It is said that desire can be a motivation for achieving goals, fulfilling needs, and attaining happiness. On the other hand, uncontrolled or unsatisfied desires can lead to suffering and dissatisfaction. It is important to understand and manage one’s desires in order to achieve a healthy and fulfilled life. We can read that a man, like all beings, turns towards something that is lacking and necessary for survival. This lack in beings causes internal changes, imbalance, and tension, which then turn into actions directed towards achieving what is missing externally.
Once this is achieved, the unrest is silenced, the internal balance is restored, and the search is ceased, until a new state of imbalance arises. In this process, pleasure is the reward for effort.
According to this explanation, desire arises from a deficiency, from the need for balance and wholeness, and pleasure is the state of satisfaction due to the reestablishment of balance or the renewal of wholeness. This whole process occurs in a closed circle, a cycle that begins anew and continues its constant circulation the moment it ends.
It can be said that desire has a cause that is simultaneously its goal: the preservation and creation of life, or its prolongation. But this pattern, which is so clear in biology, is also applicable in other aspects of human existence. At the level of plants and animals, it is no longer as clear when it comes to humans. In the human life, we do not talk about a circle, but rather about a spiral whose axis is time. However, it seems that human appetite, created by desire, does not stop at satisfying needs, but only progressively increases. Human imagination stimulates the instinct for power and life until it desires to encompass everything, possess everything, and be in everything. The need and feeling of lack are immense and continuous, and the result is an insatiable appetite.
Unlike animals, humans can invent and multiply their own needs. Basic biological needs strive for a homeostatic balance on which life fundamentally depends. However, human desires often exceed the boundaries necessary for basic survival and can become contradictory to biological logic, such as the desire for death or the desire to transcend mere biological existence. For example, higher cultural aspirations can sometimes be in conflict with the biological aspiration for life. It is also said that a truly humane The way of life implies surrendering oneself completely to something, surpassing oneself, and serving values that transcend physical existence.
We can see, therefore, that the biological concepts of “needs” and “struggle for life,” so important in modern behavioral psychology, must be used very carefully when speaking about human motivations. Undoubtedly, humans have many needs that animals also have, but many of them can be relinquished. There is a significant difference between animal needs and human desires – our needs are not always “necessary.” In humans, there are desires that far exceed the biological level. Sometimes, one is willing to sacrifice everything, including their own life, for aesthetic, intellectual, and religious values.
In summary, we would highlight two characteristics of human desires: the constant expansion of needs and the existence of desires that transcend the biological level.
TRUE HUMANE LIFE INCLUDES A DESIRE FOR HIGHER VALUES THAT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PHYSICAL EXISTENCE AND SELF-SACRIFICE. NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACHIEVING THOSE VALUES.
Seeking comfort
Another aspect of desire to consider is the pleasure that comes from fulfilling a desire. When we focus on pleasure instead of addressing the need, our actions are not connected to the need that caused them.
This creates needs that are actually artificial, such as overeating when we are already full or artificially stimulating sexual desire through pornography. Ultimately, this leads to a diseased addiction of the mind and body, and desire loses its natural role and becomes a vice. Instead of preserving life, it destroys it due to its corruption.
Whether it is good or bad, there are various obstacles that block or hinder our desires and prevent their fulfillment. This leads to frustration, an emotional state opposite to pleasure, which we feel as pain, confusion, or restlessness.
The consequence of frustration is not the loss of desire, but its transformation. This transformed desire usually turns into anger or resentment. Assertiveness, but it is not always directed towards its obstacle, but redirects itself through different paths and towards other goals that may not be connected to it at all. Since it was obviously not possible to overcome the obstacle, which sometimes is very powerful and even unknown, aggression is directed elsewhere. Such aggression, as a form of hidden desire, usually leads to highly conflictual situations in interpersonal relationships, which only increases the reasons for frustration.
Aggression is not always directed outward; sometimes it is redirected towards oneself as a way of “self-punishment” due to feelings of guilt for one’s own failures. This creates internal storms of pain and powerlessness, leading to depression and anxiety. Such deviation from desire can lead to regression into an infantile state, apathy, or even a desire to deny life and return to prenatal stages.
