Purifying Desire – Part 2

 

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Purifying Desire – Part 2

Money has brought a few blessings, but in the same measure it has brought many curses too. We can have a bigger house, but now we will have less peace. We can have a bigger bank balance, but you will also have bigger worries. Money has brought a few things which are good; in the wake of it many other things have arrived which are not good at all. And if we look at the whole thing, the whole effort has been a sheer wastage. And now we cannot even have the hope that the poor man can have. The rich person becomes hopeless. This person knows now the money will go on increasing and nothing is going to happen - just death awaits, nothing else.

But desire in itself is not wrong. The desire for money, the desire for power, the desire for prestige, are wrong objects for desire - let it be very clear. By having wrong objects of desire, desire itself does not become wrong. We can have a sword and we can kill somebody - that does not make the sword something wrong. We can also save somebody with the same sword. Poison can kill and poison can become medicine too. In the right hands, poison is nectar; in the wrong hands, nectar is poison.

Desire has to be purified and transformed, because it is our energy - we don’t have any other energy. How to transform desire? One way, the mediocre way, is to change the object. Don’t go after money, start going after God. We are frustrated with money - become religious, go to the church, to the temple, to the mosque. Let our desire have a new object called God, which is as illusory as the object called money, even more illusory, because what do we know about God? Money at least is something visible, objective; we have known it, we have seen it. What do we know of God? We have only heard the word. God remains a word unless experienced. God remains an empty word unless we pour some content into it through our own existential experience.

What is intelligence? Intelligence means the insight that no object can fulfill our desires. No object, can ever fulfill our desires. Our desire is divine. Our desire is as big as the sky - even the sky is not a limit to it. No object can fill it. Then what is to be done?

The intelligent person stops desiring objects. Such a person makes his desire pure of all objects - worldly, otherworldly. He/she starts living his/her desire in its purity, moment to moment. He/she is full of desire, full of overflowing energy.