What is it in us that calls out desire? Look into your own mind, and
you will find that memory and imagination are the two things that evoke
desire most strongly. Hence thought is the means whereby all the
changes in desire can be brought about. Thought, imagination, is the
only creative power in you, and by imagination your powers are to be
unfolded. The more you think of a desirable object, the stronger
becomes the desire for it. Then think of Yoga as desirable, if you want
to desire Yoga. Think about the results of Yoga and what it means for
the world when you have become a yogi, and you will find your desire
becoming stronger and stronger. For it is only by thought that you can
manage desire. You can do nothing with it by itself. You want the
thing, or you do not want it, and within the limits of the desire
nature you are helpless in its grasp. As just said, you cannot change
desire by desire. You must go into another region of your being, the
region of thought, and by thought you can make yourself desire or not
desire, exactly as you like, if only you will use the right means, and
those means, after all, are fairly simple. Why is it you desire to
possess a thing? Because you think it will make you happier. But
suppose you know by past experience that in the long run it does not
make you happier, but brings you sorrow, trouble, distress. You have at
once, ready to your hands, the way to get rid of that desire. Think of
the ultimate results. Let your mind dwell carefully on all the painful
things. Jump over the momentary pleasure, and fix your thought steadily
on the pain which follows the gratification of that desire. And when
you have done that for a month or so, the very sight of those objects
of desire will repel you. You will have associated it in your mind with
suffering, and will recoil from it instinctively. You will not want it.
You have changed the want, and have changed it by your power of
imagination. There is no more effective way of destroying a vice than
by deliberately picturing the ultimate results of its indulgence.
Persuade a young man who is inclined to be profligate to keep in his
mind the image of an old profligate; show him the profligate worn out,
desiring without the power to gratify; and if you can get him to think
in that way, unconsciously he will begin to shrink from that which
before attracted him; the very hideousness of the results frightens
away the man from clinging to the object of desire. And the would-be
yogi has to use his thought to mark out the desires he will permit, and
the desires that he is determined to slay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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