When frustration is constant and suppressed, it creates chronic conditions that become part of one’s character, and the individual becomes is aggressive or depressive. Simply put, we can say that pleasure is the result of fulfillment, and pain is the result of unfulfilled desire.
In the case of depression, the fear of the desire itself and the pain that arises from losing hope in its fulfillment hinders action, so the energy of that impulse is stopped. The desire may disappear, but not the need. Let’s take the example of the physical body: if we don’t eat, we may lose our appetite, but the body will still have a need for food. That is why depression is essentially a suffocated desire, but it acts in reverse: it destroys life because of unfulfillment. Needs remain unmet because of the escape from pain.
A conscious and mature person is driven by natural needs, not pleasure or pain that stimulate or hinder. Such a person, through knowledge and will, reaches the goal.
The dual nature of human desire
When we described the two basic characteristics of human desire, we mentioned two forms of expansion: the continuous expansion of needs and the existence of desires that transcend the biological level.
Artificial need arises from opinion, from a subjective feeling of need. We think we need a television or a car and immediately a desire for possession arises. In this way, we could create countless needs simply by convincing ourselves that we have them. Our consumer society creates needs in order to awaken desires. It convinces us that instead of one thing, we need to have many, then that what is old is not usable and that we need to replace it with something new, until the need for replacement becomes a necessity itself.
This expansive form of desire can be depicted as a spiral that develops horizontally and superficially. Every time we want more and more things, quantity is important. A person measures their worth by the number of things they possess. This spiral, moving at ground level, encompasses more and more floors and prevents the person from leaving the horizontal. Their instinct for power grows at the material level.
When desires that go beyond the biological start to appear, a person changes their horizontal orientation in order to grow. vertically. This spiral of desire transforms and rises from its horizontality to immaterial values.
Material, horizontal desire characterized by quantity (number of things, number of repetitions…) is not selective and does not include a sense of perfection. Therefore, it does not provide an incentive for evolution.
The hint of perfection evokes a desire for perfection, which we experience as what is beautiful, good, just, and true. Even at the unconscious biological level, life tries to reach perfection. The fundamental desire prompts us towards what we consider more beautiful, stronger, and better. Life does not satisfy its needs randomly, it does so selectively.
Humans become aware of this hint of perfection, as well as the understanding that they have not yet reached it. They seek goodness and beauty because they do not want only things, but they want them to be good and beautiful, and the more they are, the better.
But besides that, humans can also see themselves, think about themselves, look at themselves in the mirror, and recognize themselves. That’s why the desire arises. acknowledges oneself and reaches perfection. He may wish to be more efficient, more beautiful, wiser, and better.
This is an ascending, verticalizing spiral on which life truly manifests itself; this is where a person fulfills themselves as such. At this point, we transition from “having” to “being”, from simple biological function and animal consciousness to improving the world around us and ourselves; from a simple desire for more life to a desire for a better life; from collecting information to acquiring knowledge; from accumulating knowledge to wisdom; from transient to permanent.
Human Consciousness
According to ancient teachings, human consciousness exists between the material and the spiritual. A human being does not belong to either the earth or the sky, but to both. Their consciousness is like a bridge between these two worlds. From the perspective of desire, it carries within itself two seemingly opposing tendencies: a tendency towards the material and a tendency towards the spiritual. Being situated between two worlds, one longs for transient things but also for things more sublime than what everyday life offers. When one reaches a certain level of spirituality, they begin to transcend the limitations of earthly desires and material possessions, and instead focus on the development of their spiritual self. By nurturing this spiritual aspect, one can attain a state of inner peace and liberation from the cycle of suffering and rebirth. A person finds themselves in the right place, where two currents merge; on one side, they perceive the sublime possibilities of the spiritual world, beauty, justice, goodness, and truth, while on the other side, their actions in the material world enable them to direct things and themselves towards the perfection they have recognized. Therefore, the person’s sense of perfection arises from the ability of their consciousness to rise into the spiritual realm.
To close the door to the spiritual means to prevent a person from living a truly human life and achieving self-realization, pushing them into unsatisfactory states that will ultimately destroy their identity.
When a person fully aligns themselves with the spiritual, they become a force of nature, a channel through which the divine principle acts in the world. They become a being that acts for the good of all living beings, including themselves.