INCREASE DESIRE, INCREASE POWER

From Self-Development and the Way to Power, by L. W. Rogers (14)

Desire is nature's motor power--the propulsive force that pushes
everything forward in its evolution. It is desire that stimulates to
action. Desire drives the animal into the activities that evolve its
physical body and sharpen its intelligence. If it had no desire it
would lie inert and perish. But the desire for food, for drink, for
association with its kind, impel it to action, and the result is the
evolution of strength, skill and intelligence in proportion to the
intensity of its desires. To gratify these desires it will accept
battle no matter how great may be the odds against it and will
unhesitatingly risk life itself in the combat. Desire not only induces
the activity that develops physical strength and beauty, but also has
its finer effects. Hunger compels the animal not only to seek food,
but to pit its cunning against that of its prey. Driven forward by
desire it develops, among other qualities, strength, courage,
patience, endurance, intelligence.

Desire plays the same role with man at his higher stage of evolution.
It stimulates him to action; and always as his activity satisfies his
original desire a new one replaces the old and lures him on to renewed
exertion. The average young man beginning his business career, desires
only a comfortable cottage. But when that is attained he wants a
mansion. He soon tires of the mansion and wants a palace. Then he
wants several--at the seaside, in the city, and on the mountains. At
first he is satisfied with a horse; then he demands an automobile, and
finally a steam yacht. He sets out as a youth to earn a livelihood and
welcomes a small salary. But the desire for money pushes him into
business for himself and he works tirelessly for a competence. He
feels that a small fortune should satisfy anybody but when he gets it
he wants to be a millionaire. If he succeeds in that he then desires
to become a multi-millionaire.

Whether the desire is for wealth, or for fame, or for power, the same
result follows--when the desire is satisfied a greater one takes its
place and spurs the ambitious one to still further exertion. He grasps
the prize he believes to contain complete satisfaction only to
discover that while he was pursuing it desire had grown beyond it, and
so the goal he would attain is always far ahead of him. Thus are we
tricked and apparently mocked by nature until we finally awake to the
fact that all the objects of desire--the fine raiment, the jewels, the
palaces, the wealth, the power, are but vain and empty things; and
that the real reward for all our efforts to secure them is not these
objects at all _but the new powers we have evolved in getting them;_
powers that we did not before possess and which we should not have
evolved but for nature's great propulsive force--desire. The man who
accumulates a fortune by many years of persistent effort in organizing
and developing a business enterprise, by careful planning and deep
thinking, may naturally enough look upon the fortune he will possess
for a few years before it passes on to others, as his reward. But the
truth is that it is a very transient and perishable and worthless
thing compared to the new powers that were unconsciously evolved in
getting it--powers that will be retained by the man and be brought
into use in future incarnations.

Desire, then, plays a most important role in human evolution. It
awakens, stimulates, propels. What wind is to the ship, what steam is
to the locomotive, desire is to the human being.

It has been written in a great book, "Kill out desire," and elsewhere
it is written, "Resist not evil." We may find, in similar exalted
pronouncements, truths that are very useful to disciples but which
might be confusing and misleading to the man of the world if he
attempted to literally apply them. Perhaps for the average mortal
"kill out desire" might be interpreted "transmute desire." Without
desire man would be in a deathlike and dangerous condition--a
condition in which further progress would be impossible. But by
transmuting the lower desires into the higher he moves steadily
forward and upward without losing the motive power that urges him
forever onward.

To transmute desire, to continually replace the lower with the higher,
really is killing desire out but it is doing it by the slow and safe
evolutionary process. As to crushing it suddenly, that is simply
impossible; but substitution may work wonders. Suppose, for example,
that a young man is a gambler and his parents are much distressed
about it. The common and foolish course is to lecture him on the sin
of gambling and to tearfully urge him to associate only with very
proper young men. But the young gambler is not in the least interested
in that sort of a life, which appears to him to be a kind of living
death, and such entreaty does not move him. His parents would do
better by looking more closely into the case. Why is he a gambler? He
desires money. He seeks excitement. He wants to live in an atmosphere
of intense life and activity. Very well. These desires are quite right
in themselves. It is useless to try to crush them. It is nonsense to
argue that he does not want these things. Clearly enough he does want
them and that is precisely why he gambles. Then do not attempt the
impossibility of killing the desire but change the objects of his
desires. Say to him: "You desire money and a life full of turbulence
and excitement. Well, you can get all that in a better and a
legitimate way and have the respect of your friends besides. You can
go into politics. That is a field within the pale of the law and in it
you can have scope for all the energy and activity and intensity of
life you long for, with all the element of chance which you find so
attractive." And when the young man has had his fling there and tires
of it then something else can be attempted. But to try to crush desire
and curb the outrushing life is both foolish and impossible. We can
only direct it.