WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

The desire soul

26 September 1956

"All or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated or vitiated by the soul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even those that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, self-denial are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This soul of desire is a separative soul of ego and all its instincts are for a separative self-affirmation; it pushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth, for possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire."

The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 164

Sweet Mother what is the "soul of desire"?

It is what makes you live, act, move.

Soul, the word for soul in French, "ame" comes from a word which means "to animate". It is what gives life to the body. If you didn't have it you would be inert matter, something like stones or plants, not altogether inert, but vegetative.

Some people say that without desires, that is, without this soul of desire, there would never have been any progress.... In ordinary life it is something very useful but when one decides to do yoga, to find the Divine, it becomes a little cumbersome.

[...]

Mother a well-developed soul, when it incarnates, does it have less difficulty in transforming this soul of desire?

That means?...

The great masters have less difficulties?

One can't say.

In principle it is like that, but in fact, the more the individuality is formed, the stronger is this false soul of desire. Those who have a well-formed, well-coordinated individuality, which has an existence of its own, with a minimum of dependence on the environment, have much more difficulty in coming into contact with the divine Presence than others, because they have a very coordinated, very organised separate existence, which is usually self-sufficient. One always finds it much more difficult to convert, we might say, a very living, fully realised personality than someone, for instance, who is full of goodwill but still open to all sorts of influences. When an individual is very strongly made and has the sense of his own personality, his own existence, it is much more difficult for him to think that he is nothing but an instrument of the divine Force, than for somebody who feels a little nebulous, like this (gesture) not very precise, who has no exact limits, no well-built individuality; he understands more easily that in himself he is nothing and that it is a force other than his own which makes him act. So you cannot [old p. 307]say that a [new p. 306]well-developed soul has less difficulties. It depends on the case.

What you mean, I think, is that if you are in contact with your soul--the true one--it is relatively easy to get rid of the soul of desire. But that is a different situation. You must first have found your psychic being and identified yourself with it; and then, later, you may turn to the soul of desire and convince it of its stupidity.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 08, pp. 304-07