wrong one. Hence the value of an ideal.

3. THE VALUE OF AN IDEAL.

An ideal is a fixed mental concept of an inspiring character, framed for the guidance of conduct, and the formation of an ideal [338] is one of the most effective means of influencing desire. The ideal may, or may not, find embodiment in an individual, according to the temperament of the man who frames it, and it must ever be remem­bered that the value of an ideal depends largely on its attractiveness, and that that which attracts one temperament by no means necessarily attracts another. An abstract ideal and a personal one are equally good, regarded from a general standpoint, and that should be selected which has, on the individual choosing it, the most attractive influence. A person of the intellectual temperament will usually find an abstract ideal the more satis­factory; whereas one of the emotional temperament will demand a concrete embodiment of his thought. The dis­advantage of the abstract ideal is that it is apt to fail in compelling inspiration; the disadvantage of the concrete embodiment is that the embodiment is apt to fall below the ideal.

The mind, of course, creates the ideal, and either retains it as an abstraction, or embodies it in a person. The time chosen [339] for the creation of an ideal should be a time when the mind is calm and steady and luminous, when the Desire-nature is asleep. Then the Thinker should con­sider the purpose of his life, the goal at which he aims, and with this to guide his choice, he should select the qualities necessary to enable him to reach that goal. These qualities he should combine into a single concept, imagining as strongly as he can this integration of the qualities he needs. Daily he should repeat this integrating process, until his ideal stands out clearly in the mind, dowered with all beauty of high thought and noble character, a figure of compelling attractive­ness. The man of intellect will keep this ideal as a pure concept. The man of emotional nature will embody it in a person, such as the Buddha, the Christ, Shri Krishna, or some other divine Teacher. In this latter case he will, if possible, study His life, His teachings, His actions, and the ideal will thus become more and more strongly vivified, more and more real to the Thinker. Intense love will spring up in the heart [340] for this embodied ideal, and Desire will stretch out longing arms to embrace it. And when temptation assails, and the lower desires clamour for satisfaction, then the attractive power of the ideal asserts itself, the loftier desire combats the baser, and the Thinker finds himself reinforced by right desire, the negative strength of memory which says: “Abstain from the base”, being fortified by the positive strength of the ideal which says: “Achieve the heroic”.

The man who lives habitually in the presence of a great ideal is armed against wrong desires by love of his ideal, by shame of being base in its presence, by the longing to resemble that which he adores, and also by the general set and trend of his mind along lines of noble thinking. Wrong desires become more and more incongruous. They perish naturally, unable to breathe in that pure clear air.

It may be worth while to remark here, in view of the destructive results of historical criticism, in the minds of many, that the value of the ideal Christ, the ideal Buddha, the ideal Krishna, is in no way [341] injured by any lack of historical data, by any defects in the proofs of the authenticity of a manuscript. Many of the stories related may not be historically true, but they are ethically and vitally true. Whether this incident happened in the physical life of this Teacher or not is a matter of small import; the re-action of such an ideal character on his environ­ment is ever profoundly true. The world­ Scriptures represent spiritual facts, whether the physical incidents be or be not histori­cally true.

Thus Thought may shape and direct Desire, and turn it from an enemy into an ally. By changing the direction of Desire, it becomes a lifting and quickening instead of a retarding force, and where desires for objects held us fast in the mire of earth, desire for the ideal lifts us on strong wings to heaven.

4. THE PURIFICATION OF DESIRE.

We have already seen how much may be done in the purification of the vehicle of Desire, and the contemplation and worship [342] of the ideal, which has just been described, is a most potent means for the purification of Desire. Evil desires die away, as good desires are encouraged and fostered - die away merely from want of nourishment.

The effort to reject all wrong desires is accompanied by the firm refusal of thought to allow them to pass on into actions. Will begins to restrain action, even when Desire clamours for gratification. And this refusal to permit the action instigated by wrong desire gradually deprives of all attractive power the objects which erstwhile aroused it. “The objects of sense … turn away from an abstemious dweller in the body.”[83] The desires fade away, starved by lack of satisfaction. Abstention from gratification is a potent means of puri­fication.

There is another means of purification in which the repulsive force of Desire is utilised, as in the contemplation of the ideal the attractive force was evoked. It is useful in extreme cases, in which the lowest desires are tumultuous and in­surgent, such desires as lead to the vices [343] of gluttony, drunkenness and profligacy. Sometimes a man finds it impossible to get rid of evil desires, and despite all his efforts his mind yields to their strong impulse, and evil imaginations riot in his brain. He may conquer by apparent yielding, carrying on the evil imaginations to their inevitable results. He pictures himself yielding to the temptations that assail him, and sinking more and more into the grip of the evil that masters him. He follows himself, as he falls deeper and deeper, becoming the helpless slave of his passions. He traces with vivid imagina­tion the stages of his descent, sees his body becoming coarser and coarser, then bloated and diseased. He contemplates the shattered nerves, the loathsome sores, the hideous decay and ruin of the once strong and healthy frame. He fixes his eyes on the dishonoured death, the sad legacy of shameful memory left to relatives and friends. He faces in thought the other side of death, and sees the soil and distortion of his vices pictured in the suffering astral body, and the agony of the craving of desires that may no longer be [344] fulfilled. Resolutely he forces his shrink­ing thoughts to dwell on this miserable panorama of the triumph of wrong desires, until there rises within him a strong repulsion against them, an intolerable fear and loathing of the result of present yielding.

Such a method of purification is like the surgeon’s knife, cutting out a cancer which menaces the life, and, like all surgical operations, is to be avoided unless no other means of cure remain. It is better to conquer wrong desire by the attractive force of an ideal, than by the repulsive force of a spectacle of ruin. But where attraction fails to conquer, repulsion may perhaps prevail.

There is also a danger in this latter method, since the coarser matter in the vehicle of Desire is increased by this dwelling in thought on evil, and the struggle is thereby rendered longer than when it is possible to throw the life into good desires and high aspirations. Therefore it is the worse method of the two, only to be accepted when the other is unattainable. [345]

By higher attraction, by repulsion, or by the slow teaching of suffering, Desire must be purified. The “must” is not so much a necessity imposed by an out­side Deity, as the imperial command of the Deity within, who will not be denied. With this true Will of the Divinity, who is our Self, all divine forces in nature work, and that divine Self who wills the highest must inevitably in the end sub­due all things to himself.

With this triumph comes the ceasing of Desire. For then external objects no longer either attract or repel the outgoing energies of Atma, and these energies are entirely directed by Self­-determined Wisdom; that is, Will has taken the place of Desire. Good and evil are seen as the divine forces that work for evolution, the one as necessary as the other, the one the complement of the other. The good is the force that is to be worked with; the evil is the force that is to be worked against; by the right using of both the powers of the Self are evolved into manifestation.

When the Self has developed the aspect [346] of Wisdom, he looks on the righteous and the wicked, the saint and the sinner, with equal eyes, and is therefore equally ready to help both, to reach out strong hand to either. Desire, which regarded them with attraction and repulsion, as pleasure-giving and pain-giving, has ceased, and Will, which is energy directed by Wisdom, brings fitting aid to both. Thus man rises above the tyranny of the pairs of opposites, and dwells in the Eternal Peace. [347]