Desiring in the right manner
You attain freedom from sorrow (duhkh nivritti) in deep dreamless sleep, but still you don’t attain happiness. If you were to attain true happiness once for even a second, it wouldn’t be able to leave you. It is received forever. So how can we end our desires? This is impossible, unnatural. The desire for happiness would remain. Now there are two areas: God's area and maya's area. If we are smart, we will form desires for God. Ask Tulsidas, Soordas, Meera, Kabir, Nanak, Tukaram, Shankaracharya, Vallabhacharya if they have any desires. The answer? No. Uddhao, do you desire anything? “Radha Krishn are my everything.” So he has desires for the Divine side, and ignorant people desire the material side. Everyone has to desire. Even great mahapurush who have become desireless (poornkam) have desires.
Furthermore, Maharajji Kripalu says that once a Saint attained God realization, supreme Divine Bliss, but he again desired: “The souls are sorrowful. I have to teach them. If I teach thousands, then ten or twenty will get it.” This is the Saint’s desire of beneficence, to benefit others. God descends on this earth – from the act of creation to His appearance on this earth, He desires. He doesn’t just desire, He also does practical devotion.
So, what will happen to those with material desires? As a man desires, so he determines. As he determines, so he acts. As he acts, so he becomes. So to desire is our nature, to get happiness. Thus it is also our nature to form desires. How is it that the Saints formed desires for God and we didn’t? This is a separate question. We either didn’t believe, hear or understand the words of the scriptures or Saints and that is why we are in the world. If we were to increase our desire for the world, it still wouldn’t give us happiness. We never understood this. It may be that we heard Saints’ lectures uncountable times, and at that time we nodded our heads and said, “What you are saying is right.” But we again became attached in the world. Whatever knowledge you have in the present, won’t remain in the future. For keeping it, you have to do repeated remembrance, chintan. Again and again listen and think. There is nothing in this world. Why? You are a soul and this is your body. The soul is a fraction of God and the body is produced by maya. It is lifeless, but ‘you’ have life, so the subject that relates to ‘you’ is spiritual, God. The subject of the lifeless body is the world. They are completely separate. For example, the work of the eyes is to see, the work of the ears is to hear, the work of the nose is to smell. If you were to close your eyes and try to see from your ears, then people would say, “Something’s wrong with his brain. Take him to the hospital. He’s talking about something impossible.” In the same way, the subject of the soul is God but we keep giving it the world, “Here, eat this. Look at this. Listen to this. Hug this.” You hugged your father, mother, wife, husband, child – you did this your whole life and what did you get? Nothing. So these things, of which we understand very little, we don’t revise in our minds and think about.
The Ved says to listen to spiritual philosophy and think about it. Reflect, repeatedly think, revise it in your mind. Look at worldly love and animosity. How does it increase? Through repeated thinking.
Imagine two boys are following behind a girl. One boy thought, “This girl is very good. I want to meet her.” He followed her. Using some excuse he asked her where she lived and who her father was and then he started to follow her. He wasn’t able to meet her after this, so now his crying and staying up all night began. The other friend said, “Look. There are plenty of girls. If you applied this much stubbornness in finding God, you would be God realized. What will you get from her?” In the same way, our attachments increase through our repeated thinking of them, no matter if they are positive (love) or negative (animosity). Like this we should continuously think of our Guru and the knowledge of the scriptures.
Right now all of you are listening very nicely. Now you should do it. When will you do it? You have to develop devotional desire – you just have to do this much. Don’t try to eliminate your desires, anger, or greed. Just turn them towards God’s side. Your five desires are related to your five senses; you can’t have a sixth desire. You have desires to see – your mother, father, wife, husband, child, Guru or God. Like this you have desires for hearing, tasting, touching and smelling. Divert your desires. Just turn them towards God’s side. As soon as you understand that your self interest will be served by God, you will immediately become attached to God. You won’t have to practice this.