काममय एवायं पुरुष इति स      – You are what your deepest driving desire is
यथाकामो भवति तत्क्रतुर्भवति   – As your driving desire is, so is your will
यत्क्रतुर्भवति तत्कर्म कुरुते       – As your will is, so is your deed
यत्कर्म कुरुते तदभिसम्पद्यते    – As your deed is, so is your destiny

—Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV.4.5

You are what you know, and
you will be what you think…. Vasishta

We are what our deepest driving desires are? Desires manufacture us? Through this verse, rishis are telling us that we don’t generate desires, but it is desires that actually create us, to reach their own goals!!! Yet another area where the rishis turn our beliefs upside down.  And these desires keep coming back. That is true Reincarnation in action – “I” am not reincarnating, but my “deepest driving desire” is. My body is in it just for the ride with my deepest desire, as it is progressing towards it’s goal. The subtle body or that scaffolding that we talked about before is fabricated by this desire.

That’s why reincarnation does not just imply that humans reincarnate as humans, cats reincarnate as cats…, etc. At best, a sentient being reincarnates as a sentient being.  The strongest desire picks it’s preferred vehicle to reach its own goal.  For example, from Yogavasista (translation by Narayanaswamy Iyer):

“Some of them have undergone more than a hundred births. Some have attained births beyond number of Kinnaras, Gandharvas, Vidyadharas or the hosts of Uragas. Some are born as the sun or the moon or Varuna: some as Brahma, Vishnu or Siva; some as Brahmins or kings or Vysias or the ser viceable Sudras; some as beasts, birds or reptiles; some as tendrils, unripe fruits, fruits, roots or straw. Some monads are born as the mountains, Mahendra, Sahya, Meru or Mandara; some as the trees, Kadamba, Lime, Palmyra, etc.; some as the grand septenary seas of salt, curd, ghee, milk, sugar-cane-juice, honey or pure water; some as the different quarters or rivers and other objects, high or low….”

Where is the driving energy coming from, for the desires to march towards their ends? Polarities!! Like north and south poles on magnets, and positive and negative particles in atmosphere, things move towards their respective polar complements. Looking at it in another way, desire (thoughts) generated within us is a manifestation of a polarity imbalance. Hormonal differences that make male and females are also polarity imbalances essentially, and are responsible for mutual attraction. Two of the most popular heroes of our yoga story – Shiva and Arjuna – are only two perfectly balanced beings – half masculine/half feminine.

The bottom line? Thoroughly examine thoughts, intentions and desires. What surface as desires, rationalization for deeds and behavior, and all such things trace back to our deepest desire. We may not even know what that driving desire is unless we meditated on it. It’s like deep-diving into an ocean, all the way to the bottom. In some metaphysical commentaries on Ramayana, Hanuman’s jump across the ocean to Lanka is depicted by him diving all the way to the ocean floor to slay demonic-forces. Another interesting story for another day.

Again, in Yogavasista, a seeker asks a rishi – what is this desire (samkalpa)? Samkalpa actually is closer to “intention to undertake specific action” in meaning, but is an underlying seed desire that drives it.

kīdṛśastāta saṃkalpaḥ kathadupadyate prabho |

kathaṃ ca vṛddhimāpnoti kathaṃ caiṣa vinaśyati || 1 ||

The son asked said:—What is this desire, father? how is it produced and grown, and how is it destroyed at last?

Note that this samkalpa not only is produced, but grows with time!  Now see the rishi’s answer.

The desire or will is situated in the mind or mental part of the one eternal, infinite atma. It gets the form of a monad from a formless unit, and then by its gradual expansion extends over the whole mind, and fills it as a flimsy cloud soon covers the sky. Remaining in the universal Intellect (chit), the mind (manas) thinks of thinkables, as they are distinct from itself; and its longing after them is called its desire, which springs from it as a germ from its seed. The desire is produced by the desiring of something, and it increases of itself both in its size and quantity, for our trouble only, and to no good or happiness at all…

Again, is the yogic model correct? That’s irrelevant, because yogis are not asking for our subscription, but suggest we contemplate. Have a model of your own, constantly validate it with observations you make, in an unbiased way.  They also suggest that we can assess any event in an unbiased way only when our own desire gets out of the way.  Our intuition is just fine, but the problem is with our ego built up from that innate driving desire.

Now, what if the strongest desire is animalistic?  In that case, the universe allows that desire to collect a animal body to allow it to reach its goal.  Universe doesn’t play favorites – it just gives us what we seek.  We have to be very mindful of our desires.

So, we don’t have desires, but desires have us, to drive to their own ends, through us as instruments. However, we can modify or nullify that desire with a strong effort, and march towards calming down that desire-vibration. How do we neutralize the polarity energy that drives these desires? Enter Pranama mudra! Bring left (moon or creative-side) and the right (sun or physical-side) hands together, and focus on breath through both nostrils simultaneously, to neutralize the polarities. Mudras in general are intended to drive the energy in a particular direction in the mind, and pranama mudra is the most popular of all for this reason (back to 01/11-12 Kriyas/Meditations).

Yoga is all about such tools. Which tool exactly works for us individually is something we need to figure out for ourselves. How do we know it’s working? Thoughts slow down with the right tool; gaps between distracting thoughts grow. Initially a few seconds gap is all we seek. Yogis tell us that our thinking will become more focused and deeper as we grow calmer, and we learn to differentiate battles from wars much better.  And we will find all the solutions we seek during those calm moments.

May we all be blessed in calmer minds_/\_/\_/\_