Persistence of Desires
Desires are so much a force in this existence, that long after they have relevance they may remain embedded in the psyche of an individual. Let us consider the most basic need of newborn.
What is that?
It is to find a food source.
Air is happening spontaneously but there has to be a food source for the little one. The anxiety is to find that because the newborn does not have a means of mobility. Its legs are not working as they should. It does not have the advantage of a fawn which can walk moments after it is ejected from its mother’s passage.
Suppose however the infant is lucky. The mother is nearby and places its mouth within reach of her nipples. The infant can suckle and ease that basis need. However some effort has to be made. By the grace of nature the infant does not have to think this out. In most infant bodies there is an automatic sucking impulse which operates to extract human milk.
Problem solved!
Sometime after, say about two years, the mother weans the infant. Or the infant develops a disinterest in human milk and shifts to human food. Then what?
Is the desire for human milk gone forever?
We can say that from the physical evidence it is. However from the subtle evidence it remains intact, as fresh as ever, to be used again and again in repeated births. The same sucking impulse remains, the same need for human milk remains in the subtle body. It never goes away. It may become dormant. It may seem to be non-existent but it is there in the background.
This is desire, one type of desire, the subliminal type which will emerge again when suitable circumstances manifest again.
There is yet other types of desires which persist, like for instance, desires which I have in this life but which I cannot manifest because there was no opportunity to do it or because my life will end before I could fulfill it. I will carry those unfulfilled desires with me, packaged psychologically, to the hereafter.
What will I do with them there?
I was inspired to compose this because of an astral encounter with my deceased mother. She created a situation where she could fulfill her desire to be with the children of my body. In that astral place, she had somehow or the other pulled their astral forms and caused those forms to be at ages which she desires to be with them. She was fussing about this and about that, keep me at a distance, as she related to them.
Physically these children are all adults. Some have children of their own. However in that astral place their adult bodies were not present. Their astral forms took adolescent forms which suited what my mother wanted them to be for the convenience of fulfilling her desire to be their head-of-household.
Dead yes, desireless no
After death, wanting to live the life one left behind?
Yes!
Wanting to reenact desires in the hereafter, which one has when one used a physical body?
Yes!
Getting astral powers to relive what life snuffed out?
Yes, to some extent.
Desire energy. Here is what Patanjali said about it (my English translation):
तासामनादित्वं चाशिषो नित्यत्वात्॥१०॥
tāsām anāditvaṁ ca āśiṣaḥ nityatvāt
tāsām – those; anāditvaṁ – what is without beginning, primeval; ca – and; āśiṣaḥ – hope and desire energies; nityatvāt – what is eternal.
Those memories and impressions are primeval, without a beginning. Energies of hope and desire are eternal as well. (Yoga Sutras 4.10)
हेतुफलाश्रयालम्बनैः सङ्गृहीतत्वादेषामभावे तदभावः॥११॥
hetu phala āśraya ālambanaiḥ saṅgṛhītatvāt
eṣām abhāve tad abhāvaḥ
hetu – cause; phala – effect; āśraya – storage place, causal plane, supportive base; ālambanaiḥ – by what supports or lifts; saṅgṛhītatvāt – what holds together; eṣām – of those, these; abhāve – in what is not there; tad – them; abhāvaḥ – not existing.
They exist by what holds them together in terms of cause and effect, supportive base and lifting influence. Otherwise if their causes are not there, they have no existence. (Yoga Sutras 4.11)
