How Can I Manage Desires?

Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati

Managing desire is the 12th class. You have not passed through your 11th or 10th or 9th or 8th or 7th or 6th or 5th or 4th class. Managing desires will happen only when you come to the 12th class.

Desires are managed only by people who are involved in raja yoga, not by people who practise hatha yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, kriya yoga or kundalini yoga. Each yoga has its focus and the focus of raja yoga is the mind and everything concerned with the mind.

How do you know what type of desire you have? Are you aware of your conscious desires? Are you aware of your subconscious desires? Are you aware of your unconscious desires? Or do you only become aware of those that come to the surface of your mind? If you are aware of those that come to the surface of the mind, it is only a fragment, not the whole desire. It is what you perceive to be your desire.

To be desireless is not the subject that you have to follow now. You have to first come to that class to understand the components of the desire and the methods to manage them. Until then just try to be happy, try to be optimistic, try to be helpful and try to discipline yourself. Begin your journey with that, rather than trying to control desires and being beaten by them.

27 March 2016, Ganga Darshan, Munger