CWTVKS Volume 2

Human Will and Desire

Q: Is it wrong to curb desires by will?

A: Curbing postpones the evil, puts a premium on its recurrence perhaps with added strength. That does not mean one may indulge in it. The little will of man cannot successfully control desires, much less conquer them. But if the will becomes with the higher Will, then the problem is rightly tackled. The higher Will either removes these desires if they are not in consonance with the laws of the supreme Truth in action or it fulfils them if that be the necessity of the higher Law. In any case their character is changed and they are not so many hurdles on the way, but are purified and changed to become true expressions of the Truth-Will, the divine Will, the Divine in the becoming.

Here also, I may add, the human will can be trained to harmonise with the prayer. For prayer itself gives a definite form to the will in addition to the response it brings from the higher Truth and Will to act upon and through the human will changed, developed and enlightened.

I note from your letter that you are familiar with the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, particularly the Gita and his Letters. It is then hardly necessary to point out that the question of human psychology and the I-ness is not so simple as stated in the letter. What you have described is a partial truth, it is partial and exclusive, does not comprehend and take into account the variety of temperaments and types of souls and their possibilities that bespeak the global character of the Truth in the Manifestation.

Once this is borne in mind there will be no room left for any confusion.

21 March 1948