The fundamental desire

Sadhguru

If you look at it with the necessary awareness, you will see the very process of life, whatever we refer to as the process of living, is a certain seeking, a certain urge to include, evolve and grow into our ultimate nature. If you look at the most basic desires within you, you will see that the fundamental desire is to include something or someone as a part of yourself. Fundamentally, you want to expand your way of being; and you will not settle for any amount of expansion. There is something within you which is looking for a boundless experience. When it finds an unconscious expression, we call this a materialistic way of life. When it finds a conscious expression, we call it a spiritual way of life. They are not different, they are in no way conflicting with each other. It is just that one is an unconscious process, another is a conscious process. One is walking with your eyes closed, another is walking with your eyes open. That’s all the difference is.

This longing for oneness or this longing to include everything as a part of yourself, when it finds a basic physical expression, we call it sex. With sex, you are desperately trying to become one with someone. However hard you try, it doesn’t happen. There are moments when it makes you feel like you are one, but the next moment everything is separate. If you try this mentally, generally it gets labelled as greed, conquest, ambition – you are trying to include everything as a part of yourself, you want to conquer the world itself. If it finds an emotional expression, we call this love. If it finds a conscious expression, we call this yoga. It is the same longing to include something as a part of yourself.

Why is it that you want to include another person as a part of yourself? Somehow, the way you are is not sufficient. For a few moments, you have known a little bit of bliss in it, so that is what you are going after. Suppose you are so complete within yourself that you are absolutely blissful by your own nature, would you long to become one with someone else? No. So, it is not ambition or sex that you are going after, what you are seeking is blissfulness. The few moments of blissfulness that you have known are not sufficient for you. So, isn’t it time you approached it consciously?

That is why Patanjali, when he wrote the yogasutras, started them in a strange way. The first chapter of the yogasutras is “…and now, yoga” – half a sentence. Such a great document on life starts with half a sentence. Intellectually, it does not make any sense, but experientially what it is saying is: “if you still believe that building a new house, or finding a new wife, or getting your daughter married will settle your life, it is not yet time for yoga. But, if you have seen money, power, wealth and pleasure, you have tasted everything in your life and you have realised that nothing is going to work in the real sense and fulfill you ultimately, then it is time for yoga.”